That has been the frightful singsong; a dreaded trademark. We get cold whenever the music is played over and over again. The pattern has become their stock in trade. They would come, paint a gory picture and leave us to our hopeless fate.

Next year, 2020, will be exactly 106 years this weird conception called Nigeria was mooted. It was strangely conceived with no meaningful input from the subjects the idea was meant for.

The greedy colonialists considered us inconsequential. Even at that, our attitudes since then are not helping matters. We dig deep into the weaknesses deliberately created by our colonial masters. Tragically, we remain perpetually blind to our strengths.

That is what our detractors want. And we are doing their bidding. We are just playing into their hands and they are happy for it. They know we cannot make progress if we continue to ignore our strengths and focusing on our weaknesses.

We need to re-tool and re-tune our psyche. It is a national malady. There is real and genuine unity in our diversity. We ought to concentrate on this. We will always have weaknesses. All nations have, we just have to diversify to our strengths or else we pack up.

Agreed, we were wrongly wired in 1914. Yes, Nigeria was a brainwave of a couple, Lord Frederick Lugard and Lady Flora Louise Shaw. Perhaps, the concept came after taking sips of wine. The inspiration actually came from Flora. And the husband bought into it. That was how our collective destiny was decided. And our fate sealed over a bottle of wine, to the delight of their home country.

They had forcefully amalgamated their own creations: Southern and Northern Protectorates. They were looking for a label to stamp the amalgamation. That gave Flora the crazy idea of “Niger Area.” It was later fine-tuned to mean Nigeria. And we are stuck with it till today.

They were very pleased with their creation, they saw it, “and it was very good.” All they wanted was economic and administrative convenience. They pretended not to see beyond their long noses that they were laying eternal landmines for generations to come.

It was intentional, to make Nigeria unworkable and ungovernable. They set us against ourselves. And so far, we have played into the gallery. We fell flat for their plan. We have been acting their script brilliantly.

See what we have made of Nigeria in the past 105 years. What have we done to break the chains created by the British colonialists? We have failed ourselves woefully. Great pity!

To be candid, our regional governments in the 1950s started well. Some of the solid foundations they laid in the various regions are visible till today. We feign to be building upon them now. But in very many instances, we have destroyed and are still destroying those legacies.

These feats were performed before independence on October 1, 1960. Immediately after, we went haywire. We started to behave like strange bedfellows. We went loose and the centre could no longer hold. We threw ourselves into complete darkness. The khaki boys exploited this lapse and broke into our ranks. They came with our first military coup de’tat on January 15, 1966. We sank deeper into the pit. The military blindly led us to a senseless 30-month civil war, between 1967 and January 1970. We wasted millions of our patriots and some of our best brains. It was fought with bitterness but anchored on nothingness.

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Now, 49 years after the war, we are yet to find our bearing. We have taken wrong steps and careless decisions many times over. We have missed almost all opportunities that came our way. It has been a collective disaster. We fumbled all the way.

We are at it again as we are under serious threat. Our fear: Nigeria may pack up before or in 2020. We have less than a year to go as a nation. That is their ringing tone now. But, how is that possible? Is it practicable?

Some Nigerians believe this is not only for real, but also doable. Udoma Udo Udoma, former Minister of Budget and National Planning, first raised the alarm. He opined that Nigeria had serious challenges in generating revenue. Others simply expanded the narrative.

Odilim Enweghara, a development economist was definite: “…I am sure that before 2020, the country will slip into another recession.”

He hit the nail on the head without mincing words: “Mark my words, before 2020, Nigeria will pack up.” His reasons? The 2019 budget President Muhammadu Buhari just signed “cannot be implemented. Whether the budget was signed in June or whenever, it is a 12-month budget cycle. What is important is the revenue to back it up. How will the revenue come?”

He did not stop at that: “The problem is that the debt service to revenue ratio is too high. We are talking of 70 per cent and now N2.04 trillion is going for debt service. If the price of oil remains as it is, the budget cannot be implemented.” Enweghara insisted: “The problem is the capital side of the budget. I don’t think the government can implement the capital budget. Do we have the credibility to borrow money to implement the capital side?”

Eze Onyekpere, lead director, Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), is equally apprehensive: “We see a central challenge in the realisation of the revenue and funding needed to implement the 2019 budget against the background of the revelation by the Minister of Finance that only 55 per cent of the 2018 projections were realised.”

His concerns: “We are worried that despite the price of crude oil selling above the benchmark price in the last couple of years, we have hardly met the production target of 2.3 million barrels a day. The dominance of oil in the revenue profile as well as the relatively meager revenue expected from the non-oil sector compounds the revenue challenge.

“The proceeds from minerals and mining being the solid minerals sector is still very low despite overwhelming evidence of massive illegal mining, while revenue leakages from operating surpluses of scheduled ministries, departments and agencies’ non-remittance and utilisation of accrued stamp duties is the order of the day.”

Are they raising false alarm? Then what is the way out of the logjam? It is he same old and odd story. Onyekpere came on board again: “The clamour for the reduction of the cost of governance was not taken on board in the approved budget as the key cost centres (legislature and executive) maintained their very high running costs. Apparently, the Nigerian public has only been fixated with the cost of running the National Assembly to the neglect of the heaviest cost centre.”

The business of governance is one serious business. Let the government prove these experts wrong, even for once.

We keep our fragile fingers crossed as we patiently wait on 2020.