We Are Independent, But We Want Freedom || By Ebenezer Ogundele 

– The 66th Independence Anniversary Reflection

On October 1st, 1960, the Union Jack came down and the Green-White-Green went up. The drums were loud. The speeches were louder. We were told we were free. Sixty-six years later, on October 1st, 2026, we must ask ourselves a painful but honest question: Are we truly free?

Yes, we are independent. We have our own flag, our own national anthem, our own president, our own National Assembly. But independence is not freedom. Independence is a political declaration. Freedom is a lived experience. And today, the average Nigerian does not feel free in his own land.

We are a giant that cannot stand.

A Nation That Cannot Secure Itself

How do you call yourself independent when you cannot protect your own people? From Sambisa to Zamfara, from Benue to Plateau, from the creeks of the Niger Delta to the streets of Abuja, insecurity has become our daily bread. Our farmers cannot go to farm because of bandits. Our children cannot sleep in their school hostels because of kidnappers. Our roads have become ransom collection points.

And what do we do? We turn to Washington. We beg the United States for Super Tucano jets, for arms, for ammunition, for intelligence support to fight an enemy within our own borders. A country of over 220 million people, with a military that once kept peace in Liberia and Sierra Leone, now depends on America to secure its own territory. This is not independence. This is dependence in disguise.

A Nation That Cannot Feed Itself

We are blessed. Vast arable land from the Savannah to the rainforest. We have cassava, yam, rice, maize in abundance. We were once the groundnut pyramids of the North and the cocoa capital of the West.

Today, we are hungry.

Food inflation is over 20%. A bag of rice that was N8,000 ten years ago is now over N90,000. Families eat once a day not by choice, but by force.

And in the middle of this hunger, the irony that breaks the heart: Ukraine, a country torn by war for over three years, a country whose ports are bombed and whose farmers farm with bullets flying over their heads, is sending grains to Nigeria under the UN World Food Programme. A war-torn country feeding a supposedly peaceful, oil-rich giant. What greater shame can there be? We have land, but we import wheat. We have water, but we import fish. We have farmers, but we have chased them from their farms with insecurity. We are independent, but our stomachs are colonized.

A Nation That Cannot Keep Its People

Perhaps the greatest indictment of our failed independence is Japa.

Japa is no longer just slang. It is an exodus. It is the biggest export of this administration – human beings. Doctors, nurses, engineers, lecturers, tech talents, artisans – our best brains are running.

Our hospitals have become consulting rooms without consultants because our doctors are in the UK, Canada, and Saudi Arabia. Our universities are empty because our lecturers are driving Uber in America. Our young men and women line up daily at embassies, not because they hate Nigeria, but because Nigeria has made it impossible to love them back.

Economic hardship, joblessness, and hopelessness have made us citizens of other countries in our prime, while we remain citizens of Nigeria only on paper. When your able-bodied population is desperate to leave, you are not free.

A Rich Country Turned Beggar

We have crude oil, natural gas, gold, lithium, limestone, fertile land, and the largest youthful population in Africa. Yet we are one of the most indebted nations in the world.

We borrow to pay salaries. We borrow to fund budgets. We borrow to service old borrowings. Our debt has crossed N121 trillion. Every Nigerian child born today already owes over N600,000 before taking his first breath. We have turned from a lender of hope to other African nations in the 1970s to a chronic borrower from IMF, World Bank, China, and AfDB. We have abundance, but we live in scarcity because of corruption, waste, and stealing.

Debt, loans, insecurity, a collapsed health system where our leaders fly abroad for headache while our general hospitals have no paracetamol, have made us strangers in our own independence land.

WHAT THEN IS TRUE FREEDOM?

So on this 66th anniversary, we don’t just want parades at Eagle Square. We want FREEDOM.

We want freedom through leaders who care. Leaders who see public office as service, not investment. Leaders who will not budget billions for SUVs while hospitals have no beds. Leaders who will jail a thief regardless of his tribe or party. We are tired of leaders who campaign with poverty and govern with luxury.

We want freedom through citizens who are loyal to the country, not just to their tribe, religion, or stomach. A country where we stop celebrating criminals because they are from our village. A country where we demand accountability, pay our taxes, protect public property, and stop selling our votes for N5,000 and a plate of rice.

And finally, we want a country free from abject poverty and corruption.  A Nigeria free from banditry and kidnapping. True freedom is when a Nigerian can farm without fear, go to hospital and be treated, send his child to school and the child will learn, start a business and it will grow without paying bribes to fifty agencies.

We got independence from the British in 1960. Now, in 2026, we must get freedom from ourselves – from greed, from tribalism, from incompetence, from corruption.

We are independent. Now give us freedom.

Happy 66th Independence Day, Nigeria. May we one day truly be free.

Ebenezer Ogundele,
Ibadan, Oyo State capital.
ebenezerolukayode01@gmail.com