It is probably easier for a child to fly a spacecraft to the moon than for any Nigerian to define what a “Nigerian identity” is.
This is something citizens of Nigeria have been grappling with since the West African country gained independence in 1960.
This is partly historical, and partly a result of continuous skewed governance structures and unaccountable governments.
Pre-1960 Nigeria was a forced entity created by British colonialists and made up of strong, pre-colonial, independent nation states. After independence, there has not been a conscious effort to build a society based on fairness, equity and justice.
The new post-colonial beneficiaries of a defective system simply carried on. And in the end, what we have today is a nation state and a national identity that mean different things to the more than 300 ethnic nationalities, which are the building blocks of what is today referred to as Nigeria.
Nigerians in a self-help world
It is challenging for individuals to identify with a nonexistent or poorly functioning state. Citizens over the years have had to create “mini-states”, with their own “governments” in their communities.
Nigerians had to produce their own electricity through generators, construct boreholes to access water, and set up vigilante groups for security.
With the collapse of public education, citizens are more or less ministers of education, who have to rely on private education.
Healthcare is inaccessible, even for those who have some resources, leaving the majority of Nigerians to turn to local herbalists for remedies.
With the challenges of living in Nigeria, it becomes difficult for citizens with no access to the state services to feel a sense of “Nigerianess”.
There is no sense of shared, common resources that are beneficial and to be defended, and which are accessible to everyone without discrimination.
What evolved in Nigeria is a situation where a sense of belonging and having a “Nigerian identity” is dependent on a compensatory relationship – those who benefit from the system feel more Nigerian, and the other way round for those who benefit less.