On Patrick Wilmot: Nigeria in 2036

Patrick Wilmot's essay Nigeria In 2036 says more about the "Rotten Military History of Nigeria To 2006" than a prognosis of the future path to glory for the country. Even so, it remains a call to arms. In my humble opinion [IHMO]. there are three levels of re-orientation that need doing.

One, attaining country-wide literacy in writing, reading and speech in any popular African language as well as English. Literate people are able to communicate independently of the mechanisms of biased interpreters. Private citizens should organise themselves to provide the necessary education. I propose a mechanism for community-sponsored education. It attempts to be proactive in that it enables those who want to be educated to afford an education, by contributing useful services to the community.

Two, reducing IGNORANCE by widening the scope and access to information useful for building infrastructure and industry. It is telling that hardly any newsprint or broadcast medium in Nigeria deals with matters of knowledge-driven entrepreneurship or sciences. I know of very few crafts guilds or hobby associations or think tanks (whether private or corporate) or economic lobbyists. Please make it possible in 2007 for YOU to host a website that informs "ordinary" citizens of the statements and conduct of the "ogas", "aristos", "elites", "chiefs". De-mystify politics, economics, foreign cultures, and religion and observe how creative energies burst forth to create economically-sustainable industry and culture.
I will say here emphatically that for knowledge industries to thrive in Nigeria / Africa / Caribbean, effort must be made to destroy intellectual infantilism preyed on by organised religion. Man, all over the world, does improve or impose upon nature.

Three, striving to DE-COLONISE our minds. There is only one human race. What has been achieved elsewhere can be bettered by Africans. IMHO, colomentalism is the most crippling disease affecting people of African origin across the world. It appears to be fostered by the very education, religion and information that pervades African societies. Colo-mentalism manifests in many forms: why is it Africans have not had the courage to re-define their borders, institutions, or dress. What is happening with the heads of our women? Nigeria's military, chiefs and professional politicians feed on the colomental sense of inferiority-complex and enhanced-incapacity of the "masses". There is a core need for re-building education, religion, information and economy structures around African traditions and history. The military infestation is a result of people giving up their individual rights (certainly in Yoruba and Igbo traditions that I am most familiar with) to make and bear arms: this is a basic right to self-defense, even against bad government. No government should be tolerated that acts against the interests of its own people. De-colonise your mind.

By current trends, Nigeria should be re-constructed well before 2036. Dat one na tory for another day.