As We Turn 50

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation with a large number of citizens that cut across scores of different ethnicities. The diversity is great, surviving 50 years!

Jubilee celebration is as old as Bible times. The Nation of Israel was instituted to celebrate every 7 years (Sabbatical years) by the emancipation of their slaves, leaving the land uncultivated to give it rest. The seventh of the Jubilee was always celebrated afterwards as the golden jubilee.  The Celebration was so important that failure to observe it cost them 70 years of slavery in the brutal hands of Babylon’s Nebuchadnezzar. The commemoration of the event was imperative as a worthy sacrifice of worship to their creator.

Nigeria has reached the Jubilee season, and it has rolled out the drums to mark this day.  The nation has had an irregular timelines and dispensations but has remained one indivisible entity all along.

Nigeria deserves a celebration at 50 having gone through the 7^th turn of the sevens from 1960. The sevens are noted here in the following years: 1967, 1974, 1981, 1988, 1995, 2002, and 2009.

The first seveninstallments of the golden jubilee started with the civil war of Biafra in 1967. The last of the seven installments, 2009, was seen in the short-lived administration of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’dua, (who died earlier 2010). He had rolled Nigeria’s roadmap to development as “7 Point agenda” pursuit, sealing the seventh seven.

As we turn 50, there may not be enough to Celebrate for most, but there is indeed so much to commemorate.

                                                                                            Seth, Michael Abu

                                                                                            Minna, Niger State