Prof. Samuel Aghalino, the President of the Historical Society of Nigeria, HSN, says the refusal of Nigeria to build on its colonial and pre-colonial economy resulted in the current challenges it is facing. The professor of History, who expressed sadness that Nigeria abandoned production to depend completely on consumption, noted that “without production, our economy will continue to be in trouble.”
“We are interested in consuming without production, and without production, our economy will continue to be in trouble. We should look back to history to guide us on how every region developed at their own pace,” he fumed.
The historian spoke while presenting a Life Membership Certificate of the Historical Society of Nigeria to Barr Frank Tietie, a rights activist and Executive Director of Citizens Advocacy for Social Economic Rights, CASER, in Abuja. He blamed leaders for the prevailing security and economic challenges in Nigeria, insisting that their inability to draw lessons from historical antecedents resulted to the country’s current woes.
Aghalino wondered why Nigerian leaders were not conscious of history, noting that most of their private and public decisions could have been guided accordingly for national integration and harmony.
He said:” Our problem is that we refused to utilise our past to better our present. We refuse to go back to history as a means of development. We must go back to history if we must move forward. “We refused to build on our colonial and pre-colonial economy as a result of that, we are in trouble today. We are interested in consuming without production, and without production, our economy will continue to be in trouble. We should look back to history to guide us on how every region developed at their own pace.”
“I concluded that Tietie must not be speaking from the perspective of stomach infrastructure, he has been speaking from the fact that this nation is great and we must make it great and we must work in unison to make it great. And each time he speaks, I pick out his snippets of historiography and see nuggets of historical wisdom.”
Speaking at the event, Tietie, a foremost current affairs analyst and television personality, attributed the current food crisis in Nigeria to the result of political leaders repeating mistakes that grounded the country at different seasons in the past.
He regretted that leaders appear to be ignorant of the country’s history. According to him, with the “insane level of low politics” that is practiced in Nigeria, only leaders who have a sense of history could effectively navigate the future from lessons of the past.
He said 2024 was not the first time Nigeria experienced hunger but it was expected of current leaders to understand the mistakes of the past otherwise they would keep taking actions that are detrimental to the citizens.
“Until we understand certain actions and make changes, we will continue to make the same mistakes in the expectations of different results. That is why we have all these frustrations. Nothing is new under the sun,” he noted.