The former leader, 7th Senate of Nigeria, Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba SAN, has declared that it is a miracle Nigeria is still remaining together as a nation despite the ups and downs she has gone through.
Speaking on Nigeria’s 65 years of independence as a nation, when the executives of the Cross River State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) led by its Chairman, Comrade Archibong Bassey, paid him a courtesy visit at his home in Calabar at the weekend, Senator Ndoma-Egba said, “65 years in the life of a human being is a very long time because at 65, if you are not a grandparent yet. You should be close to being a grandparent. At 65, you should have retired from what you are doing except you are in academics. Because in academics, they now retire at 70. At 65, essentially, as a human being, you should have achieved everything you would have to achieve, or you would have given up trying to achieve those things.
“But for a nation, 65 years is a very short time in the life of a nation.”
Going down memory lane, Ndoma-Egba who is the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of the Federal University of Oye-Ekiti in Ekiti State, said even as short as the time is, “we have had these, heavily packed experiences. A cocktail of experiences. I am still in my sixties. Even though I will be exiting my sixties in a couple of months, I have seen colonial rule. I saw the fight for independence. I saw independence. I saw a future of hope when everybody was hopeful. Everything was just moving.
READ ALSO: UNIZIK grants amnesty to overstayed students
“And then, the economy of the then Eastern region of Nigeria was one of the fastest growing economy in the world, not just in Africa, in the world. Then we saw our first coup in 1966. Then we saw several other coups. Then we saw a civil war, we saw three regions become four regions. Then 12 states, 19 states, 31 and 36 states. Then there was a time when our problem was not money, but how to spend it.
“We moved from there to a time when money now became a problem. When we entered the university, you went abroad only if you didn’t find space in a Nigerian university. That means you were not good enough for a Nigerian university.”
In all these, he said “it has been a cocktail of experiences that ordinarily should make or create mental health problems for an individual. I mean, if you had all these experiences in one lifetime.
“Because elsewhere your great-grandfather would tell you of the fight for independence. Your grandfather would tell you of the fight of the civil war. Your father would tell you how they had so much money. But in our own case, all of these experiences, generational, cross-generational experiences, are packed together.
“So it’s a miracle that we are still seen as a nation. It’s a major achievement that in spite of these, contradictory experiences, we are still one, we are still one nation with nobody, forget all these miscreants who don’t know what they are saying, that they want another country. But there is no sane Nigerian today that is advocating the breakup of Nigeria” and that is a major achievement in spite of ourselves and challenges.
Secondly, he said “yes we would have wished to be miles ahead of where we are now. We have had a number of missed turns and missed opportunities, but so have all other countries. Nation building is not an overnight thing. Nation building never ends. It’s an endless journey. There is no destination that we see a milestone to say we have arrived at our destination of development. After all in America now we’re seeing third world actions and third world attitudes and it was the same America we used to envy but they are now behaving like like us which means that even countries like America can also enter reverse gear.
“There is no destination called democracy or fully built up nation. So my attitude is, we must continue moving forward. We just have to keep moving forward in spite of the problems, in spite of ourselves. Just keep moving forward. Where we are is like a marriage.
Comparing Nigeria to marriage, he stated that in marriage there are different phases, the romantic, the realistic and the bitter stages and the marriage will last because there is commitment and “you just say to your husband, look no matter how useless you are I am not leaving you and then you say the same thing to your wife. So it is that commitment to keep Nigeria one that is keeping us together and there’s nobody no serious person who wants Nigeria to break up you know. So I think that at 65 years we may not have achieved it all but we also have made progress.”
High point of the visit was the formal presentation of the award of excellence by Comrade Bassey to Senator Ndoma-Egba who is the longest serving patron of the NUJ in the state spanning over 40 years.
He thanked the union for the award, saying, “my relationship with the NUJ has been a long and exciting journey. You will think that after 40 years one should be bored but with NUJ, you can’t be bored because either there is a new idea or there is a new crisis. There is always something to keep you there but it is been very exciting… I congratulate you once again. I wish you and your team the very best.”
