Nigeria at 66: Six Decades of Independence, But Where Is the Nation?

On October 1, 1960, Nigeria became an independent and sovereign country. Sixty-six years later, the anniversary arrives with the familiar ceremonies, speeches about resilience, patriotic messages, and declarations about a prosperous future. The Federal Government has designated October 1, 2026 as the 66th Independence Anniversary and chosen the theme, “From Reforms to Stability: Consolidating Nigeria’s Renewed Hope for Shared Prosperity.” (Federal Ministry of Info) Yet beneath the official celebrations lies a much harder question: after 66 years of self-government, what exactly has Nigeria built?

There is no denying that Nigeria has achieved things since independence. It survived a devastating civil war, decades of military rule, repeated political crises, economic shocks and severe security challenges. It has produced globally respected professionals, businesses, academics, artists, athletes and entrepreneurs, while its people have built successful lives in virtually every part of the world. The problem is that the achievements of Nigerians have frequently existed in spite of the Nigerian state rather than because of it.

A nation is more than a flag, a territory, a constitution and an international seat. It is supposed to represent a political community whose institutions pursue interests that transcend the immediate interests of particular regions, ethnic groups, religious constituencies, political families and patronage networks. Nigeria has struggled with this basic idea from the beginning. The country's early political system itself was organised around powerful regions, and the political problems of the First Republic included ethnicity, electoral rivalry, census disputes and competition among political interests. ([Nigeria Repository][2])

This is why the question of whether Nigeria has truly become a nation deserves to be asked without sentimentality. Nigerians are certainly a people, and Nigeria is certainly a state recognised under international law. But the existence of a state does not automatically mean that a genuine national political consciousness has been successfully constructed. When citizens repeatedly understand government through the prism of where they come from, who occupies power, which region receives appointments, which ethnic group controls particular institutions and which political network benefits from public resources, the national idea becomes considerably weaker.

The tragedy is that this problem is not confined to one administration. It has survived governments, military regimes, constitutions and political parties. It would therefore be intellectually dishonest to blame the entirety of Nigeria's failure on Bola Tinubu or Muhammadu Buhari. At the same time, presidents cannot be separated from the systems they inherit and the choices they make while exercising power. Tinubu's government has presented its reforms as a route towards economic stability and shared prosperity, while acknowledging that Nigerians have endured profound economic and structural difficulties. (State House) The question for citizens is whether these reforms ultimately produce a state that works for the broader population rather than simply another period of adjustment followed by another political elite taking control.

The Buhari years provide another important part of this conversation. Muhammadu Buhari, who died in July 2025, was a former military ruler who returned to power as an elected president in 2015 and governed until 2023. His administration left behind supporters who point to infrastructure, anti-corruption efforts, and other initiatives, while critics point to insecurity, economic hardship, and institutional weaknesses. The historical record is therefore more complicated than either hero worship or total condemnation. What is difficult to dispute, however, is that his presidency did not resolve Nigeria's deeper problem of building institutions that command broad national confidence.

And that is perhaps the most painful reality of Nigeria at 66. The country has repeatedly changed leaders without sufficiently changing the political incentives that produce them. Political power remains enormously valuable because control of the state provides access to resources, appointments, contracts and influence. Under such circumstances, politics naturally becomes a struggle for possession of the state rather than a competition over competing visions of national development. The result is a country where elections can change the occupants of government without fundamentally changing the relationship between government and citizen.

There is something particularly uncomfortable about celebrating independence while millions of Nigerians continue to experience the country primarily through economic insecurity, inadequate infrastructure, insecurity, unemployment, unreliable electricity, and institutions that often appear distant from ordinary citizens. The government itself has acknowledged that the journey since independence has included “profound disappointment” alongside periods of hope. (State House) That admission matters because patriotism should not require Nigerians to pretend that failure is success.

Nigeria does not need another Independence Day in which patriotism is confused with silence. It needs an honest examination of what went wrong and why the same failures keep reproducing themselves. The founding generation imagined a country capable of becoming a major African power, and successive governments have repeated variations of that ambition. Even President Tinubu's 2025 Independence Day address described the founding generation as believing that Nigeria had the potential to lead Africa and represent the aspirations of the black world. (Federal Ministry of Info) Sixty-six years later, the distance between that ambition and the lived experience of many Nigerians remains impossible to ignore.

The answer cannot simply be to find another supposedly messianic president. Nigeria's problem is bigger than the personality occupying Aso Rock. It is the weakness of institutions, the persistence of patronage politics, the failure to create a sufficiently strong sense of common national interest, and the willingness of political elites and ordinary citizens alike to tolerate arrangements that would be unacceptable in a properly functioning state. Regional and ethnic interests will always exist in a country as diverse as Nigeria. The real test of nationhood is whether those interests can operate within institutions that ultimately place the Nigerian public interest above sectional political advantage.

At 66, Nigeria therefore has something worth celebrating, but it also has something much more important to confront. The country exists, but the nation-building project remains unfinished. Independence gave Nigerians political sovereignty in 1960, but sovereignty alone could never guarantee prosperity, justice, security or national cohesion. Those things have to be built deliberately through institutions, competent leadership, equal citizenship and a political culture in which the state belongs to everyone rather than whoever temporarily controls it.

Perhaps the most honest Independence Day message in 2026 is therefore not that Nigeria has failed, because millions of Nigerians have achieved remarkable things and the country still possesses enormous human and material potential. It is that Nigeria has underperformed the promise of its independence for far too long. After 66 years, Nigerians should be asking not merely how long the country has been independent, but how much closer it has come to becoming the nation its independence was supposed to make possible.