Ok, thread on Burna's new song as promised. Here's the section on Mungo Park (the annotation captures why he wrote it). Full lyrics here genius.com/20582651
It's an interesting point that raises some interesting questions - Dr. Park died more than 200 years ago but I was definitely taught that he discovered the River Niger in school in Nigeria in the 1980s/90s. How come?
He did 'find' the River Niger but the key thing here is that his trip was sponsored by people back in Britain. He had to give account of his trip to *them*. From the point of view of people who had never seen the River and only heard about it, Dr. Park certainly found it for them
So the question is how did something that was written from the perspective of someone who 'found' the River for the first time talking to people who had never seen it before end up being taught to people who have always lived around it?
The answer of course is that the account found its way back to Nigerian schools, long after Dr. Park was dead, via colonialism. I can end this thread here without any problems. That's the answer, really. But should we let ourselves off that easy? If your answer is no, read on
I was taught this stuff in school nearly 3 decades after colonialism ended. As I always say when people talk about lawyers wigs etc as 'colonial legacies', One of the biggest colonial legacies was a Parliamentary system. Nigeria had no problem dumping it real quick
Many things about colonialism that Nigerians didn't like (or at least the elite) were done away with very easily. Some things were kept because the elite actually liked them (lawyer's wigs) or just carelessness in many other cases.
And there are many examples of things like this from the post-independence era. The best example is Nigeria's Land Use Act. In the 42 years since that terrible thing became law, it has never once been amended. Not even a punctuation mark in the document. Nothing
The law is crying out for change. The terrible effects of it are plain to see even to the naked eye ("This House Is Not For Sale"). But the elite are happy to continue with a law that means that less than 5% of land in Nigeria has proper title documents
It will be a waste of a tweet to say the Nigerian elite do not shit give a shit about education (except where it concerns them personally). So it is not hard to see how something like that can be left in the syllabus and taught to kids.
As we show in Formation - the River made Nigeria. It is it's defining feature and explains so much about the country's history. To carelessly teach school kids that your country's geographical heirloom was 'discovered' by a Scot explorer is something only Nigeria's elite can do
This leaves us with one final question. What are we to do with the records of foreign explorers, missionaries and colonial officials? Do we simply discard them as tainted. Here is where things get tricky and need nuance. Somi's tweet gets to the point
To use one random example - one European explorer travelled around Osiele, Abeokuta in 1862. He documented passing 1,305 people and recorded that 1,100 were wearing European clothes. Might seem trivial but note that this was *before* colonialism
These accounts, for good or bad, give us an incredible insight into what life was like in 19th century Nigeria. As long as we know the caveats to add -
- Some were outright racist
- Many were ignorant and confused
- Most of the spellings were wrong
(Side note on spellings - I kept scratching my head wondering who 'Nyffie' was in one of the accounts. Until it clicked to me - the name had been told to him by Hausas who tend to pronounce P as F. It was Nupe)
In Formation we quote one account that was really detailed but the guy's racism was clear on the page. We state this upfront by caveating that this guy clearly held racist views but his account was useful once you know what to use and what to discount
As we discuss in Episode 5 of our Podcast, we made the conscious decision to flip the perspective even when the text was written from a different perspective. This is what Dr. Park saw. But what did the people who saw Dr. Park see? podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/for…
Burna is a 'conscious' musician. But the questions he raises unfortunately do not have the easy answers we might want. There are huge gaps in Nigeria's national memory that are only filled by people we might not like. If knowing is important, then we have a challenge as to how
But one thing we can all agree is this - education is too important to be so careless about.
Formation is available for pre-order. Out in Nigeria in October and UK in January 2021. You thought I would end this thread without plugging my book? Go here nigeria-formation.com
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Really promised myself never to comment on him or his stupid business anymore to avoid brain damage to myself. But his stupidity is just everywhere and hard to avoid
I always say - Nigeria’s demographics are an important consideration. Since the country is so young, you can safely guess that a majority of the current population were born since the return of democracy in ‘99. This guy has been the richest Nigerian in that time
Yesterday the Adamawa governor, completely unprovoked, posted a video of him enjoying his holiday abroad (now deleted). I will say Nigeria is probably going through one of its toughest economic crises since the 90s right now
I won’t say I’m an expert on Asian economic development, but increasingly, the thing that stands out to me as a *stark difference* between Asian and African leaders is the amount of pressure leaders are under to deliver. It is, to put it mildly, disturbing
Buhari was a useless president, that is not in doubt. But as someone who lives outside Nigeria, one of the worst things about his presidency has how he made Nigeria completely irrelevant outside of Nigeria. A big country no one cares about
This last election really brought it home to me. Barely any coverage, no one cared at all. Had it not been for Obi who added a dimension of interest, I shudder to think how much worse it would have been.
Consensus was something like - you guys just do your elections, as long as you don’t start fighting and create a refugee crisis, you can do whatever you like. See you again in 4 years.
1. He is not Buhari - Simplistic as this sounds, there is at least 1% economic growth available just because the person in Aso Rock is not Buhari - a congenitally mentally lazy fellow who put in at most 1.5yrs of actual work in his 8yrs in office
With some initial buzz here and there, he can make one or two useful things happen. Subsidy removal is the big and obvious one - painful but should give the govt some breathing room for about 5 mins. He may waste it, of course, but the opportunity will be there
1. Obviously his age and health. He is in reality around 80 and visibly mentally diminished. This body, ravaged by time and self inflicted wounds, is now about to collide with the pressures of the Nigerian presidency. His body will not win.
I expect him to land in hospital for an extended period within 6 - 12 months. This is not wishing him ill. He has essentially been in retirement for 15 years. Now he gets a full time job. We can use travelling as a practical example
Throwback to this goodie from 4 years ago - Tinubu accurately predicting the 2023 presidential election results (1/2)
2/2
As I’m sure you know, my summary of Tinubu in terms of governance is a simple one - he’s just a thief. But I will concede one thing - he’s the most gifted (gifted as it’s not something you can learn) politician of his generation. That is in terms of raw retail politics