Nigeria at 65: Too Old for Excuses, Too Young to Collapse
John Onyeukwu
Nigeria at 65: Too Old for Excuses, Too Young
to Collapse
The urgent choice between renewal and self-destruction at a critical national milestone.
By John Onyeukwu (Published on the Backpage of Business am Newspaper of Friday October 03, 2025). Attached
At 65, Nigeria should be an elder among nations, measured, disciplined, and respected. Instead, we still look like a teenager struggling to decide what to do with freedom. Our independence in 1960 promised dignity, justice, and progress. It promised a society where hard work is rewarded, where justice is blind, and where leadership is a covenant, not a conquest. Sixty-five years later, we are left with too many broken promises and unfinished possibilities. We cannot continue to act like a country surprised by its own problems. The age of excuses is over. Nigeria must grow up, or risk never truly becoming.
Independence gave us sovereignty, but sovereignty is empty without virtue. We often celebrate October 1st with fanfare, but behind the flags and parades lies a sobering truth: we have not learned how to use freedom. Freedom without responsibility becomes license; freedom without justice becomes chaos. True independence is not just driving out colonial masters; it is conquering corruption, tribalism, and the poverty of governance imagination.
The Greeks taught that the good life requires virtue. The American experiment teaches that liberty must be guarded by laws. Other African nations show that progress requires vision. South Africa wrestled with apartheid, Ghana with military coups, Rwanda with genocide, yet each, in different ways, has attempted to confront its demons and craft a path forward. Nigeria, at 65, still lives as if freedom is an inheritance to squander rather than a responsibility to safeguard, as if independence is an annual ritual, not a lifelong duty.
Politics was meant to be our tool for nation-building. Instead, it has become the theatre of our disunity. The founding fathers, for all their flaws, still believed in the promise of Nigeria. Today, politics is a cynical game where ethnicity and religion are weapons, not identities. Political parties are not homes of ideas; they are vehicles for personal ambition. Elections often end in courtrooms, not in mandates freely given and respected.
We cannot continue to call this democracy. What we have is a ritual of voting that rarely translates into representation. Ballot boxes may be stuffed, votes may be bought, and mandates may be stolen, yet politicians still claim legitimacy. A true democracy requires accountability, but in Nigeria, winning power too often means escaping scrutiny. Every cycle of bad politics deepens mistrust among citizens, fractures our unity, and erodes our faith in leadership. At 65, politics should be about service, not survival, about stitching the fabric of a nation, not tearing it apart for spoils.
Nigeria is rich in oil, gas, fertile land, and human capital. Yet, more than 133 million of our people live in multidimensional poverty. The so-called “giant of Africa” still ‘imports fuel’ despite the Dangote Refinery producing and exporting fuel, struggles with inflation, and depends on debt to finance its budget.
This is not just bad economics; it is bad politics and worse governance. Our political economy is designed to feed the elite, not the people. Nigeria’s wealth has become a curse because we extract without creating, consume without producing, and distribute without justice. Public funds are looted under the cover of subsidies, contracts, and projects that never materialize.
At 65, the conversation should not be about how to survive. It should be about how to compete globally, how to industrialize, how to innovate. We should be exporting technology and talent, not our most desperate citizens fleeing through deserts and seas in search of dignity abroad. Our farmers should be global suppliers, not subsistence strugglers; our oil wealth should build refineries and industries, not line foreign accounts. Until economics serves the people, independence will remain unfinished.
The Constitution promises justice, peace, and welfare. In reality, impunity is the law of the land. Too often, our judiciary bows to power instead of standing with the powerless. The law is enforced against the poor but negotiated by the rich. Court orders are disobeyed with ease, trials drag on endlessly, and “justice delayed” becomes “justice denied.”
A nation cannot thrive where justice is for sale. The law is supposed to be a leveler, yet in Nigeria it often functions as a weapon of exclusion. Citizens watch as political thieves go free while petty offenders languish in jail. At 65, we cannot continue pretending that a borrowed Constitution, manipulated institutions, and selective enforcement of justice can hold a diverse country together. They cannot. Without justice, there can be no peace; without fairness, there can be no unity. Nigeria must confront this truth before it is too late.
Nigeria is more a collection of fragments than a whole. Ethnic suspicion runs deep. Religion, instead of being a moral compass, is exploited by charlatans for profit or politics. The state’s retreat from its social contract has left education in shambles, healthcare in ruins, and young people without jobs or hope.
This fractured citizenship is dangerous. When the state abandons its role, people turn to tribe, faith, or even crime for survival. National identity weakens, and loyalty to Nigeria becomes negotiable. A society where trust collapses becomes fertile ground for extremism, banditry, and separatist rhetoric. We cannot build a nation where only a few feel like owners and most feel like strangers. True citizenship must be inclusive, dignified, and defended by the state.
Governance is the crossroad where all our failures meet. We have leaders who campaign on reform but govern by inertia. Institutions exist more in name than in function. Public service, once a noble profession, has decayed into patronage. Policies are announced with fanfare, but implementation dies in the swamp of bureaucracy and corruption.
At 65, Nigeria should be exporting governance models to Africa; instead, we are still borrowing basic ideas of accountability from abroad. Governance failure is not just inefficiency; it is the theft of the future from our children. The real scandal is not only that leaders fail; it is that they fail repeatedly without consequence. Impunity has become institutionalized, and mediocrity is rewarded with promotion. Until governance is reimagined as stewardship, not spoils, Nigeria will remain trapped in a cycle of unkept promises and squandered potential.
Nigeria at 65 is not just a country that has aged; it is a country that must confront its arrested development. Our independence anniversaries should not be carnivals of empty speeches and parades of soldiers. They should be solemn audits of how we have squandered promise and how much work remains undone. The flags and drums cannot drown out the cries of jobless graduates, the frustration of unpaid workers, or the despair of communities without light or water. Reckoning means facing uncomfortable truths: that our politics has been too small for our problems, that our leaders have been too timid for our crises and that our citizens have too often surrendered to cynicism.
We need a philosophy that reminds us of virtue.
We need politics that unites, not divides.
We need economics that creates prosperity, not poverty.
We need laws that protect justice, not privilege.
We need a society built on solidarity, not suspicion.
We need governance anchored on service, not self-interest.
The real question is not whether Nigeria will survive. Nations rarely die. The real question is: will Nigeria finally choose to grow up?
At 65, excuses no longer suffice. The colonial masters are long gone. The world will not wait for us. Our children will not forgive us. If we cannot govern ourselves with justice, courage, and vision, then independence will remain a hollow achievement. Nigeria is not too old to change, but she is too old to keep pretending.
http://www.policy.hu/onyeukwu/
“Let us move forward to fight poverty, to establish equity, and assure peace for the next generation.”
-- James D. Wolfensohn
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ogunlakaiye
John Onyeukwu
Dear Chief SK,
Thank you for your thoughtful and historically grounded response. Your point about the lingering forms of imperialism, manifested not through flags and governors but through economic and technological dominance, is both valid and sobering. Indeed, as you rightly noted, the devices may have changed, but the grip often remains.
My assertion that “the colonial masters are long gone” was less a denial of neo-colonial influence and more a challenge to our own governance failures. We cannot continue to attribute every structural decay to external actors when internal mismanagement, corruption, and elite complicity sustain the very dependencies that colonialism left behind.
That said, your perspective enriches the debate. The conversation about sovereignty must now include economic agency, digital self-determination, and intellectual independence, areas where the new forms of “imperialism” thrive quietly.
Warm regards,
John
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