SIMON KOLAWOLE
WE OFTEN tell ourselves a lot of beautiful lies in Nigeria. One of my favourite is the saying: “This is not the dream of our founding fathers.” By that, we often try to claim our founding fathers had a dream for Nigeria from which we have deviated — the dream of oneness, of national unity.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Most of those who led the country to independence did not believe in one Nigeria and did not do enough to unite the country.
By the time we gained independence from Britain in 1960, most of the founding fathers represented nothing but their ethnic cocoons. And it is the divided Nigeria they built that we have inherited and are operating till today.
As we commemorate our Diamond Jubilee on October 1, 2020, several questions are still being fervently asked about Nigeria, the most prominent being its
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