Will we ever recognize the ways in which we all contribute individually and collectively to the problem that is Nigeria? Before proceeding to read further, I urge you to consider this piece as both educational and contemplative.
Let’s start with our minds as Nigerians. We are what Frantz Fanon describes as “the new man,” what Dr. Marimba Ani describes as the “imitation European,” and what Partha Chatterjee describes as the “colonized mind.” The average Nigerian is a colonized mind. I know this statement triggers instant disagreement, but I implore us to examine ourselves. The way we think, the way we dress, our aspirations, what we consider accomplishments, the wig atop our heads: all aspire to a specific whiteness, in all its capitalist glory, and to our consumerist destruction. If it ain’t white, it ain’t right, right?
It is important to mention here that even as we aspire to our own collective self-destruction, there insists something within us that we have for generations now, suppressed, and it is only suppressed because we are unable to kill it. Spirit. The energy within. The god inside us that unites us, and connects us to our Source. That lifeforce that revitalizes itself despite our collective suicide. It insists itself in our speech, when we pepper our sentences with “sha,” a word that has no exact English equivalent, or when the craving for flavour hits us: Amala after a long period of intercontinental dishes. It asserts itself in how our ethnic languages carry a depth that we feel, and a sense of belonging that the colonizing language cannot afford us. It insists – to awaken us from our slumber, to remind us that we are not who we pretend to be. We won’t ever be. Imitation is where it ends. If e no be Panadol, e no fit be Panadol.
It insists, but we suppress it, still. We choose the material, a material that individuates us instead of uniting us. Me, myself and I, instead of Ubuntu. Jason as the norm, the cool name instead of Dike and Amara, and Atinuke, Ifawemi, Gbugbemi, Ekang among others. Names that tell stories of the world into which a person is born, betraying emotions and worldviews borne by those who came before the newborn. As if our ancestors were stupid, a stupidity we work so hard to erase. Why the word “local” connotes an insult where it ought to infer pride, because the word “local” denotes history, and implies a wealth of knowledge that resides in that “local” body.
The aspiration to this specific whiteness sets us in a linear pattern of competition instead of communion, so we can impress, oppress and destroy each other, as if an invaluable, yet invisible award awaits us at the end of the line. Do you see the patterns now? It is why the wigs we desire and normalize are manufactured to look as though those silky strands of bone-straight hair emanate from your scalp, when your genetic composition would argue otherwise. It is why we consider locs exotic, and why alopecia, despite being a common problem, is brushed aside.
We are stuck in a cycle of colonialism, or what I prefer to call the “colonial continuum.” Except, we inherited the baton of self-destruction from our western colonizers, and have chosen to pass it along to the next generation. We discuss Nigeria’s issues from sunrise to sunset without digging past Level 2 why – bad leadership and corruption. Peter Obi is NOT the solution to the problem in the country. He is but a bandaid, if, by chance, fate or whatever cause there may be, he finds himself in presidential office. This is also why BAT (every pun intended) can muscle his way into that office with zero consequences. Level 3 why? Because he is a product of our society, a mirror reflecting our collective face. If a people have chosen to remain mentally colonized, they will always be governed by a colonizer. BAT knows this, as did his predecessors. So, they embody this personality, with the support of the external colonizers who physically left the land in 1960, but whose economic systems perdure. Why were we so naïve as to believe they would ever release their hold on a treasure chest, a cornucopia of resources that fund western governments until today? Resources that ensure ongoing inequality. If you continue to believe that the “white life” is the “best life” – the life of comfort and true happiness – then you will make it your life’s purpose to attain said best life. And guess what? That’s how we remain colonized.
Everything they produce, we consume with neither an afterthought as to what feeds our appetite for these products, nor why we are unable to produce much locally. We import almost everything, even when we possess the land, labour, resources and intelligence required to become autonomous. Yet we don’t. When we dare to create, we imitate western products to be marketable. Where is our originality? We seek to transform ourselves from the “barbarism” of our Africanness to the “civility” of our Anglo-Saxon-ness. We teach our children these behaviours, too. We imprison our identity, and wear the garment of imitation. And as we keep imitating in the hope of attaining that objective, he keeps enriching himself at the expense of our stupidity. For, your colonizer knows you will never occupy his space if you remain steadfast on the path to this specific whiteness, a whiteness of which you know next to nothing outside of your perceptions. Therefore, he keeps exploiting you to his benefit, thereby feeding the imbalance. You, Funke, Nkechi, Tamuno, will never be white, not even in black skin can you be white. Even worse, you’re distancing yourself from your spirit. When will you choose to retrace your steps to self? Again, I ask, who are you when you think of yourself?
Nobody can save Nigeria, Nigeria will have to save herself, but Nigeria isn’t going to save herself because she’s the colonizer’s wench. The colonizer takes from her all that is valuable: her youth, beauty, mind, labor and her produce too. You have – consciously and perhaps subconsciously too – both established an order in which he, the colonizer, is the hegemony (head/mind/higher/producer), while you, the colonized are the colony (the space where the wheat is extracted from the chaff/resources extracted and shipped upwards, depositing waste at the end/colon). Yes, him and her, because this is the gendered binary upon which such relations exist. Masculine and feminine. Positive and negative. The colonizer commodifies her, again and again, and will never let go because she seems to be a regenerating source of abundance for him. He treats her with such contempt because he sees that she recognizes not her own power. She recognizes not her own power because she keeps lying to herself that somewhere within this selfish colonizing man is a heart that cares and a spirit not unlike hers, for it surely must recognize that love is all it ought to be, isn’t it? Her folly. Her undoing is his nourishment, or so he thinks. He created her, after all. He named her, this beautiful and fruitful space called Nigeria. He classified her. He gave her personality. He sees her and the world at large as he sees himself. Exploitable matter. A destructive ideology.
If the wench that is Nigeria must set herself free, she must first acknowledge her consignation in all that has been done to her. It happens because she allows it. Inaction is also action. Yet another paradox of life. Next, she must begin to deconstruct her colonial identity. It is during this process that she can learn even more profoundly, aspects of herself that contribute to the systemization of her exploitation. She must identify these aspects of herself, and call them for what they really are. She must denounce her constructed identity. She must recognize the power that she cast aside. The insistent and indestructible fiery spirit within her, seeking to be at the forefront of her totality. The god in her. The godly her. And yes, she must exercise this rediscovered power and wield it in her favour. Before that, she must purge the colonizer’s toxins within her. His legacies. The name he gave her. The rules he laid out for her. The many lies he kept telling her about herself, which she believed, such as saying she had no parents and no loved ones; or that the few cognitive abilities she possessed when he encountered her were of inferior quality, compelling him to share his with her. These things are, quite simply and as a matter of fact, untrue if we are to research our pre-colonial traditions. In a nutshell, she must deprogram his programming, and reboot herself afresh. The Indigenous peoples who belong to the colony of Nigeria carved out in 1886 must – as an act of mental self-liberation – exercise the autonomy that will decide their own future, collectively and respectfully.
Finally, she must remind herself never again to be gullible to the lures of deception – ignoring those unconscious tendencies in herself eager to (m)align with externally – imposed and internally-complicit enculturation.
Amedu Blessing Mercy May 23, 2025 05:58
This is a beautiful piece. We are a beautiful people that just need to come to a place of self-discovery and tap into all we have been gifted with. And they will be no need to desperately be a people we are not.