Nigeria at 50

In about a week from today, on October 1, it will be 50 years since Nigeria became independent from the United Kingdom. Here at NigeriansTalk, and at the blogs of our contributors, we will celebrate Nigeria’s independence with a series of articles.

The idea originates from a Twitter discussion on Nigeria’s independence. The discussion was started by Sokari. As is often the case, the conversation became too unwieldy for 140 characters so it was moved to an email discussion. It was decided that discussants should write a series of posts on Nigeria during the week leading to October 1.

The series will be kicked off tomorrow with a post that is tentatively titled “One Nigeria? Nigerian Unity 50 Years post-independence” by Kola. It will be concluded on October 1, the Independence Day, with a post by Akin. During the period, there will be at least a post a day on different aspects of the Nigerian experience.

As you can imagine, there are a lot of things to complain about – the political landscape is still unstable, the economy is still heavily dependent on rent from a single, extracted commodity, and public infrastructure, when available, are often in a terrible shape.

These are very true, but we do not want to dwell on the failures. The articles will not write away the failures of the past – as if that were even possible. While acknowledging those failures, they will be forward-looking. In short, we hope to leave the series of articles feeling not only informed, but also inspired.

Besides, we are pretty sure that those who are hungry for reports of failure will be sufficiently nourished by an outpouring of grief in the Nigerian blogosphere. Anybody who is familiar with Nigeria knows that we can be that harsh on ourselves.

Here at NigeriansTalk, the celebration starts tomorrow and runs through till October 1. Join the discussion in comments whenever you are so moved.