Prof. Terhemba Shija
There is a way Gboko boys hail you, when you yourself know they are mocking you. “Ortamen, m nau ichivir” meaning, “Elder I send my respects.”
The sarcasm of the appellation becomes striking when you discover that the person being addressed in anything but an elder. During my years in Lagos, I occasionally encountered Janjaweed Area boys who called out to me menacingly; “Chairman, we hail you! Anything for the boys?” Of course, I was neither their chairman nor any person of consequence in their hierarchy of Area boys.
I feel extremely sad that the Nigerian government has without any convincing reasons, jettisoned our national Anthem and in its place brought back the old one that was composed at independence in 1960. The old Anthem of “Nigeria, we hail thee!” sounds to me every inch like the tongue in cheek appellation of the area boys of Gboko and Lagos. This is because upon critical examination, you would discover that the song hails Nigeria for nothing. It merely calls out Nigeria as our “Native country” of different “tribes and tongues” and says nothing else about its great attributes and people.
Mrs Lillian Jean Williams, the British woman who composed this song could not have been more patriotic or creative in defining our country than the quartet of Nigerians who composed the second National Anthem in 1978, “Arise O Compatriots.” If not for anything, the generous use of pejorative terms like “Native” and “Tribes” by the British lady creates a strong sense of the pristine and the primitive. It is too late in the day to choose such words in Postcolonial discourse.
Those who masterminded the swap of the National Anthems gave an excuse that the second National Anthem was composed during the military era, and so it contains words and sentiments that were undemocratic. So, it really begs the question why government has chosen to adopt the one with words and sentiments of colonialism instead of composing a befitting one for the epoch.
This action of adopting the first national Anthem donated to us by our colonial masters after 64 years of independence is a demonstration of the failure of our decolonisation processes after flag independence. It is consistent with the idea of our leader’s losing faith in our hospitals, universities and other facilities and regularly visiting countries in Europe and America to get fulfillment.
The central theme in the lyrics of the Anthem is the lamentation of the multiplicity of “tribes and tongues” in this primordial territory the British came to “discover, “and then the expression of hope in African or Nigerian brotherhood regardless the difficulty. You could sense the tone of mockery from the British colonial composer who falsely regrets the phenomenon of divergent tribes and tongues, foisted on us by the Europeans at Berlin in 1885/86 where there was no representative from Nigeria or from any part of Africa.
You could also see the patronising hypocrisy of the Europeans highlighting their experiment of foisting multi-tribal nations in Africa as a major achievement in bonds of brotherhood, when in fact, not many European nations are multi-tribal or multilingual in their composition. A few of their multi-tribal nations like Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union have since collapsed like a pack of cards.
Nations are not stagnant. They grow and change in many ways from time to time. They also develop core values which are incorporated in their insignia of state like the national Anthem, Coat of Arms, Flags, Creed and constitution. A country could change the lyrics of its national Anthem to conform with the realities of the time, but no country has yet, as far as I know, gone back to the ideas of its colonial masters to define itself. At least, not now in Africa, where even smaller countries in West Africa with clear headed leaders are asserting total independence from European colonial mentality.
Nigeria is by all standards not lagging behind in creativity. We are ranking high as suppliers of expertise and professional manpower all over the world. Our country is home to a galaxy star in the arts too. Our Nollywood movie industry is ranked among the top six in the world. Our pop stars are the envy of even the American popular cultural producers. Our own Prof Wole Soyinka was the first black person to win the Nobel prize for literature 38 years ago, and Nigeria still boasts of literary giants like Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Helon Habila, Senior Atta and others with international acclaim. A nation with such creative talents has no business going back to the lyrics of British colonial woman whose words have neither proved to be prophetic nor adequately defined the proud people of Nigeria.
Rather than hurriedly or secretly conduct a legislation to swap the new Anthem with the old, the government had a duty to organise an open national competition for creative artists to write a better and more appropriate National Anthem for us. An ideal Anthem should highlight the positive attributes of Nigeria and its people and should draw our attention to philosophical values and qualities that specifically distinguish us from other countries.
Just sample a few examples from other countries to appreciate my idea of how an ideal anthem should be. The Russian national Anthem is a praise song for the Russian federation, the triumph of the philosophy of communism and the beauty of the “land where the sun of freedom shines on us” The US national Anthem describes America as ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave.” The British national Anthem is a victory song that was composed after a war in 1745 led by the then king of England, in it, citizens pray to God to save the King as well as pledge their loyalty to the throne. But by far, my most favourite is the Anthem of the defunct Republic of Biafra which describes itself as “Land of the rising sun and the beloved homeland of the brave.”
The colonial era is certainly a wrong period to go in search an anthem for a nation that professes it got its independence 64 years ago.
I dare conclude that this choice of an obviously outdated national Anthem for Nigeria in the 21st Century is certainly not the best action taken by the government of President Tinubu. This law should be repealed.
