My name is Alhaji Tajudeen Tijjani Ajibade”, the veteran journalist started. “Before I talk about independence, it is important to talk about my background. I was born in Ibadan on Sunday, 1st of June, 1947 to a Nupe woman and a Nupe father, people the Yoruba refer to as Tapa. My parents came from Bida, but I was born in Ibadan. My parents decided to name me Tajudeen because of the environment they found themselves. Although it is a Muslim name, the Yoruba bear it most. My parents lived in the palace of Balogun Ogunmola because my father’s sister was married to the Balogun Ogunmola of Ibadan. Up till today, our house is located in Oriolowo’s compound around the famous Mapo Hill.
Nigeria since independence
Talking about Nigeria before independence, at independence and now, a short history about myself becomes necessary. For a long time, I did not even know I came from the northern part of the country because everyone was equal. I grew up like any other child and nobody discriminated against me. Nobody ever spoke about my background until I grew and my father had to tell me by himself. And that was even because I am the only son of my father. As at that time, I only heard people call my mother Gogo, but what did I care? All I knew was that she was my mother.
So, when we were growing up, there was no discrimination of any sort. We attended free primary education in the old Western Region. I started my primary education in 1954 at Islamic Primary School, Odoye, Ibadan. As at that time, Nigeria was actually very stable in terms of economy and politics. People were living together without anybody thinking about where someone came from.
Suddenly, things started to unfold after the 1966 coup. The background to what is happening in Nigeria today is the 1966 coup. I am not condemning it. I am not saying it is good or bad, because I don’t know the reason why the coup plotters came in. But since it was the coup that led us into civil war and the civil war led to everyone moving from one place to the other and people started to know where they came from. That was the beginning of ethnicity, religions sentiments and what have you.
Again, there was a military government that created states. That states creation polarised us the more. Now people talk about their states than even the nation. They talk about their local government area than their states. Those are the things that were not happening before.
When I came to Kaduna in my late tens too, despite the fact that I bear Ajibade, nobody discriminated against me, except that they called me a Yoruba boy when they wanted to describe me. But it really didn’t matter, because I used the name while going to school to work in New Nigerian Newspapers for many years, I worked in Standard, Punch, Sketch and edited a few newspapers, and I was at home everywhere.
So, anyone who grew up during our time will be sad and would ask: is it not the same Nigeria we were living in that has turned into this unsettled nation? A country where people think about differences in religion and ethnicity, and because of that, people are not friends again, as if it is not the same people that grew up together, went to church and mosque together. During Christmas, we used to go to church with one Samuel who was our friend. During Sallah, we would go to the mosque with one Mohammed, so that we would come back and slaughter the ram. It was fantastic.
The sudden change in this country we call Nigeria is really very unfortunate. In those days, nobody asked where you came from to get employment, all you needed to do was fill a form, and once you are qualified, they gave you job. It is unlike today that you have to go to your local government to get your paper. You have to even go to your ward for them to identify you. Even for admission into schools, you have to go through all that. No country can move forward like this.
A lot of things started happening after the 1966 coup. The military were coming, civilians were also coming and there was no stability, politically and otherwise. Why did things get suddenly wrong to the extent that we started talking about federal character and zoning system, which means even if you are qualified and you are not from the zone where certain things have been zoned to, you can’t get it?
So, these are some of the things that are crippling this country, which I think we have to work seriously hard to get out of the woods. Because if we don’t settle it before people who saw Nigeria pre and post-independence vanish, it will get more polarised so much that people will not talk about Nigeria again but their local governments. Because in Nigeria of today, somebody will tell you I am an indigene of Sokoto or Kaduna. Nobody says I am a Nigerian.
Americans are bigger than us, but there are no indigenes. You are just an American. We were working for Nigeria to get to that stage. That is why when they talk about national issue, we support it. We don’t care where it starts from, because we believe in nationalism.
The way out
So I think there is clarion call to both the old and the young to look inward and see exactly what our problem is. The late Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, and the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo were said to have met somewhere, and when they were talking and Awolowo called Sardauna, ‘Prince, why can’t we settle our differences?’ Sardauna replied: ‘Omo Oba, let’s understand our differences before we can settle them.’ I think we should go back to such conversations. Let us first of all understand our differences and find a way of settling them; those differences that are making us live apart.
Nigeria of our dream is not the Nigeria that we have today. I have never bothered about where someone comes from. My concern is what you can do for this country and how we can work together to move Nigeria forward as a single entity devoid of sentiments of religion, ethnicity and others. That was how we grew up
My prayer now is that the leaders that are there today will be able to do something better for us to go back to the good old days of one Nigeria, one destiny, one nation. That was the slogan of the NPN in those days.
Why we are in serious economic crisis
What actually killed us was the abandonment of what we had or the abandonment of what we were using before the advent of oil and gas. We have all concentrated on oil and gas, forgetting agriculture and other things. This led to the deaths of many industries and people started coming into oil and gas. But what many people don’t know is that the whole money we have made since the discovery of oil in Oloibiri, India made it in software in just about two years.
There are countries of the world who don’t have oil and they are doing fine. But since God gave us oil in Nigeria, we were thinking that the oil should be a blessing to us, but it turned out to be something else. At least before oil was discovered, we had what we were running the country with.
But above all, what I want to see before I leave is a united Nigeria, like it was before and shortly after independence. The Queen gave independence to Nigeria and called it one country. But what are we seeing today? We have what you can call 36 countries in Nigeria. May God help us.
