Every Land Has Its Richness – Celebrating Nigeria at 66, By Oladunni Olisa

When I was in secondary school, I travelled with my mum and took along the seed of a vegetable that grew easily in our home garden.

At home, planting it had always seemed almost effortless. I could put the seed into the soil and, with the right care, expect something to begin growing. So when we travelled, I assumed the same thing would happen there.

It did not.

I planted the seed and waited, but nothing happened.

What fascinated me was that the land itself was not barren. Other plants were growing there. Whatever combination of soil and growing conditions was present, this seed did not thrive there as easily as it did in our home garden.

I was young, but somehow the experience stayed with me.

Years later, as I travelled and observed different places, I began to understand that childhood experience differently. Different things flourish in different environments. Something that grows almost effortlessly in one place may struggle somewhere else, while another crop may thrive there abundantly.

That does not make one land rich and the other poor.

It means that each land has its own richness.

What the Land Can Give

That thought came back to me during another journey when I saw people loading large quantities of tubers of yam into a container.

There were so many that I became curious.

“Where are they going?” I asked.

I was told that they were being prepared for export.

That answer caught my attention. What I was looking at was not simply yam. It was something the land had produced that could become food, livelihood, trade and economic value beyond the place where it had been grown.

On another occasion, in a different country, I saw large quantities of apples being prepared for export.

Again, I was fascinated.

One place had an abundance of one product. Another had an abundance of something different. Each had found a way to take what its environment could produce and turn it into something valuable enough to send beyond its borders.

It made me think again about that childhood experience.

Perhaps one of our mistakes is believing that value means being able to produce exactly what somebody else produces.

But why should every land produce the same thing?

A soil that does not favour one crop may support something else exceptionally well.

The real question is not always, “Why don’t we have what they have?”

Sometimes the better question is, “What do we have, and what are we doing with it?”

The Difference Between Possession and Productivity

Having resources is one thing. Knowing what to do with them is another.

The yam I saw being prepared for export represented much more than something harvested from the ground. Someone had planted it. Someone had cultivated the farm. Someone had harvested it. Others had created systems for transporting, packaging, selling and exporting it.

The apples I saw elsewhere had gone through their own journey from production to trade.

That, to me, is where productivity becomes important.

A resource may begin in the soil, but its value can grow when human beings apply knowledge, creativity, organisation and enterprise to it.

A country may have fertile land, minerals, culture, human talent or natural resources, but those things reach greater potential when they are developed, protected and put to productive use.

Remembering a Lesson Called Patriotism

As I reflected on these experiences, I remembered something I had been taught in secondary school: patriotism.

At the time, it was one of those words we learnt in class. We understood it as love for one’s country, loyalty and pride in where one comes from.

But adulthood has made the word more meaningful to me.

To me, patriotism should not mean pretending that everything about a country is perfect.

We can love a place and still recognise what needs to improve. We can celebrate what is valuable and still ask difficult questions about what could be better.

Perhaps mature patriotism is partly about recognising what has been entrusted to us and asking how we can contribute to developing it.

When I thought again about that childhood experience, the yam and the apples, I felt a different kind of pride.

Every nation has something.

Every land carries possibilities.

And every community has something it can contribute.

Our Own Kind of Richness

Nigeria’s richness is not contained in one thing.

It is in the land and what it can produce. It is in our cultures, languages, food, music, stories, art, enterprise and creativity. It is also in our people: in the farmer, the teacher, the trader, the writer, the scientist, the craftsperson, the entrepreneur and the young person still discovering what he or she can become.

Our diversity itself carries possibilities.

But richness becomes more meaningful when it is recognised and developed.

It is not enough simply to say that we have resources. What matters is what we build from them, what opportunities we create around them and what we leave for the generation coming after us.

The lesson from the soil is not that every seed will grow everywhere.

It is that something worthwhile may already be capable of growing where we are standing.

Sometimes we spend so much time admiring what grows in another person’s field that we fail to cultivate our own.

And perhaps the same principle applies to individuals. We do not all possess the same strengths, talents or opportunities, but difference does not diminish value. What matters is recognising what we have, developing it and finding ways for it to become useful.

Celebrating What We Have, Building What We Need

As Nigeria celebrates another Independence Day, I find myself thinking less about comparison and more about possibility.

There is much to improve. There are challenges that should not be ignored. But acknowledging challenges does not require us to overlook our strengths.

We can recognise what is good and still work for what can be better.

We can appreciate our heritage and still embrace innovation.

We can be proud of what our land produces while asking how to turn more of that richness into jobs, industries, knowledge and opportunities.

Perhaps patriotism is not simply waving a flag or saying that we love our country.

Perhaps it is also asking:

What has our land been given?

What have our people been given?

And what are we going to build with it?

That childhood memory taught me something I did not fully understand at the time.

Not every seed will flourish in every environment. Not every land will possess the same resources. Not every nation will follow the same path.

But difference does not mean absence of value.

Every land has its richness. The responsibility is to recognise it, cultivate it and turn what we have into something productive.

Happy Independence Day, Nigeria.

Oladunni Olisa
Author, Creative Writer & Educator
Creator of Then with Dunni on Instagram