Thread by @RealOlaudah

Olaudah, I am glad that you brought up “the great flowering of Islamic civilizations”. But we needn’t stop there. We also have to ask what happened to that civilization because we are today in Nigeria suffering from the aftereffects of its decay, a season of anomie which is...

reaching a critical point under Gen. Muhammadu Buhari.
President Buhari has presided over a moral and intellectual primitivization of Nigeria, such that much of the enlightenment gains of the postcolonial era have been erased.

Nigeria has now, for all the world, relapsed into what the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, in his celebrated 1651 work, Leviathan, described as a "state of nature".

In such condition, according to the Hobbesian conception, there is "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes); there is "continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Nigeria under Buhari has slipped into a Dark Age similar, almost, to what befell Eurasia following Mongol conquests in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Here is the trajectory of Nigeria history:

Colonization --> Amalgamation --> Decolonization --> Military Rule --> Civil War --> Oil Boom --> State Capitalism & Indigenization --> Privatization --> Democratization --> Northernization.

Our historical path is now clear because, as the northernization of Nigeria approaches apogee, the country has fallen into the full grip of Islamic decivilization and we are set for an era of what I will describe as "Islamic Drag".

Why Islamic Drag, you may ask?
Well, we know from history that Islamic civilization has been in decline for centuries. The era of Islamic enlightenment, dated between the 8th & 13th centuries, was a period of cultural, economic and scientific flourishing in the history of Islam.

It began with the emergence of the Abbasid caliphate which ruled in the Middle East, western Asia, and northeast Africa (including Egypt). The early part of Abbasid rule was a time of peace and prosperity, marked by great advances in several areas of art, science, medicine,...

and mathematics. Schools of higher education and libraries were built throughout the Abbasid empire. The culture flourished as Arabic art and architecture reached new heights.

This period saw the inauguration of the House of Wisdom (an academy) in Baghdad where scholars from various parts of the world with different cultural backgrounds were mandated to gather and translate all of the world's classical knowledge into Arabic and Persian.

The defeat of the Abbasids by the Mongols, marked by the sacking of Baghdad in 1258, ended this period of great Islamic enlightenment.

Fulani and Boko Haram adventurism, aided by advances in the hegemonization of Fulani Rule under Buhari, is eerily reminiscent of the Mongol invasions that ended the golden age of Islamic civilization in the Late Middle Ages.

The Mongols were nomadic tribes united by Genghis Khan who founded an empire following the Mongolian invasions that conquered most of Eurasia. Mongol Empire was a land power fueled by the grass-foraging Mongolian cavalry and cattle.

Much of the Mongolian conquest and plundering took place during the warmer seasons when there was sufficient grazing for the herds. With a death toll of about approximately 55 to 70 million, historians regard the Mongolian devastation as one of the deadliest in history, trailing

only the Second World War. In addition, Mongolian expeditions may have spread the bubonic plague across much of Asia and Europe, helping to spark the Black Death of the 14th century.

With the entrenchment of Fulani Rule in Nigeria, a similar fate probably awaits the country - perhaps not as dramatic as Black Death but certainly the onset of stagnation and decline.

The good news is that Europe eventually rebounded from stagnation in the late Middle Ages with the dawn of Reformation, the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery and the Industrial Revolution, and ultimately a transition to Enlightenment.

The bad news is that it took rather a long while for Europe to rebound. This portends the sad stretch which Nigeria faces if forced to remain as one federalized entity - a long historical stretch before it will emerge from the Dark Age of Fulani Rule.

© Chudi Okoye PhD