LAGOS Nigeria turns 40 on Sunday and plans to fete its anniversary of independence from Britain with fanfare despite criticisms that the long-suffering Nigerian people have little to celebrate.
The government of President Olusegun Obasanjo is spending 300 million naira (around 2.5 million dollars) on a series of events from the opening of a millennium park to a pan-African arts awards ceremony and a fireworks display to mark Nigeria's coming of age.
South African President Thabo Mbeki will be guest of honor at the main event, expected also to be attended by other African leaders and diplomats from around the world.
Formed in 1914 from two separate British protectorates in west Africa, the modern state of Nigeria came into being on October 1, 1960.
Still initially under the British crown, the nation became a federal republic in 1963 and has remained so since.
Since 1960, the population of the country has almost tripled to reach 121.8 million in 1999 according to the United Nations, making it the most populous country on the continent and the largest black nation on earth.
However, the country's history has been far from smooth.
Nigeria suffered its first military coup in January 1966 and between 1967 and 1970 fought a bloody civil war to stop the Igbo people of the southeast seceding in the so-called Biafra Republic'.
More than a million people died.
Between 1966 and 1999, Nigeria experienced only four years of civilian rule. Its military rulers gained a worldwide reputation for corruption, beggaring the oil-rich country's people.
The man who ruled the country from November 1993 to his death in June 1998, the late Sani Abacha, won particular notoriety for brutality.
Once some of the wealthiest people in Africa, in the last two decades Nigerians have fallen to among the poorest on the continent with more than 70 percent surviving on the equivalent of less than one dollar a day.
The reasons are not hard to find. Earlier this month, the country which boasts one of the world's greatest cultural diversities, from its more than 200 different peoples, once again was singled out in a survey as being perceived as the world's most corrupt nation.
Newspaper columnist Olusegun Adeniyi of the newspaper This Day said it was "tragic" that no one in government seemed bothered about this.
"Perhaps that explains why the preoccupation of some people now is how to share another 300 million naira to celebrate 40 years of what is clearly wasted opportunities," he said.
"The truth is that, whether we admit it or not, we are all collectively guilty for the image of Nigeria as a nation where there is no standard, where anything does," he added.
Obasanjo, who was jailed by Abacha and emerged from prison only months before being elected president, has pledged since taking power to change Nigeria, passing a new anticorruption bill and promising economic reforms.
After many delays, a panel set up by Obasanjo to review past human rights abuses is due to start sittings in mid-October.
"We are taking stock of what has happened and looking ahead," AFP quoted Reverend Matthew Kukah, a member of the seven-strong panel as saying last week.
Information Minister Jerry Gana told a special church service at the weekend he believed there was still hope, but admitted the past record of Nigeria was not encouraging.
"If there is nothing else to thank the Lord for, it is for keeping the nation together after all the tortuous days it has passed since independence," he said.