Nigeria’s new anthem, written by a Briton, sparks criticism after a contentious regulation is handed

Nigeria adopted a brand new nationwide anthem on Wednesday after lawmakers handed a regulation that changed the present one with a model dropped practically a half-century in the past, sparking widespread criticism about how the regulation was rapidly handed with out a lot public enter.

President Bola Tinubu’s assent to the regulation comes a day after it was accredited by each chambers of Nigeria’s Nationwide Meeting, which is dominated by the governing get together. The federal lawmakers launched and handed the invoice in lower than every week, an unusually quick course of for necessary payments that normally take weeks or months to be thought-about.

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The “Come up, O Compatriots” anthem being changed had been in use since 1978, when it was launched by the army authorities. The anthem was composed at a time when the nation was reeling from a lethal civil warfare and calls on Nigerians to “serve our fatherland with love and energy” and to not let “the labor of our heroes previous (to be) in useless.”

The brand new model that takes instant impact was first launched in 1960 when Nigeria gained independence from Britain earlier than it was dropped by the army. Titled “Nigeria We Hail Thee,” it was written by Lillian Jean Williams, a British expatriate who was dwelling in Nigeria on the time.

The brand new anthem was performed publicly for the primary time at a legislative session attended by Tinubu, who marked his one 12 months in workplace as president on Wednesday.

Many Nigerians, nonetheless, took to social media to say they will not be singing the brand new nationwide anthem, amongst them Oby Ezekwesili, a former training minister and presidential aspirant who mentioned that the brand new regulation reveals that the nation’s political class would not care concerning the public curiosity.

“In a twenty first Century Nigeria, the nation’s political class discovered a colonial Nationwide Anthem that has pejorative phrases like “Native Land” and “Tribes” to be admirable sufficient to foist on our Residents with out their consent,” Ezekwesili posted on X.

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Supporters of the brand new anthem, nonetheless, argued it was incorrect for the nation to have adopted an anthem launched by the army.

“Anthems are ideological recitations that assist the individuals to be extra centered. It was a really unhappy improvement for the army to have modified the anthem,” public affairs analyst Frank Tietie mentioned.