The contempt of reminiscing colonisation

I am shocked to see Nigerians on Nigeria’s Independence Day endorsing the argument that; Nigeria would have been better off if the British colonialists are still ruling us. While I totally disagree, I go further to say that argument is both unscientific and contemptuous. As a people whose history is not farfetched from the shackles […]

I am shocked to see Nigerians on Nigeria’s Independence Day endorsing the argument that; Nigeria would have been better off if the British colonialists are still ruling us. While I totally disagree, I go further to say that argument is both unscientific and contemptuous. As a people whose history is not farfetched from the shackles of bondage and exploitation of colonial masters, reminiscing colonial rule with this kind of nostalgia is akin to recapitulating the famous slave masters’ saying that without western contact (read bondage) of Africans, we wouldn’t have been “so civilized and improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually”.

Truly, there is no denying that our indigenous leaders after independence failed to maximally utilize the country’s resources in a way that could ensure sustainable development. It is also true that Nigeria has not given Nigerians tangible reason to celebrate self-rule. But as humans, we cannot discover anything more honouring than this very life of freedom and self-determination.

The vast majority of what is known as Northern Nigeria today was at par with many western countries in several respect. Reason Western writers who attested to Usman Danfodio’s regime believed that he entrenched one of the most expedient systems of administration of justice world over. They acknowledged the advanced level scholarship, literature, peace, security and political stability found thriving under the dominion.

But the colonialists shattered those structures and imposed on us systems that till date remain largely alien and most incompatible with our development. The fact that advocates of extended British rule did not attempt to claim that colonial masters were here on invitation or some kind of bilateral waivers reaffirms the position that the visit was never consensual and therefore impulsive and oppressive.

If the colonial masters had not relegated and underdeveloped us and our familiar systems, our adaptational capabilities as human beings would surely have gifted us the potential to meet up with exigencies of globalisation. But they did, and that amounts to resetting whatever progress we might have made as a people. Their action made us foreigners in our lands, newbies in our ways and beginners in a race we were at the verge of winning. We had to abandon the much familiar Ajami numeracy and literacy which good percentage of our people were getting used to to entirely different one and then allow them to rate our education on its basis. We were physically and psychologically defeated. We became so corrupt and unsecured that we are now were we are. If you take southern Nigeria also, although their contact with the British colonialist wasn’t as destructive as it was to the Danfodio North, it cannot be denied that the colonial expedition was both contemptuous and exploitative to them as free-born humans.

They went ahead to present the wacked argument that colonial masters are better administrators because they entrenched sound educational, health and infrastructural facilities, and that the latter in time they left a colony, the more developed the colonies always are in relation to others. First of all, this argument is most unscientific because it is neither based on any established researched nor a product of conclusive factorial analysis.

Every single thing they left behind which we see today as beneficial were means of ensuring continued exploitation. The rails and the roads were means of accumulating raw materials to the West, the language was medium for communication and the numeracy and literacy were so that their implanted agents could match up with their exploitative business. Everything they built so strong to last was either because they had standards to maintain or because they had nothing to lose.

There is nothing positive to celebrate or reminisce about colonial presence in Nigeria. The worst days of our men are better than the best days of colonialism, for the single reason that the pride of liberty is the most important determinant of personhood. So if nothing, we could celebrate this.

Abba Hikima, Abuja