I don’t particularly like the personality of Elon Musk, whom I find in my observation of him from afar to be gruff and lacking in the finer traits of charismatic personalities. But I recognize and salute the brilliance that he and his organization put into the making of the Tesla electric vehicle, and I will therefore not deny myself the privilege of owning one if ever I find myself in need of a Tesla.
In similar light, although I may harbor an eternal beef with the foreign powers that colonized, subjugated and forced the peoples of the constituent nationalities that comprise Nigeria today into what the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo once described as an unholy alliance, I can no more lament or protest this reality than I can pinch my Nigerian nose to spite my Nigerian face.
The deed that found us together as members of a disparate political entity in Nigeria is done, and here we are, hobbling along after our common progress as a democratic entity was hobbled by successions of military coups. Today, we are so advanced in our immersion of what exists that it will be largely impractical, nay a disservice to our collective progress in many respects, to upturn the cart simply to satisfy the idealistic pursuits that often inspire such decisions.
Advertisement
To order your copy, send a WhatsApp message to +1 317 665 2180
Take for instance the fact that our common language in Nigeria, the English Language, is one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world – the language with which we brag or impress one another about our asssumed individual sophistication, pummelling or deriding others who lack a better command of the language. Even in informal social settings, the go-to means of communication is still ‘Pidgin English,’ a variance of this same language of the erstwhile colonial opportunists in our land.
Now, should we peoples of the multi-ethnic nations that comprise Nigeria, as a result of our rejection of the English colonial legacy in these lands, now insitute the abolishment of the English Language today in our land? Would such action not set back the hands of communication or engagement in our Nigerian society? Is it even a possible feat at all, at a time when desperate resources needs to be channeled towards fostering better communication in our superdiversity?
Of course any such action would be self-defeating. This is unlike the case when it comes to recalling the brilliance in the usefulness of a beautiful national anthem, reportedly written by a Briton, that ministers to the hearts and minds of a great proportion of Nigerians, young and old, to recognize the power in the beauty of our diversity – that our diversity is our most precious asset, and not the liability that our enemies try to make of it.
If we must repudiate colonial legacy in our Nigerian homeland, we must ‘borrow sense’ in attending to the duty. The dismantling of Nigeria’s delicate house of cards was largely done by many of the reckless decisions of past military regimes in the country. Prominent among such decisions was the removal of a beautifully uplifting anthem, ‘Nigeria, We Hail Thee!’ and replacing it with a dictatorial and melody-deficient anthem in ‘Arise! O Compatriots!’
If Nigeria had remained a dictatorship, ‘Arise! O Compatriots!’ would have been a perfect fit for such regime. The anthem was a military song, or ‘martial music’ as it is called. It is made by the military, for the military and of the military. Don’t take my word for it; just recite the lyrics in your mind and feel it. In the anthem, the rest of us merely followed as the military commanded us to ‘Arise!’ and ‘Obey!’ The anthem neither professed nor effused love. It was rather the anthem of a hard father with little or no emotional intelligence.
While the older anthem, now new, reached for the legacy of worldspeak in ‘mother earth,’ speaking kindly of our ‘dear native land’ as ‘motherland,’ the militaristic ‘Arise! O Compatriots’ on the other hand merely orders us to get up ‘To serve our fatherland.’ The former anthem knocks on the door of gentle persuasion to reach the better angels of our hearts, while the latter only appears to bully Nigerians to submit to authority, even though it later talks of ‘love and strength and faith.’
‘Arise! O’ Compatriots!’ employs the tactics of the bi-polar bully in a relationship, shouting and bossing you around in one breadth, and then reminding you about ‘love and strenght and faith’ in the next. I personally never liked the anthem, both for being a relic of our despotic military years in Nigeria, and also for its lack of the kind of endearing melody that typify great anthems of valiant people anywhere in the world, no less the peoples of the world’s largest black nation!
In ‘Nigeria We Hail Thee,’ the re-adopted anthem starts out exhorting Nigeria, ‘our dear native land.’ It reminds us that we have more in common than otherwise, and encourages us to band together for a common cause. The anthem also reminds us of our flag as a symbol of truth and justice, that it is a banner that we hope to hand down to our children (without zobo stains on it, if I may add). And it invokes the name of God to help build a nation where no man is oppressed – so that with peace and plenty, Nigeria will be blessed.
‘Nigeria We Hail Thee!’ is truly a beautiful national anthem! So, I’d say, rather than throw out the baby with the bathwater, save the baby: Take what is good of colonial legacy and do away with the rest of it.
The colonial powers gave us everything from democracy to ‘Our Lord’s Prayer,’ alongside a British educational system. Some of our people, many of them among those who lampoon the idea of an anthem written by a Briton, even make a point of acting and speaking more British than the Buckingham Palace people. If anyone is talking about legacy, let them start with abrogating all of the above, and quit speaking in English while at it.
Until then, we cannot begin to take the people who criticize the anthem from that point of view any more serious than we did Mungo Park for discovering Ogbese River for AfriCola somewhere near Ayede-Ogbese in today’s Ondo State.
There is also something to be said of those who begrudge the importance of updating our national anthem on the premise that there are other important issues that should otherwise hold the attention of those who run our affairs in Nigeria. It suffices to remind these folks that government is big enough to walk and chew gum simultaneously. That one issue gets attention does not steal the limelight from other issues.
