When on the 4th of july 1776 congress adopted the declaration of independence of the United States it was a landmark, epoch-making and indeed history making event and even though the document as far as I am concerned is to serve as the compass for the journey of the great nation that was birthed that day, to sit down and debate if America has lost that compass will be to leave the log in one’s eyes only to be pointing at the speck in the eyes of one’s neighbor, hence even though I’ll look at the text of the declaration of American independence, I’ll be looking at it in the context of my dear country Nigeria who graciously gained her independence on the 1st of October, 1960.
“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government”.
Hmmm...pregnant declaration if you ask me. Nigeria, oh my darling country as we celebrate our 49th year of freedom I am tempted to ask are we free indeed? Freedom as far as I am concerned goes beyond celebrations which is what we seem to have reduced it to and take it from me that is the greatest aberration to the principle of independence, to me it looks like what we have are the paraphernalia of freedom devoid of freedom itself and sadly we appear to have confused freedom as a concept ( idea) with freedom as a concrete (reality). Wherein lies the difference? I’ll use a simple analogy – Wedding and Marriage. Just like loads of folks are confusing the two as they get carried away with the motions and theatrics of wedding preparation that they suffer from acute amnesia to keep at the fore front of the mind that wedding is one day marriage is a lifetime, of course reality begins to dawn on folks when after all the merriment and noise making of wedding which by the way is short lived they are awaken to the real world of marriage and alas they are ill prepared. The crack in several homes can be traced to this silent issue and it is a classical case of misplacement of priority which is exactly Nigeria's present dilemma .
In the wake of events leading up to 1st October, 1960, our leaders were carried away with the ceremonies and preparations for the ‘great event’ of independence that they somehow forgot that with independence comes responsibility and it looks as if we took freedom and mortgaged the responsibility that comes with it for something that has a form of freedom but in actual sense is bondage in disguise. If not how can we explain the fact that our history is replete with leaders who at best are rulers? We were freed but are we free? Are we free from corruption and all its attendant consequences? Are we sincerely free as a nation to move into our ‘promised land’? Are we free to properly and judiciously utilize the natural resources with which we have been abundantly blessed by the almighty? Are we free to exercise our right as a sovereign nation in dealing with the challenges that we face as a people? Are we truly free? I think the real question is have we paid the price for freedom? because the reality of it is that freedom has a price tag attached to it. Food for thought if you ask me.
