Nigeria Is 66. Independence Must Leave the Flagpole.

Nigeria is 66 this year.

At 66, a person is called an elder. A nation is still permitted to describe every failure as growing pains. History is a generous landlord.

On 1 October 1960, the British flag came down and Nigeria’s flag rose. Political control changed hands. The harder work began: turning sovereignty into capacity.

That work remains unfinished.

In this year Independence Day address, President Bola Tinubu said the struggle was never merely for a flag or anthem. It carried the promise of opportunity, dignity and a better life.

The Constitution is even less poetic. Sovereignty belongs to the people. Their security and welfare are the primary purpose of government.

Not a charitable side project. The primary purpose.

A country may control its borders while its citizens remain tenants inside it. When families must privately provide electricity, water, security, education, healthcare and sometimes the road leading home, the citizen carries a small government on his back.

The passport says citizen. Daily life says contractor.

This is why independence must leave the flagpole.

It must enter the clinic where medicine is absent, the classroom where learning competes with a leaking roof, the farm where insecurity harvests before the farmer, and the courtroom where justice grows old waiting for its case to be called.

Patriotism is not pretending the roof does not leak because the house belongs to us. It is refusing to let ownership become an excuse for decay.

Citizens also carry obligations. We cannot demand honest institutions while bribing our way around every rule, worshipping corrupt benefactors and treating public property as nobody’s property.

But citizenship is not a licence for government to transfer its failures back to the governed. Resilience is admirable. It is not infrastructure.

Nigeria’s endurance deserves respect. Its people deserve more than praise for enduring.

Sixty-six years after the flag rose, independence must become something a Nigerian can encounter without looking upward.

Abraham Ikongshul Ashindortiang

Sources

State House: 2026 Independence Day address

Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Section 14

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