The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines the elderly as someone aged 60 years and above. However, definitions for ‘elderly’ can vary significantly, with the UN and other organisations using the cut off of 65 years. Therefore, Nigeria, by all definitions, is an elderly country.
We say, ‘a fool at forty is a fool forever’, but we are much older than forty, so I think the best term for us is the Yoruba term- ‘Agbaya’. Coincidentally, October 1, our Independence Day, is also celebrated as the international day of older persons worldwide.
Hitherto, Agbaya.
Another October 1 has come and gone, draped in the familiar green and white colours. At 65 years of age, a nation, like any person, should be enjoying the fruits of its labour, standing with the steady gait of maturity and the wisdom of experience. Its citizens should feel the robust pulse of its systems, the surety of its protection, and the warmth of its care. But as we celebrate another year of independence, we must ask: in the six and a half decades since that green and white flag was first hoisted, has our long walk been one of progress or a tragic, circular trek back to where we began? What have we done with our 65 years of Independence?
To answer, we must first remember the man who stood at the podium at Tafawa Balewa Square in 1960. Our first Prime Minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, spoke not just of freedom from Britain, but of a responsibility to a continent. ‘We are called upon immediately to show that our faith in ourselves is justified,’ he declared. Nigeria was a ‘trust,’ a ‘privilege,’ a nation poised to be a ‘great and powerful country.’
In those early years, the stride was hopeful. We were a federation of regions with competitive agriculture; groundnuts piled high in Kano, cocoa flowing from the West, palm oil from the East. We built universities, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (1960), Ahmadu Bello University (1962), the University of Lagos (1962); cathedrals of learning intended to forge the African mind. Our healthcare system, though young, was functional and respected; teaching hospitals like University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, were beacons of medical excellence in West Africa. The trajectory, though not without its political tremors, pointed upwards.
Then came the coup of 1966 and the countercoup that plunged us into a 30-month civil war. The shadow of that war, and the millions of lives it consumed, has never truly left us. It was the first great fracture, the moment we learned that the Nigerian project was a fragile one, held together not by a common vision, but by a precarious and often violent balance.
The oil boom of the 1970s should have been our great leap. Petrol-dollars flooded the treasury, and the military government of Yakubu Gowon spoke of the problem not being money, but how to spend it. We embarked on ambitious projects, but in our frenzy, we committed two original sins: Firstly, we abandoned the farms with the share of GDP plummeting from over 60 per cent in the early 1960s to about 20 per cent by the 1980s and secondly, greed took over our senses. We became a mono-economy, hooked on crude oil, vulnerable to global price swings, and utterly reckless with our wealth.
The 1980s and 90s were the ‘lost decades,’ defined by a carousel of military dictatorships. The Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of the Babangida era devalued not just the Naira, but our collective dignity. It dismantled the nascent social safety net and introduced a harsh, survival-of-the-fittest capitalism that shattered the middle class. Our universities, once proud, became theatres of endless strikes as the intellectual foundation of the country was deliberately neglected. Brain drain, or ‘Japa’ before it had a name, began in earnest.
The return to democracy in 1999 brought a fragile hope. However, the 4th Republic has been a masterclass in the politics of patronage over progress. We have witnessed the entrenchment of a political class so detached from the realities of the people that their promises feel like a form of national gaslighting. They tell us, ‘Education is free’ while our lecturers sell tomatoes; they announce ‘free healthcare’ while our children die from a lack of diphtheria antitoxin.
So, are we moving forward or backwards? You tell me.
The Nigerian economy, once a diversified, agricultural exporter has now become a struggling mono-economy, the poverty capital of the world, with a currency in freefall. We now import what we once grew.
Once upon a time, we had a functioning railway system; the Lagos-Ibadan Road was a smooth passage. Now? We have dilapidated roads, a collapsed national carrier, and a national grid that functions like a bad joke. The last time I travelled the Kaduna-Abuja Road, my heart banged against my ribcage so many times so much that I thought I was going to have a stroke. In fact, we are currently celebrating the revival of a train service, a basic amenity we had at independence.
Healthcare. Where do I start from? In the sixties and seventies, UCH Ibadan was a regional centre of excellence. Now? Our best and brightest doctors are the backbone of the NHS and the American healthcare system. Our hospitals, as I have lamented many times, often lack gloves, oxygen and bed space while patients bleed to death from perforated ulcers caused by fake drugs sold by quacks and children die from preventable diseases like Diphtheria. Life expectancy has improved globally, but in Nigeria, the pace is a crawl compared to peers, and the outcomes are amongst the worst.
As for security, I have no words. In the eighties, we grew up hearing about dangerous countries like Colombia and Honduras where kidnapping was the order of the day. Never in our wildest dreams did we ever imagine that that would be our reality. Yet here we are. Our Kidnapping is now on steroids.
What about education, you ask? Well, when a sitting JAMB Oga comes out to tell you that some students will have to rewrite JAMB because there was a ‘glitch’ in their system, then you know that, pardon my French, shit has really hit the fan. Graduates of universities can no longer write coherent sentences and talk more about reports. Every year, WAEC and NECO scores continue to plummet even lower. As for the states that boast of high scores- like we say ‘miracle’ no dey tire Jesus!
The evidence is overwhelming. By every metric that measures the health of a nation, the welfare of its citizens, the strength of its institutions, the quality of its public goods, we have moved backwards. We are a country that, in 2025, is struggling to achieve what it had a firm grip on in 1965.
And yet, to declare us a failed state is to ignore the irrepressible Nigerian spirit, the ‘siddon look’ resilience that is both our strength and our curse. Our survival is not a sign of success, but a testament to the sheer grit of ordinary people who, against all odds, continue to hustle, to hope, to build businesses in the face of epileptic power, and to save lives in hospitals without tools.
The diagnosis is clear. We suffer from a chronic and debilitating illness: a failure of leadership and a corrosive corrupt political culture. The treatment is not another policy paper or a sensationalist headline. It is a radical, surgical intervention into our national psyche and our political structures. It demands that we, the people, stop rewarding the bad behaviour of our rulers and begin to demand, with one unwavering voice, what we were promised 65 years ago; prosperity, justice and security for all.
The long walk is not over. But until we face the truth of how far we have strayed from the path, we will remain, 65 years on, Agbaya forever.