LETS BE NIGERIAN

In the brilliant words of Honorable Justice Nikki Tobi of the Supreme Court of Nigeria:

“English is English, Nigeria is Nigeria. The English are English. So also the Nigerians are Nigerians. Theirs are theirs, ours are ours. Theirs are not ours, ours are not theirs. We cannot therefore continue to ‘enjoy this borrowing spree’ or merry frolic at the detriment of our legal system. We cannot continue to pay loyalty to our colonial past with such servility or servitude. After all, we are no more in slavery”

These words got to me and it brought my mind to the fact that we have this “borrowing culture”. It brought my mind to the fact that most of our laws, including local statues, are only a replica of “the English”. While I kept meditating on this disturbing thought, I realized that this “copy and paste” attitude is not peculiar to our legal system alone; Nigerians seem to generally love “copying”.

Have you ever wonder why most organizations,both governmental and non-governmental, require their employees to dress “corporate”? (That’s the usual slang). Why can’t we wear our native attire? Someone said English attires make you look smarter but do you agree?

I visited a friend one day and she told me she doesn’t use anything “made in Nigeria”. According to her, everything in Nigeria is “wack”. But then I asked, are you not “made in Nigeria”. Let’s face it, We keep buying foreign stuff and increasing the income of other countries while we leave ours to languish and at the day, we call it “wack”. The question is who made it “wack”?

Coming down to the issue of language, we have “English” as our lingua franca, we seem to forgotten that “English is for the English”. The truth is that they would never come and adopt a Nigerian language as their lingua franca so why do we make theirs ours? I remember back in high school when we were punished for speaking any other language apart from English. According to them, they were teaching us “decorum”. I’m not sure if they ever realized that they were teaching us to neglect our languages. Now, if you look around, You would discover that a lot of young people don’t know how to speak any local language, all they know is “English”. Don’t you think some of our languages would go into extinction if this continues?

I could go on and on but the ultimate question is “For how long will this borrowing spree linger?” Why do we keep using the excuse of “influence of colonialism” to keep leave on a borrowed culture? We are no longer in slavery so why do we still act as if it’s our duty to follow their footsteps? Why do we keep paying loyalty to our colonial past? Many of us just want to run away from Nigeria but we fail to realize that the destination we run to was built by its people who stayed back to build it. So if everyone keeps running away, who builds Nigeria?

I think part of the problem is that we don’t believe in what we have or what we can generate, we tend to see the English culture as superior; that’s why it’s a “god” to us. So I think it all starts with believing in Nigeria and changing our attitude towards her. Like it is said: “Change begins with me and you”;  we don’t expect anything to change if our mentality and attitude towards your country doesn’t change.

In a nutshell, let’s be Nigerian because English is for the English, Nigeria is for us. So let’s accept who we are and stop trying to be a “photocopy” of the English or any other foreign culture.

Thank you so much for reading this post and I leave you with this line of a poem by me titled “Copiers”

“…..

Copiers, we are no more in slavery."