By Offong Okodio
The characters and the temperaments in our evolving political history have to do with the long years of neglect, suppression and caging of issues, feelings and worthwhile sentiments that are natural and pure in any marriage of strange bed-feelows.
In any nation or culture that had gone through British form of colonialism and its nationhood evolved through colonial legacies, the postcolonial cultural, social and political developments never evolve without altercations and perhaps civil unrest.
Issues in, or characteristics of postcolonial nationhood include the hybrid of cross-cutural exchange, which in Nigeria the North has severally attempted to resist with attendant consequences that propped up the resisting forces like Boko Haram, among other Islamic fundamentlist fronts that have shook the nation deep into the foundation.
Another of postcolonial characteristic or issue is that of meta-narrative where we have the European and Arabic cultures of education and religion fiercely at dagger drawn, demanding for submission of the other.
These two spheres of influence have diminished everything nature had endowed us at birth and as inheritance, thereby compelling us to see the world through either the eyes of Europe or the eyes of Arab.
Also, the identities and identity questions as a characteristic feature of a postcolonial nation cannot be undermined by any legal instrument, worst still when a nation is in the habit of ignoring the postcolonial inherent tendencies which are the products of its colonial history.
‘’Other’’ as irreconcilable issue in a postcolonial nation is yet a factor no nation can ignore. By ‘’other’’ is meant the social and psychological ways in which one group excludes or marginalizes another group.
By declaring someone or group ‘’other’’, peersons tend to stress what makes them different from or opposite of another, and this carries over into the way they represent others, especially through stereotypical images.
The most culturally ravaged issue or characteristic of postcolonial nationhood is the mimicry which explains the way and manner the colonized adapt the language, education, religion, clothing, and other forms of culture of the colonized.
This is seen in the hybrids of the Southern Christians and northern Muslims whose lifestyles are completely taken over by the impurities inherent in those two foriegn cultures.
There are other characteristic features of postcolonial nationhood such as the diaspora, race, subaltern, language, worlding, hegemony, etc. none of which was taken into consideration by the Nigerian government since independence to help fashion out the instruments of containing them as our history evolves.
The above issues or factors nurtured and sustained the long years of suppressed and caged temperaments and characters by the Nigerian government through draconian laws which could not help to ventilate our social, religious, cultural and political environments with fresh air or re-structuring.
Ideally, in the civilized nations and cultures of the world that are conversant with the inherent postcolonial tendencies, allowances are created in all instruments of governance to absorb the shocks and all possible upheavals that often come with postcolonial tendencies.
This is where the Nigerian government erred since independence, for the failure to take cognizance of the unniversal realities which any nation would ignore to its peril.
Nigerian government had ignored the wisdom of putting in places the necessary shock-absorbers to wedge the evolving characters and temperaments threatening every facet of our national life.
The irrefuteable argument here is that, the young ‘’boys’’ in military uniform in their 30s and 20s, who were trained to carry guns and in the manners of the vandals, came and mismanaged every opportunity we had to re-order the Nigerian society after the colonial shocks of centuries; to re-order and structure the nation properly to observe the emerging postcolonial issues and tendencies.
They came as young men and grew through the ranks into bloody bigots, spoilsports, agents of imperialism, and pernicious vermin ravaging our economic and political systems, leaving wounds that may never be healed.
But the truth about it is that, no individual, group or race anywhere in this world holds special place in human history for too long; nor is given by nature the exclusive preserve to lead the rest by the nose, having them playing myrmidons or simpletons all their lives and through ages. It is a fact in postcolonial history all over the world.
It therefore follows that while it is in your power as an individual, a group or a race to lead others, to expliot them, and to share among all, do it with the constant reminder that humans are highly wired to think and to seek redress when and where they are confronted with challenges for a time, time, and time.
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