Lingering Vestiges of Colonialism in Nigeria 

By Tochukwu Ezukanma 

In 2007, the court voided the Public Order Act, a legacy of colonialism. The Public Order Act made it illegal for the people to stage a public protest without permission from the government. While this law may seem benign, just a law designed to maintain the peace; it was a repressive tool of colonialism. Most public protests are directed against government policies, actions or inactions. To be required by law to obtain permission to protest from the very institution you are protesting against was disingenuous. Colonialism was morally reprehensible. Therefore, it had to be premised on perverted logic and irritating sophistry. 

Normally, right after independence, such unjust legal contrivances of colonialism should have been automatically expunged from the Nigerian law books. That it took such a long time after colonial rule to repeal that potent tool of suppression is instructive. It instructs us on the mission and objectives of the emergent Nigerian power elite. Like the colonial masters, their objectives and goals were not totally informed and shaped by the needs, aspirations and general good of the Nigerian public. They were not particularly concerned with building a new post colonial society found on egalitarianism, social justice and the respect for the individual’s freedom and rights. They were not very inclined to give Nigerians a more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth. The new Nigerian political elite relished, and consequently, retained aspects of that colonial inspired, originally race-based social structure and other vestiges of colonialism: legal, social, and even most injurious, attitudinal.  

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Colonialism was a historical injustice, buttressed by a system, brutally exploitative and ruthlessly discriminatory. Not a single ideal inspired British colonialism in Nigeria. It was purposely to extend British imperialism. It reinforced the pretensions of the White man and furthered British colonialist interests. It was a psychologically abusive and materially depredatory evil. Inescapably, it oppressed the colonizer’s conscience. Therefore, he sought justification for it. The justification was found in sweeping racial and social theories.

These theories found expression in: ennobling the White race and disparaging the Black race; dignifying the Europeans and their ways of life and demeaning the indigenous people and their culture, religion and folklore; confecting and reinforcing denigrating stereotypes about the native people; and making royals of the colonial masters and conferring inferiority status on the indigenous people. They supported a sumptuous lifestyle for the colonialists obtained at the expense of the native people. They gave legitimacy to the imposition of an antiquated class-structure in Nigeria, a class structure long discarded in Europe because it was considered cruel and therefore unacceptable. This colonial imposed social structure engendered exclusivity for the Whites, and thus, segregation based on race; it relegated the people to second class citizenship and restricted their access to the circles of the elite, the colonial masters.

After colonialism, Nigerians stepped into the shoes of the departing colonial masters; they became the new ruling elite. Instead of dismantling these oppressive and unfair bequests of colonialism, they, in some ways, reinforced them. They made no resolute effort to reorient the people, so as to make possible their rise from the unrelieved sense of inferiority, instilled by colonialism. They took over the pretensions, privileges and prerogatives of the Whiteman and retained his attitude towards the Nigerian masses – that is – that same attitude earlier dictated by the deliberate promotion of the superiority of the White race and the bestowment of inferiority status on the native people. So, not surprisingly, although the new power elite became Nigerians, the class structure, the relationship between the elite and the people remained the same, exactly as it was when the ruling elite were the White colonialists. The system remained as segregated, and the preserves of the privileged class as inaccessible to the masses.

They retained the tools of coercion, brutality and intimidation put in place by the exigencies of colonialism. Not surprisingly, that indispensable element of power, the police force, is extortionate, insensitive and trigger-happy as though it is beholden to a colonial power. They continued to exploit the Nigerian masses, ignore their legitimate aspirations, treat them with scorn and deny them the right to protest, or seek redress. They maintain a luxurious and extravagant lifestyle only obtainable by the merciless exploitation of the people and the conscienceless theft of the public funds that would have been used to better the lives of the people. So, the post independent social order remains equally, and in some respects, more repressive and discriminatory than the colonial order. The only difference being that the basis for exploitation, subjugation and discrimination changed from race to social class.

For example, following the Ikeja cantonment ammunition dump explosion, the then president, Olusegun Obasanjo, arrived in Lagos to review the destruction wrought by the explosion. The level of devastation on the adjoining civilian neighborhoods was staggering, the toll in human life was excessive, and the affected citizens were understandably inconsolable. Ordinarily, the president, the personification of the country’s hope, the embodiment of her resolve and the repository of the powers of her government, should have shown utmost compassion: consoling, apologizing and promising investigation, rehabilitation, compensation, etc. Unfortunately, even under such a circumstance where people were killed, injured and bereaved as a direct consequence of the Federal Government’s negligence, the president could not conceal that embedded elite’s disdain for the masses. Discountenanced by the importunate crowd that thronged around him because they correctly considered him a beacon of hope, he lost his cool and scolded them. Obasanjo’s attitude towards the Nigerian people is not different from that of the average Nigerian power elite; he only lacks tact.

The ruling class inflates contracts by over 200 percent, misappropriates the entire amount and end up not executing the contract at all. They steal and share amongst themselves such staggering amount as the $16billion budgeted for upgrading the power sector and beefing up its energy generation. They have stolen additional billions of dollars earmarked for the renovation of the country’s roads; the upgrade of the airports and the improvement of air travel safety; the improvement of health care delivery; etc. There is more to these than just mindless greed and compulsive thievery. It is also explainable by their contempt for the owners and would-be beneficiaries of the money, the people.

Just as Nigerians led by the nationalist leaders rallied to wrest this country from British colonialism, we must again unite in a crusade to break the ruthless power of this Home-grown colonial masters, and restore Nigeria to its own people. History has furnished the instructive precedence that no power class will ever relinquish power to the people without a demand: strident, vociferous, determined, relentless, unremitting demand from the public. Frederick Douglas relevantly stated that “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Therefore, to profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation is to want crops without plowing the ground”.

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The United States of American was found on the creed that it is “self evident that all men are created equal”, a remarkably revolutionary creed by the standards of the time. Almost 200 years later, mostly, in the 1960s, the Black Americans led by a new breed of courageous, enlightened and selfless leaders laid a claim to this American statement of belief, the equality of all men. That equality was not granted them on a silver platter. They struggled, suffered and sacrificed for it. The reward of that painful and sanguinary struggle is today vivid, palpable and incandescent; a Black man, Barack Obama, stands poise to win the United States presidential race.

Nigerians are so caught up in self: self-enrichment, self-gratification and self-aggrandizement to sacrifice for anything transcendental, sublime or that does not readily pander to their immediate personal gains. Fela Anikulapo Kuti, in one of his songs, Sorrow, Tears and Blood, lucidly captured the mindset of the average Nigerian, that of unmitigated cowardice. It is cowardice borne out of self-absorption, a prepossession with narrow, pedestrian self interests and goals, and the consequent inability to commit to anything that does not readily and directly benefit him, especially materially. So, the average Nigerian is so terrified to take a stand in defense of his right, the public good and other lofty issues of life. His rationalizes his cowardice, according to the lyrics of Fela’s song, by: I no wan die, I no wan wound, mama dey for house, I get one child, I wan enjoy, etc.

However, the fearfulness of the average Nigeria does not make impossible a campaign against this monstrous elite class unsurpassed in its lamentable catalog of arrogance, greed, and theft,  because the people, no matter their number, strength and motivating righteous anger, cannot get anything done unless they are led. It is leadership that galvanizes and channels a people’s courage, strength and will. So, to break down this anachronistic social structure and give every Nigerian an equal opportunity to share in the wealth of this country and guarantee his right to be treated with respect and dignity in their own country, the people need leadership. To lead such a movement, the leader must be a brave and principled man, a man governed by courage and absolute commitment to the cause to the point that even the prospect of his death in the struggle will not matter to him. In making the same point, Mohandas Gandhi stated, “only if I die for India shall I know that I was fit to live”. Martin Luther King Jr. the most prominent leader in the Black American movement for equality, made a similar point when he said, “I have conquered the fear of death”.

So far, in scouring the Nigerian horizon, I see no man that can offer this desperately needed leadership, that leader who believes that only if he dies for Nigeria shall he know that he was fit to live or that leader who in the full transport of his messianic mission will conquer the fear of death. Although Nigeria is teeming with these loquacious and flamboyant political activists and social critics, like Gani Fawhwemi, Wole Soyinka, etc., I do not believe that any of them has the moral courage and selflessness to truly lead the movement to restore this country to its people. To me, they all come across as a bunch of opportunists angling for their own piece of the pie.  

Tochukwu Ezukanma writes from Lagos, Nigeria.

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