Post by The West (@WEST1)

The dream of every bird trapped in a cage is not only to fly, but for its wings to finally touch the sky. So when a bird is set free, it rejoices, because it can finally become what nature always designed it to be. This is the same longing carried by a nation that weeps for independence and, after long years of waiting, finally receives it.

What does it truly mean for a nation to gain independence? It means its people are freed from the hand of a foreign ruler, free at last to chart their own course and shape their own future. But there is a quiet difference between being freed from a colonial master and being freed from the weight placed on a people by their own leaders, and sometimes, by one another.

Today, we celebrate freedom, yet Nigeria is not fully free, and the evidence lives all around us. It lives in citizens who struggle to place others before themselves. It lives in the roads left unbuilt, the light that flickers and fails, the hospitals left without equipment, and the schools left without funding. It lives in the people living with physical and learning difficulties, left abandoned on our streets like forgotten pages of a story no one wants to finish. And it lives in the safety our nation still struggles to promise its own people.

This message is not meant to criticise any government or any citizen, because truly, we have good leaders and good people among us. It is simply meant to speak honestly about the reality we see. So let this come, instead, as a wish, and here is my wish for all of us: may this 66th year of independence open our eyes to do better, both as individuals and as one people. May it stir in every citizen a willingness to place the interest of our fellow countrymen above our own, because a nation only rises as high as the people willing to carry one another, the way a thousand small roots quietly hold up one great tree.

Happy New Month, and Happy Independence Day, to Nigeria, and to all my leekeeleekee family.

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