Literature, Languages and Diversities: How has Nigeria fared since 1914

The year 1914 marks the founding of a potentially great country. A hundred years after, the adverb ‘potentially’ which modifies the adjective ‘great’ has refused to delete itself because of the long years of both poor leadership and bad follow­ership. In spite of her occasional gestures of distinction combined with her size, population, affable climate, soil fertility and all kinds of re­source within, including trained hands and bril­liant minds, Nigeria has not been able to con­vert her endowments into lasting monuments of grandeur. Instead we continue to be feckless and unpatriotic, leaving ourselves each time at the mercy of clay-footed potentates who think ethnically; who turn an endowed nation into a bastion of poverty, where corruption is king; and nepotism its fraternal twin. Yet this is a na­tion of writers1, the home of laureates at vary­ing levels, including one Nobel Prize in the kit­ty. A nation of ‘pen-pushers’ is a nation where the intellect prevails; it should be a nation of creativity, attainments and enlightenment.