Nigeria at 66 🇳🇬

This morning, I wrote a message to a young man I mentor. His name is Sesugh.

He sent me a beautiful message wishing me a Happy New Month and Happy Independence Day. In responding to him, I found myself saying something that I genuinely mean:

I want to see him grow… not just in his career or achievements, but as a person. I want him to keep learning, asking questions, making wiser decisions, and becoming more intentional about the kind of man he wants to be.
I want to see him excel, but more importantly, I want to see him become a man who can look back and be proud of the choices he made and the life he built.

And then I paused.

Because today, Nigeria is 66.

And somehow, as I was writing to Sesugh about the man he is becoming, I began thinking about my country and asking myself:

What have we become?

We talk about independence. We celebrate the fact that 66 years ago, Nigeria gained independence from British colonial rule.

I am happy to be Nigerian. I am happy to celebrate this day. I am grateful for our people, our resilience, our creativity, our culture, our ability to keep going even when things are difficult.

But I also find myself asking questions.

Should we celebrate simply because we are older?

Or should we also be celebrating what we have become?

I’m not saying we have not gotten anything. Of course we have. There are things we have achieved. There are Nigerians doing extraordinary things at home and all over the world.

But I really wish we had more.

I wish, at 66, we had more to offer.

More stability… More opportunities… More things that work… More systems we can trust… More leaders we can depend on… More reasons for the young people coming behind us to believe that they can build meaningful lives here.

So, maybe, just maybe, that is why my conversation with Sesugh stayed with me.

When you mentor a young person, you don’t just want them to get older… You want them to grow and you want them to learn from their mistakes.
You want them to make better decisions and to become wiser. You want them to discover their capacity and use it well.

You want them to become the kind of person who can look back one day and say, I did something meaningful with my life.

Maybe countries are not so different.

Maybe the question at 66 shouldn’t only be, “How old are we?” but most importantly: “What have we become?”

What are we building? What are we leaving behind? What are we teaching the generation coming after us? What are we doing with the enormous potential… Yes, very enormous potential, that exists within this country?

So today, as Nigeria turns 66, I celebrate independence, I celebrate our people and I celebrate how far we have come.

But I will also hope that we pick ourselves up… pick up our pace and do better and greater things.

Happy Independence Day, Nigeria. 🇳🇬

Author: Emaistace

wife, mom, sister, daughter, aunty, friend. writing my everyday thoughts as they pop up. View all posts by Emaistace