Nigeria’s troubled tryst with nationhood has seen it all in more than 60 years of false dawns, cruel stops and starts, broken dreams, and shattered hopes. Indeed, it is to the eternal credit of the country and a testament to its resilience that it is still standing, somehow managing to hold things together.
Nigeria’s shaky foundations were laid with the amalgamation of 1914. If independence was supposed to consolidate those faulty foundations, the quick fire coups that followed in 1966 before snowballing into the cataclysmic Nigerian civil war of 1967-70 put paid to those hopes. The country has struggled to recover ever since, with the deep wounds inflicted during the civil war showing a significant capacity to fester.
Today, Nigeria faces significant challenges to achieving national unity and cohesion. Ethnic and religious divisions instigated by historical differences and disagreements remain sharp.