Let’s Promote our Culture -By Usama Abdullahi

It’s really challenging that we are found wanting in our own culture. We don’t promote it simply because we don’t want to be looked down upon or despise being mocked about it. The western culture has now substituted ours. We assimilate and worship anything western. Ironically, the West didn’t force their culture on us, rather we westernised ourselves.

Sometime in 2013, my uncle bought us Pizzas. I used to see pizza as the best dish ever, but I was filled with nausea when I took my first bit. Being in the company of my cousins, I had to conceal my bitter feelings and fake some smiles to fit in. Actually, that day I was pretty low.

For me, pizza is supremely overrated and not as delicious as I thought; it’s aromatic though. Mind you, I’m not totally condemning the Italian dish. No, I’m not. But why do I bring this to light? This is because I felt like sharing my experience, and I want my people to understand that not anything foreign is delectable.

As a people with beautiful culture, we do have crazy good dishes that can possibly excite and quench so many aliens’ appetite. Yet, we don’t promote that. We fault it instead. I have watched several western TV shows where the westerners expressed their liking for African culture, particularly their foods.

Arguably, most Nigerians tend to shun and mislike their culture because, to them, it’s worthless. The preference for western dishes leads to the decay of our cultural dishes. Sadly enough, most of the dishes are given western names, which has become difficult for one to catch on to.Those names don’t correspond and are mostly corrupt version of the western’s.

Some of us, the so-called civilised ones erroneously claimed that most of our foods are detrimental to one’s health. Though I’m not a medical personnel, but because of the little I know about food, I can say foods like Tuwo provides the body with with energy; Awara/Kosai, which are the most-avoided dishes by the corps d’elite, help build and repair tissues because they are “proteinaceous”. My claims are open to criticisms because they are perhaps not well-grounded.

There are others too, which I guess if thoroughly examined could be harmless and good for consumption. It’s time we stopped self-hating or ridiculing ourselves merely because we want to look or sound different, say like the western. Until we promote our culture, our culture will go extinct someday.

Usama Abdullahi wrote from Abuja, Nigeria. Can be reached at usamagayyi@gmail.com