Samuel Udoma
It was Chinua Achebe, clearly without doubts, one of Africa’s most profound and distinguished writers who encapsulated aptly in his now all-time classic, Things Fall Apart, the travails of Okonkwo, a proud, acculturated nativist in the face of the encroachment of western culture into the little community of Umuofia.
While the great novel has so far been translated into more than fifty languages, its highly reverred author long dead and gone and the legends and myths of its great protagonist, Okonkwo continuing to be a mystique in Igbo folk milieu as well as ever-raising scholastic dust in the whole of Black Literature, it’s thematic preoccupation and its sub-themes are all now full-fledging and far more relevant in our so-called modern African world. Achebe’s effort was seminal if not prophesying:
he was an artist who saw tomorrow!
While most would always feel nostalgic and effusive over the novel’s superior narratives, few would pay attention to the great heroic act of Okonkwo’s resistance to the desecration of his native traditions by foreign influences, a symbolic head-strong which he even had to pay for fatally and grossly pilloried by his townsmen.
Culture can be loosely defined as the sum total of a people’s way of life. It envelopes but not limited to the folks, legends, myths, practices, culinary, heroes and aspirations of a people.
It is noteworthy to state here that against conspired western narratives, pre-colonial Africa was a bustling cultural monolith that had a robust, vibrant and socially corrective cultural system. It was what set the continent apart and that may have partly informed the West’s perception of the continent as “dark”. To them, dark is exotic!
Ibn Battuta, David Livingstone, Joseph Konrad, Kenneth Dike, Joseph Alagoa, Tekena Tamuno, Monday Noah and Edet Udo are some of the fine historians who have unanimously corroborated on the existence of a uniquely spectacular African culture before the western imperialism, a unique cultural specie only peculiar to the continent and which has often been described as being “total, fetish, crude and unadulterated”.
Such adjectives by the way are descriptions a particular culture should feel proud of as they portend traits of originality.
Shrewd students of history can attest to the fact that the soiling and desecration of Africa began with the European exploration of the continent during the “Age of Discovery” in the 15th century mainly pioneered by the seminal efforts of Portugal under Henry the Navigator.
The Cape of Good Hope was first reached by Bartholomew Dias in 1488 and for a hiatus lasting more than two centuries, European inroads into Africa remained recessive while slave trade and Muslim expansion starting with the Conquest of Sudan became dominant.
Eventually, the Europeans returned in 1884 for the “Scramble for Africa” just after smarting from the Berlin Conference.
With a bulldozing effect, religion and education were planted while the people’s “fetish” social system was proscribed. Prized local artifacts were exchanged for mirrors, razor blades, and den guns. “Development” was finally permeating into Africa’s jungles.
For decades, the Europeans looted heavily and milked Africa dry with fatality or exile awaiting any resistor. The tragic cases of King Jaja of Opobo and Oba Ovonranwem of Benin will suffice here.
But their siege of the people was not to be everlasting before a classic case of change in fortunes occurred.
Young African elites buoyed by the “eye opening” while studying overseas started galvanizing a fight back and the seed of an African nationalism was slowly yet surely sown. Herbert Macaulay, Oliver Tambo, Sekou Toure, Jomo Kenyatta, Leopold Sedar Senghor, The Zik, Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela among others are some of the illustrious names often associated with the agitation for an independent Africa.
Fast forward to circa 1960s, all of Africa but for a few Trust Colonies was independent and free at a heavy cost.
But the big question that has continued to be asked till date is:
In our presumed independence and freedom, how free are we, especially culturally speaking?.
There is no doubt that formal education and Christianity which are vestiges of colonial incursions have had positive impacts on the continent and have totally changed the way we live. The problem seems to be the total abandonment and erosion of our local contents as either suggested by the new beliefs or maybe suffering from an unwarranted inferiority complex.
In fact, how we have so lost or diluted our core indigenous values have been well documented by not a few commentators yet everyday our culture seems to be dovetailing into the abyss of extinction. It has become an endangered specie. A custom merely read in textbooks and never taken seriously anymore.
While I may be criticized for still living in the stone age, it would be pertinent to note here that the whims and the recklessness at which we tend to dump our identities in pursuit of borrowed ones is alarming and calls for sober reflections.
While Christianity should mean a lot to those who believe and nothing to those who don’t, the place of our local deities, Ekpo, Ekpe, Abon, Ukaang and other cultural icons should be maintained at least for history and ceremonial sakes.
Whatever happened to our, fashion styles, our modes of greeting, colourful festivals, the masquerade seasons, initiation rituals, and the reverred deities of each of the local governments such that they have now been relegated to the background and sacrificed on the altar of so-called science and technology would leave a sour taste in the mouth of our ancestors and a sad indication for our future.
How we have come to look at our traditional practices and mode of living as derogatory is in itself distasteful, if not betraying.
Why don’t we have an imperial museum of colonial antiques to aid remind the incoming generations of the evils of colonialism and of traditional arts where we can preserve for posterity, our identities in craft.
Why is our council for arts and culture dumped while we built churches on every street?
Why are we trying to use our hands to midwife the obsequies of our culture while we trump and herald the beatification of the foreign ones.? What would we tell our children’s children?
As such, it is time we had a change of perception towards our culture. Government and agencies must take the culture industry seriously through the enactment of culturally favourable policies and moreover, the duty of preserving our culture should be seen as everyone’s affair lest we should be a people without an identity. God forbid!
(Samuel Udoma is an Uyo-based media practitioner. 09071556547)
