The Following post was contributed by Ajibola Adigun, Charter Team Member from Nigeria

On Tuesday, October 1, 2013 there will be national celebrations in Nigeria to mark the country’s fifty three years of sovereignty.  Although Nigeria has been independent from British Colonialism for over five decades, the heart of Africa is released but not free. No thanks to Big Government.

From the dying days of British colonialism to the early years of independence, people were stronger than the government and there was so much room for optimism because things really worked. This was the time Nigeria earned its nom de plume as the Giant of Africa. The efficient transportation system conveyed the pyramids of groundnuts from Northern Nigeria to earn foreign exchange for the country. There was Cocoa and Oil Palm from Southern Nigeria. Farmers anywhere in Nigeria knew they could be wealthy from the proceeds of their farms. Those were the days of glory for Nigeria because the people earned their living  and expected government to face its area of core competence of securing lives and the enforcement of contracts.

The Nigerian educational system was one of the best in the British Commonwealth. It produced the likes of Wole Soyinka, the first  writer of  black African descent to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature; the Late Chinua Achebe renowned for  inventing African Literature with the structure and language of Things Fall Apart. Both were alumni of the University College, Ibadan — now the University of Ibadan, Nigeria’s premier university.

The government did its job well too. People settled in different parts of the country and were treated fairly. Competition was healthy in the different regions of the country, that is, until the government robbed the people of their economic and political power in a series of coups by soldiers and subsequently by politicians.

How times have changed. The educational system in Nigeria is a shadow of its former itself. Nigerian students don’t have much to celebrate as they are at home due to university lecturers’ three-month old strike. State governments that have no capacity to own and run universities establish them to gain votes; public primary school teachers sell pastries in class to augment their meager earnings. It is no wonder there is huge capital flight and brain drain from the country.

Nigerian parliamentarians and politicians are a paradox; earning so much and producing so little value. It’s so bad that they’ve come to suffer from a sort of frustration-regression syndrome. Lacking the requisite capacities to do right, they take pride in doing wrong. The examples are legion; one being the promotion of a bill to promote the marriage of minors by a senator who once governed a state which ranked at the bottom in education for girls.

The jury is in on the performance of the Nigerian government and the verdict is unanimous. They have failed in the performance of their core duties of securing lives and properties; they have failed in the enforcement of contracts. And they have bungled distastefully in areas where they have no business. Feeding fat on oil and the ignorance of the people.

But there lies an opportunity for Nigerians to take economic and political power back using technology and education as leverage. With the internet, Nigerians can learn anything if they put their mind to it, and create jobs for themselves in the process. With the light of knowledge, the ignorance of the people that politicians thrive on will be no more.

This is no utopian dream. Nigeria’s youth are the most technologically savvy in the country’s history. The 53rd independence celebrations in October and the centennial celebrations in 2014 offer the umpire’s whistle. The Cheetah generation must rise to the challenge.