Ordinarily, the myriad of uber tough challenges confronting Nigeria, ranging from the existential crisis of rampant terrorism, large-scale abductions and cost of living crises, to galloping inflation at approximately 30 per cent; diminished purchasing power, which ostensibly fuels persistent wage increase demands across the public/private sectors, huge unemployment and underemployment in recent years, would be more than sufficient to capture the attention of targeted countervailing government policies.
Those dynamics are now further compounded by the raging debate over the country’s “old” (1960 -1978); and the “new” (1978 to present) national anthem.
For linguistic precision, the Cambridge Dictionary defines an anthem as “a song that has special importance for a particular group of people, an organisation, or a country, often sung on a special occasion.”
For instance, the ace musicologists, Messrs Fasina and Inko-Tariah, respectively, composed the Government College Ibadan (Founded 1929) anthem, “Built on the Rock”; and the Federal Government College Warri (Founded in 1966) School Air, “Great Fedgocol, I thee Revere.” Other educational institutions, organisations and sovereign nations have their respective anthems.
Within this treatise therefore, the opposing camps are split into the “patriotic conservatives” who strenuously support “Nigeria we hail thee”; the “old” anthem; and the “patriotic modernists” who favour “Arise o’ compatriots”; the “new” anthem. The opening stanza of the “old” anthem reads:
“Nigeria, we hail thee,
Our own dear native land,
Though tribe and tongue may differ,
In brotherhood, we stand,
Nigerians all, are proud to serve, our sovereign motherland.”
The corresponding stanza of the “new” anthem goes thus:
“Arise o compatriots,
Nigeria’s call obey,
To serve our fatherland,
With love and strength and faith,
The labours of our heroes’ past,
Shall never be in vain,
To serve, with heart and might,
One nation bound in freedom, peace and unity.”
Now then, the context and central arguments of both camps are all important. The leading proponent of the aforementioned patriotic conservatives is the Nigerian legislator, Professor Julius Ihonvbere. He sponsored the bill in the Federal House of Representatives, where it has successfully scaled the third reading and currently winding its way through the Senate in Nigeria’s bi-cameral federal legislature.
The patriotic conservatives make four key arguments. First, the “old” anthem written by a Briton, Lillian Jean Williams, and composed by Frances Berda in 1959, just before Nigeria’s Independence on October 1, 1960, captures the unique essence and aspirations of the country’s unity in diversity, especially with the powerful invocation: “though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood we stand.”
Second, it is a telling reminder of Nigeria’s rich cultural and nostalgic heritage. Third, it evokes a sense of national identity with the words “Nigerians all, are proud to serve, the sovereign motherland”, which draws the inference that the “old” anthem was never broken, and there was never a foundational logic for its alteration in the first place.
Fourth, the very fact that the bill has scaled the legislative hurdles in the House of Representatives is itself, demonstrable evidence that Nigeria is a dynamic and living democracy, which nimbly, and pragmatically, exercises the important constitutional law doctrine of the separation of powers as between the executive, legislature and judiciary.
On their part, the patriotic modernists contend, first, that the “old” anthem is a relic of a dim and distant colonial past, which bears zero correlation to present day Nigeria! They advance a second argument: that the “old” anthem was written by a foreigner, Lillian Jean Williams, and therefore lacks patriotic credibility.
Third, also linked to the preceding contention, they posit that, Nigeria’s “new” anthem is indigenous because it was written and composed by then Director of the Nigerian Police Band, Benedict Elide Odiase (1934 – 2013), invokes national pride, a strident call to national service with vociferous aspirations for peace and unity.
Fourth, is the contention that Nigeria is, and has been, besieged on various fronts by surging volatilities pertaining to extremist terrorism, insurgency, large-scale abductions, crippling poverty, hyper-inflation and economic stagflation. Given these harsh existential threats, how on earth, it has been argued, can reversion to the “old” anthem ever be a priority?
Patently, there are strong arguments and countervailing-arguments on either side of the debate. Nevertheless, a number of fundamental points need to be established. The first point reinforces Nigeria’s indirect participatory democratic model with elected legislators at the Federal Senate and House of Representatives and across 36 State Houses of Assembly.
The manifestation of the bill surpassing complex legislative bottlenecks in the House of Representatives, whilst incrementally progressing through the Senate, highlights the reality that the patriotic conservatives’ argument for the “old” anthem, commands the support of the majority of the Nigerian people, as expressed in the strong Parliamentary support thus far.
Second, patriotism cannot rationally be defined exclusively, upon the singular criterion, that the “old” anthem was written by the British expatriate, Lillian Jean Williams. Afterall, the name “Nigeria” was never coined by the indigenous people of the country but rather by Flora Shaw (1852-1929), wife of Lord Lugard who amalgamated the Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914 to form the country!
Shaw, it was, who first suggested the term, Nigeria, in her treatise, published in the Times of London on January 8, 1897; which was indeed a much shorter term for the “agglomeration of pagan and Mahomedan states” to supplant the official title “Royal Niger Company Territories.”
Accordingly, if the very name, Nigeria, bequeathed to the country 110 years ago, in 1914, by Flora Shaw, is still in use post-Independence, what is the overriding rationale for discarding the country’s “old” national anthem dating to 1960? On the facts, very little!
Third, Nigeria is home to over 200 different tribes and languages. However, not one of those languages is the country’s official language. Rather, on purely pragmatic grounds, English, is the country’s official language and it is self-evidently foreign. So, if Nigeria has retained English as its official language for aeons, on practical grounds, surely the same logicality brigades that argument with the contention of the patriotic conservatives for retaining the “old” anthem.
Fourth, Nigeria, adopted its Presidential system of government from the United States, in 1979. Again, that model is anything but indigenous to the people of the Nigeria, notwithstanding the fact that the country’s constitutional framework establishes its binding legality.
The material point therefore, is that the singular fact that the “old” anthem possesses a “foreign” patrimony, is not, in of itself, any evidence of negativity. The more persuasive argument is the practical effect, hence the extant heroic legislative attempts at its reincarnation at the National Assembly.
Closing, the foregoing demonstrates that although present day Nigeria commenced as a commercial venture with British officials, with the extremely crude appellation of “Royal Niger Company Territories”, nevertheless, the term (Nigeria) remains in use to this day purely on the grounds of legal and socio-political pragmatism ditto common acceptance by ordinary people.
The deduction therefore being that the “old” anthem is not inherently defective just because of its British provenance. On the contrary, the reality of its somewhat seamless legislative journey thus far, suggests that the majority of Nigerians, through their elected parliamentary leaders, vicariously support the “old” anthem.
Besides, the “new” anthem advanced by patriotic modernists, arguably negates popular credence because the Nigerian people never for once exercised their sovereign democratic will by voting for it; because it came about by military diktat!
It is hardly surprising therefore, that the libertarian entrepreneur, Lewis H. Brown (1894-1951), reinforced similar thoughts by affirming: “we cannot possibly reconcile the principle of democracy, which means co-operation, with the principle of governmental omniscience under which everyone waits for an order before doing anything. That way lies loss of freedom, and dictatorship.”
Ojumu is the Principal Partner at Balliol Myers LP, a firm of legal practitioners and strategy consultants in Lagos, Nigeria, and the author of The Dynamic Intersections of Economics, Foreign Relations, Jurisprudence and National Development.
