Introduction
History is humanity’s compass. It points to the present,
warns of danger, and protects the future. Every society that has risen from
chaos to stability has done so by remembering, by holding its past close enough
to learn from it, yet far enough to transcend it. But what happens when a
nation forgets? When memory is not merely lost but buried? When the past is not
a teacher but a corpse? The present becomes hollow, and the future becomes a
casualty.
Nigeria today is a living example of what it means for a
people to exist without memory. It is a nation where remembrance has been wiped
out, where collective experience has been cleansed, where lessons once learned
are now discarded like waste. Nigeria’s absurdity is not accidental; it is the
predictable outcome of a society that refuses to be informed by its own
history.
The Paradox of a People Who Kill the Past and Bury the Future
The title of this essay carries a deliberate paradox: Nigeria’s
present buries the past and kills the future, but Nigerians themselves bury the
future and kill the past. The distinction matters.
To bury something is to inter what is already dead. To kill
something is to extinguish what is alive, hopeful, or struggling to breathe.
Nigerians have not merely forgotten their past; they have actively killed it.
They have severed themselves from the memory of who they were, how they arrived
here, and what shaped their collective identity. And in doing so, they have
buried their own future, because a future built on amnesia is a future built on
sand.
A Present Shaped by Forgetfulness
The tragedy is not simply that Nigerians forget; it is that
they forget too easily and too conveniently. They forget the
hunger that once humbled them. They forget the hardship that once disciplined
them. They forget the promises they once made to themselves about what they
would never become.
And so, when opportunity arrives, they replicate the very
conditions that once oppressed them.
The Councillor Who Forgets His Poverty
A poor man becomes a councillor. One might expect empathy,
reform, or a commitment to justice. Instead, he forgets the very poverty that
shaped him. He imports his scarcity mindset into governance: stealing not out
of need but out of habit, out of fear, out of a warped sense of arrival. His
leadership becomes a projection of his unresolved deprivation.
The President Who Feeds His Household with the Nation’s Future
A president allocates to his personal feeding what could
build roads, hospitals, or schools. The symbolism is devastating: the nation
starves while its leaders feast. The present devours the future.
The Legislator Whose Constituency Exists Only on Paper
Senator claims funds for constituency projects that never
materialize. The projects exist only in reports, in speeches, in the ether. The
people remain abandoned, yet the cycle repeats every four years because memory
has been erased.
The Executive Who Steals in Broad Daylight
Ministers, commissioners, and parastatal heads plunder the
treasury with a brazenness that suggests not just impunity but cultural
acceptance. Looting is no longer scandalous; it is expected.
The Citizens Who Sell Their Tomorrow for a Cup of Rice
And then there is the ordinary Nigerian, the voter who trades
their vote for a cup of rice, a wrapper, or ₦5,000. In that moment, the future
is not stolen from them; they hand it away. They steal from themselves.
A Society Without Memory Cannot Build a Future
The Nigerian crisis is not merely political or economic; it
is existential. It is the crisis of a people who have lost the ability to
remember and therefore the ability to imagine.
A society that kills its past cannot learn. A society that
buries its future cannot hope. A society that lives only in the present cannot
progress.
This is why Nigeria’s problems persist across generations.
Each generation begins from zero because the lessons of the previous one were
never preserved. The past is not a foundation; it is a forgotten grave.
The Urgency of Remembering
If Nigeria is to survive, let alone flourish, it must recover
its memory. Not nostalgia, not selective recollection, but honest, collective
remembrance. Memory of past failures. Memory of past victories. Memory of
promises broken and promises kept. Memory of what leadership once meant. Memory
of what citizenship once demanded.
A nation that remembers can rebuild. A nation that refuses to
remember will collapse. A nation that forgets decays. Nigeria stands at this
crossroads.
Conclusion
The paradox remains: Nigeria’s present buries the past and
kills the future, but Nigerians themselves bury the future by killing the past.
This is not merely poetic; it is diagnostic. It names the disease.
The cure begins with remembering. Remembering who we were. Remembering
how we got here. Remembering what we once hoped to become. Only then can the
present regain meaning. Only then can the future be rescued from its grave.
Until then, the nation will continue to wander directionless, rootless, and suspended in a perpetual present that devours everything in its path.
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