The President of the Historical Society of Nigeria (HSN), Prof. Samuel Aghalino has said that the prevailing security and economic challenges in Nigeria was largely due to the inability of its leaders to draw lessons from historical antecedents.
Aghalino stated this while presenting a Life Membership Certificate of the Historical Society of Nigeria to Frank Tietie, the Executive Director of Citizens Advocacy for Social Economic Rights (CASER) weekend in Abuja.
He wondered why Nigerian leaders are not conscious of history, noting that most of the decisions they make in private and public life could have been guided accordingly for national integration and harmony.
“Our problem is that we refused to utilise our past to better our present. We refuse to go back to history as a means of development. We must go back to history if we must move forward.
“We refused to build on our colonial and pre-colonial economy as a result of that we are in trouble today. We are interested in consuming without production and without production our economy will continue to be in trouble. We should look back to history to guide us on how every region developed at their own pace,” he said.
He said Tietie was deserving of life membership certificate of the Historical Society of Nigeria because he had demonstrated uncommon capacity to confront the national question with patriotism.
Speaking afterwards, Tietie said that the current food crisis in Nigeria is as a result of political leaders repeating mistakes that grounded the country at different seasons in the past, saying that leaders appear to be ignorant of the country’s history.
He stated, “With the ‘insane level of low politics’ that is practiced in Nigeria, only leaders who have a sense of history could effectively navigate the future from lessons of the past.
He said 2024 was not the first time Nigeria experienced hunger but it was expected of current leaders to understand the mistakes of the past otherwise they would keep taking actions that are detrimental to the citizens.
“Until we understand certain actions and make changes, we will continue to make the same mistakes in the expectations of different results. That is why we have all these frustrations. Nothing is new under the sun,” he noted.
The Chairman, Board of Trustees, CASER, Otunba Gbenga Onayiga, commended the Historical Society of Nigeria for the honour, assuring that the honoree remains a lawyer with a difference.
