Category: Olatunji Ololade

Patriotism thrives by cultural standards. Progress too. Thus the songs that every Nigerian knows by heart, the lore of nationhood, and the politics of suburban, boondocks poetry should, normally, manifest the kernel of indigenous culture and political sovereignty.

But all these flounder and fade where Nigeria subsists as a cultural whore. Beyond the powder and blush of its republican label, should Nigeria subsist as a neocolonial brothel? Or recaptured colony, if you like.

Should Nigeria remain a settlement of internally displaced persons (IDPs) whose nativities are embowered and restrained in a mental jail cell? To assert independence is to be labeled as too radical, too conformist, too rebellious, too conservative – and confined in a cultural straitjacket by imperialist design.

Caught in a maelstrom of economic, political and cultural interests, Nigerians frantically seek escape via a specious remake of persona – political theater’s wooden mask – into a survivalist totem that is at  once functional yet sculpted to preserve shady alien interests.

The resultant decadence, inventive in pleasures yet originative in malice, is amplified as leftist satire in mainstream literature and revolutionist chant across multimedia platforms. Ultimately, it is spruced up as a “liberal” revolt against the perceived austerity and tyranny of Nigerian personae, a desecration of ancestral origins.

Society thus sidles from a multiplicity of morals to unity in depravity. Our veneration of Euro-American interests has assumed the ruckus of a ghastly orgy, far removed from fertile nature. This validates the Euro-American propagation of vulturine psychology as a specialty cum arbiter of diplomacy and the human experience.

Hussein Bulhan’s treatise on metacolonialism brilliantly addresses this phenomenon and its deceptive psychology. During classical colonialism, psychologists and psychiatrists embarked on racial comparisons on the size of the brain, concluding from biased measurements that Africans belonged to a lower evolutionary phase.

With the rise and growth of globalisation, the calculus and dynamics of colonial domination have assumed more subtle and treacherous forms as superpowers of the so-called “First World” redesigned their conquest expeditions to suit the poetics and arithmetic of their “enlightened self-interests.”

Apollos Nwauwa posits that Western education produced a contradictory elite in West Africa; one that served as both an agent of colonisation and nationalism. But nationalism, in our case, rather than mature into sovereignty of thought, hardened into mimicry. We changed flags, not philosophies. What we call modernisation has often been little more than domesticated colonisation—metacolonialism.

Also, a conditioned mass passion for consumer goods imported from abroad and effective dissemination of the belief that this stage of colonialism aka globalisation represents a great advance in human history continues to be the bane of industrial and economic growth in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.

By sustained assault on the world of meaning, metacolonialism also penetrates the psyche and social relations. Nigerians are, of course, vulnerable to this scourge of culture, politics, and personae – they are fawning and defenseless before its oppressive hierarchies.

And there is a structure to the indoctrination. For instance, the journalist plays the proverbial role of the primitive town crier cum interpreter, who ditches good sense for witlessness. He stifles intellect as he inhales the carnations of mindlessness. Should the press slip into trance like the Delphic Oracle?

Being part of the orgy requires corruption of intent and mystic loss of self. To keep the stream of indoctrination flowing, journalists and activists contort into a purulent faucet. But if Nigeria’s best minds must season decadence for profit, who would guide the country through the trials of dystopic revel?

As globalisation flourishes, the dynamics of Euro-American imperialism become more pronounced yet camouflaged in our lives with devastating consequences. As long as Nigeria and Africa worship the dollar and the euro as the primary means of international exchange and measures of human worth; as long as we venerate Euro-American norms as indispensable edicts of civilisation, Nigeria will remain poorly heeled in the global commune of recaptured colonies.

The current system, nourished by subtle and aggressive programming through the media and academia, projects nations of Europe and America as unimpeachable models of humanity and freedom, not minding their buccaneer exploits and abrasive presence in  the middle-east and “recolonised” territories of the developing world.

To counter this metacolonial complex, Nigerians must partner as progressive social actors to reinvent our national narrative in the language of patriots and deeds of an exalted ethic. In covering the next general elections, for instance, the civil society and the press must desist from inflaming the polity through sponsored disinformation and psyops comprising dubious analyses and pronouncements by questionable “foreign observers.”

This isn’t a call for self-censorship but over time, several activists, journalists and political actors have been conscripted by foreign interests. Their intent is to destabilise the country, by predicting and influencing a groundswell of conflict tailored to fulfill the “enlightened self-interest” of their sponsors. Nigerians must shun their factious quotes and counter their doomsday portrayal with tact and patriotic intent.

The next general elections won’t be perfect. No election is ever perfect all over the world. At least the United States’ scandalous elections of 2016, mired in claims and counterclaims of tampered ballots and sexed-up results, shows clearly that there is no perfect system or nation in the world.

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Nigerians must resist the impulse to sensationalise perceived shortcomings of the ongoing dispensation to suit the purpose of enemies of the State, at home and abroad. Heaven didn’t fall and Nigeria didn’t collapse simply because the outcome of the March 2023 elections contradicted the run of doomsday predictions by frantic foreign consulates and political interests.

It’s about time we committed with a clearer conscience and altruistic intent to the analyses of the conditions that victimise Nigerians as pawns and minions of the political class and shady colonisers.

Civil society, the press and other social actors must quit talking down at Nigerians and instead identify with the citizenry as discerning, self-determining political actors. The press must alert the citizenry to self-defeating electoral quirks and enlighten them about the benefits of progressive partisanship in the electoral process.

Decolonised psychology advocates change using a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach. The top-down approach is imperialistic and arrogant. Many political interventions or programmes of social change fail because they are imposed top-down by local and international actors with ulterior motives – thus they are often supported by the threat or instigation of mayhem as a tool of revolt.

En route to the 2027 elections, the Nigerians must resist every token and leash from foreign interests, rights groups and non-profits inclusive. But for a very few, they are all part of the metacoloniser’s poisoned chalice. The change they promise is oft insincere, self-serving, and borderline.

Beneath their claims that they alone know what’s best for Nigeria, they only seek to hinder our progress march and infantilise the Nigerian mind, using psyops that foster hostilities and aggravate conflict. It’s all frantic, soulless posturing. In the end, they will claim victory for negligible successes and blame Nigerians for perceptible failures.

True, fancy repute and ghostly online clout may earn venal activists, journalists and NGOs patronage in the short run, but they will lose it all in the long run to the same elements that taught them to be soulless mercenaries and hobbyists.

We have used the soapbox and our presumed intellect as a mirror to reflect society’s hypocrisy, moral corruption, and injustice. It’s about time we walked our talk in the interest of Nigeria.