No, I am not a Nigerian -By J. Ezike

I am compelled to publicize my innermost convictions through this article in acknowledgment of the inward “wave of protest” refuting the slavish national identity bequeathed onto me by the colonial ancestors and their descendants. Hopefully, it will resonate with the dominant debate on the balkanization of Nigeria’s territorial lines, of what is known as “ancestral habitation.”

J. Ezike

Also noteworthy is the interplay between colonialism and “geographical expression.” An evolution that continued even after post-colonial age. Every culture has its “historical bank” and many if not all groups are being interfered by “external contradictions.”

The inquisition is, shall we say, a query on the nativity of the codified geographical expression bearing the sobriquet – Nigeria and what ancient territorial lines existed prior to the systemized creation of the aforementioned country and the external contradictions that influenced it.

This article is not a reminder of the intrusive conduct of Britain’s Frederick Lugard and Lady Shaw whose hegemonic affection for the vassal state inspired the colonial name – Nigeria, but rather, this article is an emphatic refusal of the continuity of this expired, malformed, choked up, incoherent unification of “dissonant cultures.”

What we call Nigeria today, is simply a fraud, an imperial construct that culminated to the development of false identity.

And the inquisitions again are:

What were the cultural identities, the ancestral habitations of the indigenous people whose territorial lines got interfered by external contradictions; by Britain’s slave vessels and its army of colonialists under the empire’s supreme sponsorship?

What original territories, cultures, and locational contiguities existed prior to the mal-formation of the contraption?

How did a deity or god officiate through “divine authority” a crooked, deformed, malformed and ill-formed union on the pretext that hundreds of “dissonant cultures” can have a unified sense of shared citizenship through the amalgamation of 1914?

How does a call for freedom or referendum translate to a call for war or treason?

Why has the Abdulsalami Abubakar’s apartheid constitution of 1999 failed to acknowledge the expiration of the Amalgamation clause of 1914?

The honest admittance of our ill-fated marriage is always the hesitant factor. And the denial of our false identity waters the seed of “hereditary ignorance.”

In short, it is valuable for the constituents of the British colonial structure coined “Nigeria” to look back at their ancestral pasts, to revisit their historical banks, to be acquainted with their original identities and understand how they “mentally” adopted the highly pejorative identity – Nigerian.

The illusion of an “equitable restructuring” that promises an escape to regional autonomy is the “unnoticed perpetuation of colonialism.”

And the inquisitions again are:

Has anyone enquired from Theresa May’s government why it preferred a United Kingdom “completely” independent of the European Union?

Has anyone reasoned the logic in the British government’s genuine determination for an outright control of its political future?

Has anyone deduced the rationale behind the Scottish people’s resolve to break away from the United Kingdom?

The furtherance of this Nigerian union, we should point out, would prolong the manipulative interests of the Feudal Lords of London and their vassal chiefs in Sokoto.

If anything, the preservation, realization and restoration of our “ancestral habitations” will help our “colonized minds” retrace the footprints of their True-Self.

The dismantling of the false identity we hold firmly, unabashed, will shine a reproving light on this inhabitable territory that should NEVER had been a country in the first place.

And I am willing to apologize for this blunt assertion but I humbly disagree with my mentor, the Great Bard, Chinua Achebe. In my independent estimation – “There was NEVER a country.”

And no, I am not a Nigerian. I am a Biafran.