The Senators passed a bill to compel us to go back, adopt and sing the old national anthem, the President assented to it. It is now a law. The distinguished Senators in collaboration with the President, might have seen or heard what we, the undistinguished Nigerians neither saw nor heard. The bill, I guess was one of their continued ingenious searches for a new prosperous Nigeria.
The old anthem, must be sang in order to revive our old glorious era, the concerned Senators mulled. The era of groundnut pyramids in the North, palm oil in the East, coco in the West, the peak of our national glory taken away mindfully by the wordings of a new anthem the Senators thought, must be restored. The old anthem, they insisted, must be sang again for new things to emerge out of old things. It was that lovely anthem that was the charm and chant which propelled the first generation leaders to lead well. So, it is needed to spiritualize the present leaders and the led into the old consciousness.
Ezenwa-Ohaeto remains eternally right. “The chant” he said, “is the escort” so, let our old national anthem become our escort as we march to rediscover ourselves and reinvent our will and humanity. To behave and achieve like the old leaders with vision and mission, our nation in her plans, policies and programs, must henceforth, be escorted by the old anthem, in all gatherings and before the leaders talk. The devil holding our national progress must be charmed into submission, so our old anthem must be chanted. The old anthem the Senators seemed to note, at last, was the incantation needed for our national rebirth. So, sing it, we must.
“Nigeria we hail thee,” in the old anthem is a better invocation than, “Arise, oh compatriots,” in the new anthem, the wise Senators reasoned. Trust Nigerians with their morbid sense of humour. Some said, joke wise or real, that the reason why prices of goods and services do not come down anytime and every time they go up was because of the “Arise” at the beginning of the new anthem. Do you still need to wonder over the wisdom of our Senators?
Nigeria is like a woman in search of the seeds of womb, so we are ready to take every herb and admixtures of cocktails, we pray they work. From prescriptive to descriptive economic formulas, local and international counsels on economic managements we have received, deregulation of the downstream, upstream, devaluations of our currencies, subsidies for and against goods and services, we moved, from slogans to slogans we marched, austerity measures, structural adjustment programs (SAP) etc, at last we are here and there. The Senators saw all and heard all, as the people’s representatives, they are well equipped. The citizens must sing to hail the nation. Hailing, the distinguished know, is a process of healing. So, here we go, all must join and sing, “Nigeria we hail thee…”
Let the gods accept our old anthem as our national sacrifice for our rebirth.
Nze James Chinonyerem.
©️nzejameschinonyerem.
Old Anthem As A National Sacrifice By
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