I almost did not remember it’s Nigeria’s Independence Day because I am removed from its daily happenstances by choice, or more truthfully, I was busy at work.

My quest for a better life has led me to this place where I work and remit taxes to the monarchy that colonised my homeland. A little strange, innit? Now, I will acknowledge our faux independence.

For a country that leaves a bittersweet aftertaste, I am a little too concerned about it, primary because the geographical contraption Flora Shaw’s boyfriend drafted, is home to the people and places my daydreams are made of.

Like the legendary CNA wrote in her book, half of a yellow sun :

I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came.

For me, I am Ibibio first, in language and thoughts, in hopes and prayers, in music and manners after which, am I Nigerian because a common government gives us similar problems over which we can form bonds complaining about. At least, that is what I think.

To be honest, I do not even know its current national anthem because the one I learnt and sung for a quarter century was changed overnight by the same government that took gasoline prices from 200 to 1500 naira per litre in the same tenure. It’s a little hard to identify with that cruelty.

I no longer feel safe or at home there and neither do I, in England because, at the end of the day, this is not my native land.

I get very many reminders, spoken and silent, that I do not belong here. From the where are you really from? To the, I want to speak to a real staff because how can I possibly be real with an accent and the unstated obvious?

I desperately want to say something grand and gracious and hopeful about my birth country whose passport I hold to cross borders but my heart is hurt over the poverty and the accompanying childhood hunger, maternal mortality, religious psychosis and extremism, injustice and general economic decline that faces the nation.

I care because it’s home to me and the people I love. I make annual trips there and relish the flavours from its farms.

Every single journey, without fail, leaves me sad even more and hopeful, however bleak that it’d get better. That its children will beat malnutrition; and its women would not die from preventable causes in pregnancy and childbirth.

If you are tired of reading the complaints, imagine how it feels living below the poverty line in it. In 2026.

I am not angry enough that a nation whose wealth funded FESTAC in the 70s could have, according to World Bank(2025); 63 per cent of its citizens, multidimensionally poor in less than 50 years.

I know the Bible predicts a general economic decline in the last days but ours is so steep, the Prophet Daniel from war-torn, 536 BC Isreal would be shocked at his predictions.

The greed, injustice, incompetence, cruelty and corruption of the people in power has made us near irredeemable.

But Jesus offers us hope. And we will cling to the last straw of it like the bloodied woman to the hem of His garment.

I really want to say Happy Independence Day! But for now, I will just say, God abegggggggg!🥹🥹🥹💔🤲🏾🤲🏾🤲🏾🤲🏾

Tutu mkpong!

Eyen Ibibio,

Edima.