Our Worthy Heirs

That great statesman, the National Johnson, once pronounced that the reason for Africa's postcolonial problems lay not in the mere facts of military invasion, economic exploitation, social disruption, legal dehumanisation and moral improvement, but in the fact that all these blessings were withdrawn too soon. Yet even the National Johnson is not immune to error, and the former British colony of Nigeria has convincingly rebutted the Johnsonian model of history by adopting a thoroughly British solution to its current government's difficulties. Economic crisis and runaway inflation are to be combated with a change to the national anthem; though certainly not a change to some vulgar and untried jingle that might suggest some sort of new beginning. A law was rushed through this week to depose Arise, O Compatriots, which has held the position since the military junta of the nineteen-seventies, and to reinstate Nigeria, We Hail Thee, which was adopted on gaining independence in 1960. Although the merely real-world consequences for Nigeria's economy remain as yet unclear, this unequivocal confirmation of its enduring cultural Britishness will indubitably count for something or other where it really matters.