Times and words are powerful weights. Just a few lines from him—“If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet”—and suddenly Nigeria’s sluggish attention to matters of public concern, especially security of life and property, began to stir. What was Nigeria’s crime? Genocide—against its own people. Nigeria’s descent from promise to something of a disgrace took barely five and a half decades. Precisely from 1970 to 2025, if one discounts the first decade after independence as a natural teething period most countries endure after the departure of colonial masters.

By the turn of the 21st century, national decay had reached its peak. Most indices of development collapse: infrastructure, industry, research capacity, citizens’ well-being, and security. The good old days simply vanished—to the astonishment of the pre-independence generation, who, though not without fault, could clearly tell the difference. That generation—both individuals and institutions—experienced a simpler Nigeria. Life was slow and uncomplicated. Few were educated, yet many were reliable. Nigerians were religious, but without the chronic bigotry of today. Churches and mosques were fewer, but people were morally upright.

The issue should not be twisted. The honest living of that era was not unrelated to the presence of a colonial system that sought to clone Nigerians—and indeed all colonial subjects—into a European lifestyle shaped by the early industrial revolution. Law, order, and accountability were the tools through which the colonialists colonised, governed, and controlled. European legal, economic, and administrative systems became the guiding principles. Early local colonial officers and, later, politicians were schooled and programmed accordingly. They were “white” internally, superintending over their fellow black communities. And it worked—at least administratively.

Things changed after independence. The further society drifted from the colonial experience, the weaker the assimilated values of orderliness, honouring time, public good, and accountability became. Because these behaviours were imposed rather than organically developed, they were difficult to sustain. Worse still, little effort was made to evolve local alternatives grounded in indigenous values. Education was not adapted to local realities. It’s neither labour-market linked, nor did it speak to entrepreneurial motivation. Institutions were not built, either. Thus, giving rise to massive structural unemployment where jobs to done/opportunities to be exploited, exist side-by-side with pools of unemployable labour. And so, as the colonial scaffolding faded, chaos and confusion rushed in to fill the vacuum. The more Nigeria moved away from 1960, the more entrenched the dysfunction became.

No one longs for colonialism—it was exploitative. But the experience, nonetheless, offered some nations a foundation on which to build. In some places, it produced “strong men.” In others, “strong institutions.” In a few, both. These two ingredients accelerated post-colonial development in many societies. Most of sub-Saharan Africa—especially Nigeria—missed out. Society became vacuous, with nothing to guide or shape it. And as Malcolm X (or Alexander Hamilton) put it, “If you stand for nothing, you fall for anything.” Nigeria’s failure to cultivate a shared national philosophy left it vulnerable to every divisive wind.

With no shared vision and weak institutions, Nigerians turned on one another in difficult times. Everyone looked for culprits. Sectarianism exploited social cracks and mental emptiness to mislead vulnerable believers. Some did so through distorted spirituality; others through toxic rhetoric. Ethnic and tribal chauvinists joined in. Before long, communities that once respected each other became sworn enemies. Relationships fractured. The idea of nationhood crumbled. As Achebe, quoting Yeats, captured: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold… The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Today, honest conversation has become perilous. Speaking freely with friends, colleagues, or old acquaintances in Nigeria feels like navigating a minefield. Gone are the days when people debated religion, culture, marriage, or political ideology openly. Every word now carries ethnic or religious connotations. People judge each other more by what they didn’t say than by what they said. Every sentence has triple meaning—what was said, what wasn’t said, and why. Paradoxically, what is unsaid is what people hear the loudest.

Under collective hypocrisy and silence, impunity rose and took the driver’s seat. Governance weakened, and society scattered like sheep without a shepherd. Insurgents, terrorists, bandits, and secessionists filled the vacuum. They grew and matured within the same communities that eventually became their victims. Yet Nigerians could not engage in open, honest discussions when these threats were still nascent. The result is a nation soaked in blood, tears, and avoidable misery.

When Boko Haram ravaged Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa, many dismissed it as “their problem”—a distant Muslim-on-Muslim or Muslim-on-Christian conflict. Then armed herders began rustling livestock in the Northwest—Zamfara, Kebbi, Sokoto, Katsina—and Nigerians again looked away. The phenomenon escalated into mass killings and industrial-scale kidnappings. Criminals reasoned that instead of stealing cattle and struggling to sell them, it was easier to kidnap the owner and make the family sell the cattle and bring the money. “Smart economics”—but drenched in the blood of tens of thousands of innocents.

Not done. The terrorists moved into the Middle Belt—Niger, Plateau, Benue, Nasarawa, and Kwara. Here, criminality is fused with ethnic and religious undertones. Jihadist groups exploited these cracks. Natives and farmers fought back with whatever means they could. After decades, the outcome remains the same: death, displacement, and sorrow. In the Southeast, the ghost of the Civil War still lingers. IPOB’s armed struggle to revive the Biafra dream has been chequered but destructive, grounding the regional economy and inflaming tensions.

Discussing these crises openly has become taboo. Everything is dressed in religion, region, tribe, or culture. Nigerians discuss these matters internally within groups, but not across groups. People who can not share collective grief can not agree on causes. Even existential threats are reframed into ethnic talking points. Nigerians have become prisoners of their own narratives, transmitting doom from generation to generation.

As a consequence, Nigeria, with over 220 million people, becomes the only nation on earth with such a size to be economically impotent. It can’t genuinely invent, innovate, or improve. It’s a nation with a highly defficient capacity to manufacture or mechanise processes, except for low-tech activities such as bottling, packaging, and assembling, while mid-tech projects, are usually executed on turnkey bases. A nation that manages to put infrastructure like highways, power transmission, and public buildings but hardly maintains and/or routinely service them. A nation that at best could be said to be on the path of growth but certainly not development. For, no economy gets developed or transformed without the existence of given levels of applied engineering technology, innovation, and commercialisation capacity, and infrastructure. The Nigerian economy is defficient in all these, and as such vulnerable to imminent collapse – maybe within a twelve calendar months – in the event of an internationally coordinated economic sanctions.

Then Trump entered the scene. His allegation of genocide may be exaggerated, but it achieved what Nigerians had refused to do for decades—it forced the nation to talk. To accuse openly and to respond openly. Trump reminded Nigerians that nature equipped them with mouths. Problems can not be solved through silent groaning in enclaves. They must be confronted squarely. Whether or not Trump’s motives are clear, there is a silver lining: Nigerians are finally speaking. No more pretence. No more sweeping issues under the carpet—at least not if Nigeria plans to remain one country.

The way forward is for governments at all levels to treat the U.S. allegation not as an attack but as an opportunity for honest, open, and constructive national engagement. Civil society organisations like the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Supreme Council of Islam Affairs (SCIA), and Jamma’at Nasirul Islam (JNI) must rally their followers toward common ground rather than divisive accusations. The same applies to major cultural and regional organisations—ACF, Ohanaeze, Afenifere. Through action or inaction, these groups, along with successive governments, have been part of the failure to stem Nigeria’s steady decline.

It is instructive and incumbent on all to know that the history of US interventions around the world rarely delivered the envisaged peace and stability. Instead, such nations were recessed decades back in terms of peace, harmony, and stability, from Somalia, Iraq, Libya, Philippines, Israel, Syria, and Afghanistan to cite a few. Nigeria is too fragile to gamble with US interventions even if it chooses mutual dissolution. Suffering and deprivation are “colourblind” when to it comes to tribe, religion, culture, or creed – the very achilles heels of Nigeria. Social upheaval, too, affects both the oppressed and oppressor, to varying degrees. In the final analysis, people largely may not only end up in the same boat but also face the same storm.

Now that Trump has lifted the lid over the bottled up frustrations, mutual prejudice, and attendant emotions, among Nigerians, the engagement should extend to why the nation and indeed Sub-saharan Africa are finding it difficult to evolve good governance. Why should a nation be in a constant state of lamentations and trading blame for over half a century? Granted that historical experiences (colonialism, neocolonialsm, neoliberalism, imperialism, globalism, etc) may have a part to play in a nation’s predicaments, why should some like Nigeria remain perpetually trapped. Nations make conscious and deliberate efforts to overcome them by cultivating the right attitude.

What is inside Nigerians that allow them to know the right thing but never prepared to do the right thing, just to go on extolling the virtues of those doing the right thing? Why doesn’t the consciousness stick? Nations work and walk out of “-isms” through hard work and justice systems and not lamentation and impunity. It is delusional to think that Nigeria could sidetrack good governance and still become a great nation. After getting over the allegations of genocide, the next logical dialogue should be to interrogate why Nigerians are the way they are. Could it be nature, nurture, or both? Let the interrogations begin.
A.G.Abubakar
agbarewa@gmail.com