OUR COLLECTIVE HISTORY: RAMBLINGS!

This is our collective history as far back as when we think it all went wrong: The soldiers who stole the throne from the first independent civil administrators brought in a new type of respect called fear. Whereas the civilian administrators were admired largely for their great intellect and perceived patriotism, the soldiers brought in their “might is right” mentality to the Nigerian conscience, proving this theory as they took turns to replace each other based on that principle. Most of these soldiers were smart individuals, but due to the physical and sometimes harsh nature of their job, they became seen as brutes before anything else, feared across the land, from North to South and from East to West. And in what must be regarded as one of our nation’s greatest ironies, they who stole the mandate became the glue that held this nation for so long till they handed power to a different uniform. It was during their days that most of the tales of this nation’s woes can be traced. Everyone living in this country can trace one life changing period in their lives to that era directly or indirectly.

We the neo-colonial slaves are stuck between our parents’ insistence to hold on to the past be it through some relative in a remote village they themselves refuse to live in or through their ongoing autonomy in our politics/personal lives and between our generation’s need to move “forward” through some social awakening be it on twitter or facebook or gasp, instagram; the perceived alien orientation our elders claim we stick to.

For this reason, our thinking differs and a battle between tradition and modernity rages. The battle between religion and culture rages, which people often mix and think are the same. The media has become the new battlefield upon which some of these battles take place. No longer do we tune in to the 9 o’clock news on NTA, when we can go on debating the polity on twitter till it is a trending topic and we are still talking about it the next day like we were all in the same room when it happened. The playing field has changed. Not only have we changed families, we have changed the game!