Sixty-six years is long enough to have a history, but it is nowhere near long enough to have finished becoming.
As Nigeria marks 66 years of independence, there will naturally be conversations about where we have been. We will remember the milestones, reflect on the difficult chapters, celebrate the progress we are proud of, and acknowledge the distance we still have to travel. All of that matters. But I also believe an anniversary gives us an opportunity to turn our attention in the other direction and ask a different question: What could we become?
I find that question powerful because it does not require us to ignore the realities of where we are today. Instead, it asks us to imagine what might still be possible and, more importantly, to consider our individual and collective responsibility for getting there.
Nigeria remains a remarkably young country, full of people building businesses, creating solutions, raising families, developing communities and pursuing ideas that may look small today but could become significant tomorrow. When we speak about nation-building, it is easy to think only about major infrastructure, institutions and policies. Yet countries are also shaped by the everyday decisions of people who choose to create something useful, improve something around them or leave an opportunity behind for somebody else.
Perhaps one of the most humbling things about building is knowing that its story may continue long after ours has moved on. Somewhere, years from now, a child may take their first steps across a floor we helped create. A family may gather around a table in a home whose foundations were laid by hands they will never know. Someone may find work because of a business started today, or find belonging in a community imagined years before they arrived. We will not be there for those moments. We may never know their names, hear their laughter or know what became of the things we began. But perhaps that is the point. The future has always been built by people willing to care about a tomorrow they may never get to see.
That is the kind of thinking I believe Nigeria’s next chapter requires: a willingness to build beyond ourselves. To consider not only what we need today, but what the people coming after us will inherit.
This year, Bilaad also marks a milestone of its own: nine years. Our anniversary is, of course, much smaller in the context of Nigeria’s 66, but it gives us a similar reason to reflect. Nine years have given us enough history to appreciate how far we have come, while reminding us that there is still so much ahead of us.
As we enter our next chapter, our ambition is not simply to build more. It is to become more intentional about what our work makes possible: the communities that grow around it, the opportunities it creates, the people it serves and the value that remains long after construction is complete.
At 66, Nigeria is still becoming. At nine, so are we.
And perhaps that is the privilege of being part of an unfinished story: we still get to help shape what it becomes.
Dr. Emmanuel Bassi Usman
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, BILAAD REALTY
