If the British want to be fair to Nigeria, they will use the opportunity of the Platinum Jubillee to address some of the heinous crimes of colonialism

Ayo Akinfe

[1] First of all, how about paying compensation for the bloody 1897 Massacre of Benin. It was by far the most brutal slaughter of Nigerians during colonialism, followed by the sacking of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1905

[2] For starters, Britain is a country well renown for its expertise in several sectors including tunnelling, coal mining and steel making for instance. During over 100 years of colonialism, did the British ever bring along a group of experts to help Nigeria in these industries?

[3] The man known as the world’s father of tunnelling was a British engineer named John Norton-Griffiths. During World War One, he was the man who 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.

[4] After the 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

[4] 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

[5] 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

[6] Do you know that Sheffield was at one time renown as the European steel capital? Yet, we have Ajaokuta rotting away and Britain has not even thought about bringing a team of steel engineers to revive the moribund facility

[7] I also wonder why Britain is not urging Nigerian monarchs to merge their monarchies as Britain did. Do you know that half of the world’s monarchs are in Nigeria? This is a terrible drain on the public purse. Malaysia had a similar situation to us at independence but they decided to merge their monarchies and have just six. They now rotate the King of Malaysia title among them

[8] With us having three tiers of government, traditional monarchs are just figure heads. They do not serve any official function and you have to ask yourselves is their any justification for having more than say - The Alaafin of Oyo, the Sultan of Sokoto, the Shehu of Borno, the Obi of Onitsha, the Obong of Calabar and the Oba of Benin

[9] In Britain the amount the public spends on the royal family is being cut daily. I hope Queen Elizabeth tells the Nigerian monarchs that they need to fund their institutions themselves to free up government money for schools, roads, hospitals, clinics, etc

[10] 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. President Buhari should have given Britain a minimum annual investment figure Nigeria requires each year. 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 by British firms should be tax deductible in London to encourage it!