Nationalism and Liberalism in Nigeria

A letter to myself to be oped at 50 years of age.

First and foremost I would like to commend you on how proud you have made me by achieving your long awaited goal by becoming the first female president of Nigeria. You have kept your promise not to run off to another country. Also, I will like to commend you for being patient and not opening this letter before your 50th birthday. You have certainly grown up and more mature. Although I know that you already know the contents of this letter, I will still go on as I am sure that this old memory of yours needs some refreshment. I also hope you would use this opportunity to check your progress so far in ruling Nigeria. Even though I have a feeling that your ideologies have probably changed, the aim of this paper is to remind you of the ideologies of your 17 year old self and compare them with your current ideologies so as to determine your progress so far in the past 33 years. As a 17 year old, your main ideology was nationalism unlike most of your colleagues who preferred conservatism or liberalism. But that was quite understandable because you were a nationalist at heart despite the situation your country was in at that moment. But seeing as you are the current president, I can certainly say that Nigeria is a better place now.

Nationalism, according to Andrew Heywood, is defined as the belief that the nation is the center principle of political organization. As such, it is based on two core assumptions. First humankind is naturally divided into distinct nations, and second, the nation is the most appropriate and perharps only legitimate unit of political rule.

One of the main reasons why nationalism was your main ideology is because nationalism not only dealt with just the boundaries between nations, it included the people bound together by similar characteristics such as shared values and traditions, particularly a common language, religion, ethnicity, or history. Nations can be seen as cultural entities.

According to A. D. Smith (2010), “nationalism is an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity for a population for which some of its members to constitute an actual or potential 'nation'” (pg. 9).

This brings us to the definition of a nation. A nation according to A. Keywood, is defined as cultural entities, collections of people bound together by shared values and traditions, in particular a common language, religion and history, and usually occupying the same geographical area.