Decolonizing the Nigerian Mind

I begin with Ola Rotimi’s words: ‘we are drifters in the modern world if we do not know our history.’

A man will find trouble reaching where he is going if he does not know where he’s coming from. Decolonization comes into play when discussing post-colonialism. It is the deconstruction of the perception and attitudes of the power and oppression that were adopted during the time of colonialism.

People who are cut off from their belief and heritage are easily manipulated. So in addition to colonizing African land, Europeans also colonized African knowledge, stripping them of their culture and heritage. In this case we are reminded of Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’: Obierika has exclaimed that the white man has put a knife in the things that held us together and we have fallen apart. It should be noted that the greatest tragedy with colonialism was that it turned our own kinsmen against us, brothers against brothers. So decolonization is a process of change, of regaining and rediscovering oneself from the path one has wandered from. In his ‘further analysis’ on decolonizing the African mind, Uhuru Hotep explains decolonization as the process of overthrowing and then removing the ‘Europeancentric’ or ‘Arabcentric’ value and belief systems implanted in our minds by our public school mis-education, our Christian or Islamic indoctrination and mass media manipulation that keep us psychologically, emotionally, materially and spiritually tied to Europeans or Arabs as their victims or servants. Chinweizu also educates that to decolonize the African mind is to cleanse and liberate by re-Africanising the African mind.

The central objective in decolonizing the Nigerian mind is to oust alien tradition. Chinweizu also suggests that it must be stressed, however, that decolonization does not mean ignorance of foreign traditions; that it simply means denial of their authority and withdrawal of allegiance from them.

It may seem far-fetched to bring up the issues of colonialism at this time of the century; at the time of consciousness and social liberalism. Nonetheless, one’s memory should be jogged in the line that, in a nation like Nigeria, colonial powers destroyed the native tradition and culture and left the country on a contraption. This led to conflicts when the country became independent; it faced a new and greater challenge while developing a new nationwide identity and self-confidence because it has long forgotten who and what it was.

Walter Rodney writes that colonial education was education for subordination, exploitation, the creation of mental confusion and the development of underdevelopment. Rodney also observes that:

‘The educated Africans were the most alienated Africans on the continent. At each further stage of education, they were battered and succumbed to the white capitalist system, and after being given salaries, they could then afford to sustain a style of life imported from outside… that further transformed their mentality.’(275)

F. K Omoregie further explains in his essay ‘Rodney, Cabral and Ngugi as Guides to African Postcolonial Literature’ that:

‘Colonial education did more than corrupt the thinking and sensibilities of the African, it filled him/her with abnormal complexes which de-Africanised and alienated him/her from the needs of his/her environment. Colonial education has thus dispossessed and put out the control of the African intellectual the necessary forces for directing the life and development of his/her society.

We train our children with English because we believe it is a way of civilization. For Mongo Beti, the tragedy our nation is suffering today is like that of a man living in a world he did not create and does not understand. How will such a man know what he is doing or supposed to do?

Achebe, in a speech entitled ‘The African Writer and the English Language’ said:

‘Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue for someone else’s? It looks like a dreadful betrayal and produces a guilty feeling. But for me there is no other choice. I have been given the language and I intend to use it.’ (Achebe, 1975)

To conclude, this paper is not targeted to refute modernism or to argue against foreign ideas and beliefs. Its objective is also not to abolish the idea of submitting to foreign power because it’d be nearly impossible to do so since we have come to a point of seemingly no return. Rather the objective is to make us become aware of what we are and what we are not. One of Nigeria’s political problems, and arguably the greatest, is the shadow of post-colonialism. In a society where its peoples should be living with one defined identity, it yet struggles to find a common goal because it lives in a modern world in which it does not yet understand.

©Stanley Chuck Uwaezuoke

Works Cited

Achebe, C. Things Fall Apart. Reading: Heinemann, 1958

_____. The African Writer and the English Language’ (1975) Beti, M. Mission to Kala. London: Heinemann, 1964

Chinweizu, Jemie, O. And Madubuike, I. ‘Toward the Decolonisation of African Literature.’ Vol. 1, African Fiction and Poetry and their Critics. Washington: Howard University Press, 1983

http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Post-Coloniasm

Omoregie, F. K. Rodney, Cabral and Ngugi as Guides to African Postcolonial Literature. (2007)

Rodney, W. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Washington: Howard University Press, 1981. Rotimi, O.