A Sense of Belonging and the Sense of Community

In the natural African civilization there is a tested and tried consensus in the community. Such consensus that has survived multiple and countless generations is not only a stable incentive for progress but a deterrent to aberrational vice. The principles of governance and communal harmony are rooted at every level of the society. There is virtually little to no discrepancy in the outlook of the nation whether at individual or public level.

With this sort of pre-colonial setting the outcomes are frequently unanimous and the gears of progress are swiftly changed according to the nature of the challenges facing that community.

However, in an experimental society the regular outcomes are unpredictable and the nuances of incoherence can spark alarming conflicts. It requires a detailed studying of the various components of the experiment in order to find a brittle common ground. The element of trust has a very low threshold for the boiling point and therefore disappears at the slightest incongruence. This may be due to innate incompatibilities but it could be more a matter of natural divergence. Whatever the case may be, it should not be a perpetual experimentation if the recurring outcomes bear the mark of failure in a consistent trajectory.

With the above preamble in mind the mirror in the sun converges the spotlight on the colonial experiment in West Africa known as “Nigeria.” This giant colonial experiment is still perplexing every onlooker in the way it combines endowment with persistent regression as the expanding rot of an apple. It is almost a mystical puzzle when diction speaks louder than action for far too long. The very complexity of its ethnic civilizational mosaicism is a recipe for dissatisfaction to say the least but the constant denial of this complexity itself inadvertently cancels the sense of belonging for an unknown but sharply increasing percentage of the conglomerate. This absent sense of belonging is further exacerbated by a history littered with injustices that if anything have a propensity for recurrence on a regular basis. Obviously vain utterances will not yield trust when the colonial matrix cannot guarantee any safe haven even in the indigenous cradles. This particular reality exponentially heightens anxiety, paranoia and every other disorder that makes our folks look like peoples cursed even before the cock crows at dawn. The level of desperation for many is such that they feel doomed from the very moment of waking up.

So why is our collective history evading the vast majority of our peoples? The deliberate omission of robust local history in the colonial education being offered from kindergarten was the vehicle of brainwashing that prolonged the collective suffering. Going by the colonial trajectory some ethnic nations will never see their fellow indigene become head of State ever as the arithmetical odds are forever stacked against them. How does this fact promote trust or a sense of belonging? If it doesn’t, then it will certainly feed the sense of discord, distrust, selfishness and corruption. The colonial experiment created a “confunity” by confusing our destiny but it never promoted a community as we were lied to.

So it turns out that our peoples do not lack intelligence but they lack a sense of belonging given the colonial configuration that denies their true voice, identity, language, culture, hopes and self-determination.

We did not colonize ourselves and we certainly must not colonize ourselves on behalf of the colonizers who neither speak our languages nor give birth to our descendants. It is utter nonsense to continue with any colonial formation anywhere in Africa. It is an insult on all of us as individuals and as a collective.

We must follow the research and seek the Orange Union earnestly with a sense of urgency in fact. We need to stop all political wilderness and gimmicks.