At 66, is Nigeria still casually holding a gun?, by Charles Dickson – THISAGE

Prince Charles Dickson Ph.D

A kì í mú ìbọn tẹ́tẹ́rẹ́.

You don’t hold a gun carelessly.

Fifteen years ago, when Nigeria turned 51, I borrowed the Yoruba warning to describe a country dangerously casual with the loaded weapon of the nation. The gun itself wasn’t necessarily the problem. The problem was the hand that held it.

Then I asked if Nigeria could regain the character and strength to hold its head high. I have written about corruption, failing schools, epileptic electricity, insecurity, unemployment, maternal deaths, institutional decay and, perhaps most worryingly, our growing capacity for indignation.

Today Nigeria is 66 years old. The gun is still in our hands. Has our grip become more stable?

That question deserves something better than the annual Independence Day row between two familiar Nigerian clubs: the Association of everything is bad and the Stop Demarketing Nigeria Association. Both usually come armed with enough statistics, insults, and data packets to wage a small civil war.

The truth is less comforting: Nigeria has made progress, and Nigeria is still in trouble.

Starting with democracy. Nigeria has completed 27 uninterrupted years of civilian rule, the longest period in our history. A Nigerian under 27 has never personally experienced military rule. Courts still hear political disputes, civil society continues to speak, and it is difficult to completely silence the press.

Technology has redesigned the country. As of July 2026, the Nigerian Communications Commission recorded over 124 million broadband subscriptions. Nigerians transfer money from phones, create online businesses and somehow receive prayer points, fake news, burial announcements and political propaganda in the same WhatsApp group before breakfast.

Economics also rejects a simple story. Real GDP grew 4.43% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026, with services accounting for 56.62% of output. Yet growth on a spreadsheet and relief from a family are not the same thing.

The World Bank estimates that in 2025, approximately 69.6% of Nigerians lived below the low-to-middle income poverty line of $4.20 a day, while 50.8% lived in extreme poverty. It also notes stronger macroeconomic and external conditions, but household incomes have not fully recovered.

This is the contradiction of Nigeria at 66: the economy could stabilize while the kitchen still protests.

GDP doesn’t buy garri.

Foreign reserves do not pay tuition.

Citizens experience the economy through food, transportation, rent, medicine and tuition, not through PowerPoint slides.

Electricity tells a similar story. According to World Bank data, in 2024 access will be equal to 62.5% of the population. This is progress, but access is unreliable. The Nigerian businessman remains a taxpayer, generator owner, water supplier, security officer and sometimes road repairer. Government creates an “enabling environment”; the citizen often provides the environment.

Education may be the most dangerous chamber. Back then, public education still carried with it a civic promise.

Today, UNICEF reports that more than 10 million primary school-aged children are out of school and only one in four children can read at a basic level. A nation cannot endlessly export the education of its elite while neglecting the majority.

Ọmọ tí a kò kọ́ ni yóò gbé ilé tí a kọ́ tà–The child we refuse to educate may eventually sell the house we worked so hard to build.

Health is equally disappointing. In 2011 I cited a maternal mortality estimate of 840 deaths per 100,000 live births. The latest estimate conducted by the WHO for 2023 is around 993, although the estimate carries a large range of uncertainty.

Sixty-six years after independence, pregnancy remains too dangerous for too many Nigerian women.

Some statistics should not be hastily dismissed.

Then comes corruption, our stubborn dinner guest who no longer waits to be invited.

In 2011, Nigeria ranked 134th out of 178 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Today, Transparency International gives Nigeria a score of 26 out of 100 and ranks it 142 out of 182. The methodology and coverage of the country has changed, so the rankings should not be read mechanically. But corruption clearly has not become a museum exhibit.

Insecurity has also changed.

Fifteen years ago Boko Haram dominated the national imagination. Today the vocabulary includes banditry, kidnapping, communal violence, farmer-herder conflict, separatist violence and organized criminal networks. UNICEF’s 2026 humanitarian appeal says more than 3.7 million people are displaced, while 8.4 million require humanitarian assistance in the north-east, north-west and north-central regions.

Yet, perhaps, Nigeria’s 66-year-old most dangerous problem does not lie in a single statistic.

AND normalization.

Bad road? Regular.

No light? Buy the inverter.

No water? Drill a well.

Can’t the police protect you? Hire security.

Is public school inadequate? Find a private one.

Bankrupt hospital? If you can afford it, travel.

Government service unavailable? Get to know someone.

We have turned resilience, one of our greatest virtues, into an unofficial substitute for governance. There is a difference between a resilient people and a people permanently forced to improvise on institutional failure.

Fifteen years ago I feared that Nigeria had lost its anger. At 66, perhaps anger in itself is no longer enough. We marched, protested, tagged, “japa-ed,” stood, prayed, cursed, and laughed at our pain.

Nigerian humor has become the ambulance that arrives when many other ambulances fail to arrive.

What we need is more difficult: indignation translated into citizenship, hope linked to responsibility, criticism separated from hatred, and patriotism separated from propaganda.

This does not erase what Nigeria has achieved.

We are more connected, digital, entrepreneurial and globally visible than we were in 2011. Our music travels visa-free. Nollywood speaks beyond our borders. Nigerian technology, banking and creative talent compete internationally. The civilian government resisted.

They matter.

But this is also true: the UNDP Human Development Report 2025 places Nigeria in 164th place, with an HDI value of 0.560. For a country with such human capital, natural resources, cultural reach and entrepreneurial energy, that number is not destiny.

It’s a mirror.

And so, fifteen years later, I return to the warning: A kì í mú ìbọn tẹ́tẹ́rẹ́.

You don’t hold a gun carelessly.

The nation is that gun. Our diversity is loaded into it, along with more than 200 million ambitions, wounds, languages, memories, grudges and dreams.

At 51, I wondered if Nigeria would still exist 49 years later. Fifteen of those years have passed.

That leaves Nigeria.

But survival cannot forever be our highest national achievement.

At 66, the more serious question is whether Nigeria can function well enough so that geography does not determine a child’s fate; childbirth is not a gamble; electricity becomes infrastructure rather than prayer point; public office becomes service rather than settlement; and citizenship means more than connections and survival strategies.

The gun is still in our hands.

Maybe we keep it a little better than 51.

But Nigeria is now old enough to know that we cannot blame the gun forever. In the end, we must look at the hands: May Nigeria win.

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