Given Nigeria's contribution towards the allied victory during World War Two, we should be using these 80th anniversary celebrations to demand from our former colonial masters the British that from now on, we get treated like an equal partner 

Ayo Akinfe

[1] It may not occur to many Nigerians but from what I can see, we were Britain's second most important colony after the "Jewel in the corn of the empire" made up of current day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

[2] Nigeria was this huge African giant that straddled the African continent, leaving the French and Germans green with envy. from palm oil to cocoa, to timber, to livestock, Nigeria was so resource rich that every European power wanted her

[3] Now, Britain, our former colonial master is a country well renown for its expertise in several sectors including tunnelling, coal mining and steel making for instance. I would like to see a group of experts land in Nigeria to help expand these industries?

[4] Now, a man known as the world’s father of tunnelling was a British engineer named John Norton-Griffiths. During World War One, he came up with the idea of digging tunnels beneath the German trenches, allowing the allied powers to get behind their lines and subsequently win the war.

[5] After that war, Mr Norton-Griffith was awarded contracts to carry out major engineering projects in Africa and South America. These included work on the first 197km of the Benguela Railway in Angola between 1903 and 1908. His construction firm also took on a contract to carry out the heightening of Egypt’s Aswan Low Dam

[6] His pioneering work was what led to the construction of the London Underground. His methods are still being used to this very day as the UK expands the network to build the Crossrail sector of London Underground. Lagos in particular desperately needs such skills as a city of 12m simply cannot survive without an urban underground network

[7] In the area of coal mining too, Nigeria could benefit from British expertise. Just imagine what British coal miners could do if taken to Enugu

[8] Do you also know that Sheffield was at one time renown as the European steel capital? Yet, we have Ajaokuta rotting away and we have never asked for a British team of steel engineers to revive the moribund facility

[9] Britain created Nigeria and left her sitting on a keg of gunpowder. As far as I am concerned, the British have to take responsibility for a lot of the problems they created. Nigeria should use the 80th anniversary celebrations as an opportunity to demand a minimum annual investment figure from Britain each year

[10] We have poverty, restlessness and violence in our land because of a lack of industrialisation and job creation. Britain should be obliged to address this by investing at least £1bn a year in Nigeria. Such investment should be tax deductible to encourage it!

ayoakinfe@gmail.com