By BONIFACE AKARAH

Author and political commentator Okey Anueyiagu says persistent injustice, tribalism and economic marginalisation have made it difficult for many people to feel proud of Nigeria, recalling a conversation with a retired university lecturer who questioned the country’s treatment of its citizens.

Anueyiagu made the remarks in excerpts from his unpublished essay, The Fault Lines in Our Country’s Politics, where he reflected on a visit to his hometown in Awka, Anambra State, and a discussion with one of his retired uncles about Nigeria’s political trajectory.

According to him, he asked the elderly academic whether he was proud to be Nigerian, but the response revealed years of disappointment over what he described as systemic injustice.

“I asked one of them, who was an elderly retired university teacher, if he was proud to be a Nigerian. He vacillated around this question for a while and managed to painfully provide an answer to the effect that it was difficult to be proud of a country that oppresses him and his people; a country that abuses, murders and diminishes them through systemic tribalism and economic strangulation,”** Anueyiagu wrote.

The author said his uncle believed Nigeria’s problems were rooted in longstanding political failures that successive generations had failed to address.

“This man in the village, with sadness and sorrow written all over his wrinkled face, told me that his heart was disturbed and bruised, and that he had lost feelings and compassion for a nation that never was one in unity. He said it was hard to make excuses for the people of a sickened country, with the evil men and women who rule and ruin it,” he recalled.

Anueyiagu said the elderly scholar also lamented the lingering consequences of ethnic division and the failure to confront the country’s past honestly.

“He pointed to the history of the anarchy and madness that Nigeria had become, and said there was no more need to hide or disguise the truth. He was completely drained, and said he was still bleeding for the country from the drizzles of the bloods of the Northern massacres—the pogrom, the starvations and the Biafra genocide,” the essay stated.

Despite his disappointment, Anueyiagu said his uncle did not advocate hatred or division, but instead prayed for a peaceful, just and fair Nigeria where citizens could live in dignity regardless of ethnicity.

The author noted that the reflections form part of his forthcoming essay examining Nigeria’s political fault lines and the lessons the country must learn if it is to build a more united and equitable future.

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