Why the US freed itself from Britain & lessons for nations in Nigeria

Every fourth of July in America, presenters at the National Public Radio read the text of the US Declaration of Independence. Besides the popular lines, I have never paid much attention to some obscure lines in the Declaration of Independence. This year, I did. And I think the new meaning that I got from it must have something to do with today’s Nigerian situation.

Of course, I have always admired the first line. “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

It always makes me think of the human events in Nigeria. It makes me wonder if it has become “necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which connected them with another.” Has it, I asked as I listened to the reading? For those who think it has become necessary, I wonder if they have “declared the causes which impel them to the separation” in reverence to “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.”