Chief Umobuarie Igberaese, the late notable folklorist, was at his usual best when in the 1980s I paid him an excursionary visit at Ewu, his hometown in Esan district of the present-day Edo State, Nigeria. Prepared with ‘Afan’, a locally-assembled string instrument and a hooked ‘Sekere’, also a local percussion object, he rendered a resounding number. ‘Uriei,’ the didactic title, is a predator of the cat family that hates the millipede as an ugly creature, but soon plucks the leaf to push it into its mouth as a meal.
By a similar metaphor, Ayi Kwei Armah, the late Ghanain novelist, in his timeless work, ‘The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born’, describes the Chichidodo bird as one that detests excrement, but feeds solely on maggots, which emanate from the bowel discharge massed in a toilet.
Somewhat, these are symbolic to the abandonment of indigenous culture, as a safeguard to achieving Nigeria’s nationhood.
With the above-mentioned title, I detour to paraphrase a recent piece, entitled; “Of Nigeria’s regimental and individual disorder”. Therefore, who says that writers have no discretion to ‘literary license’, in the same manner despots misuse those under their firm control? A writer readjusts where his positioning is a slim body that is twisted too often, and expendable. In this labyrinth, a writer would exercise a ‘literary license’, to attain a prearranged certainty. Who says writers are not despotic to vulnerable semantics?
The former title; “Of Nigeria’s regimental and individual disorder”, was a winding hypothesis that cited the feebleness of Nigeria and Nigerians for the unusual, where individuals and institutions of its polity; state and non-state alike, largely regress to incivility and other binges, thus constituting a disorder that defies humanity; peaceful and benevolent societal conducts. The article was a straightforward verdict on the disfigurements of a once-liberalise African culture, nay Nigeria, which quickly crumbles to unrestrained alien values, that hardly sustain the copycats.
The previous article laments the lawlessness that has become a national affliction for the Africa’s most populous nation. Its security units, particularly the military and police force, the supposedly forerunners of individual and societal discipline, are the same most implicated as lawless. It also castigated frequent public fights, involving soldiers and policemen that are now taken after as a civilian code-of-conducts. Being a hangover from the decades of despotic military rule and rooted insanity, from which security operatives and the citizens haven’t been mentally rehabilitated!
Sampson Ibome, an Abuja-based lawyer and culture activist, was apt in his pinpointed judgment that the non-inculcation of indigenous cultural practices in the national scheme is mainly responsible for the moral laxity. His added that the ‘War Against Indiscipline (WAI)’, a correctional scheme of 1983 to 1975, by the military regime of Buhari/Idiagbon, had failed the litmus test because indigenous cultural values were not made its main springboard.
The said article re-echoes its original firmed position that; “The social disorder and human carnages have crept into Nigeria’s culture, to which forbearing Nigerians already have developed a-shockability. In-and-out, what would be regarded as abnormal is when incendiary social disorder and killings no longer take place and are occasionally reported by the mass media”
Nigeria’s moral decadence is often premised on failure by the government, that expunged history and cultural moral lessons from national school curricula, as youths and other age-grade are no longer imparted. Also, the non-state actors, like the family and schools, are blameworthy. Christianity and Muslim are over-dominant, where African Traditional Religion (ATR), tailor-made for the indigenous people, is relegated. One readily knows what to expect when the locals abandon their diverse rich culture, to practice alien to them, particularly the cultural derivation of the Western world. Homosexuality, lesbianism, single-sex-marriage, illicit drug trade and addiction, financial fraud, terror financing and other crimes are nightmarish.
But many Nigerians are persuaded that the rejection of indigenous culture is as a result of colonialism by the British, even when it didn’t adapt to the ‘assimilation’ policy of the French colonies (Francophone) of West Africa; like the Ivory Coast, Togo and others. Pertinently, why will India and Pakistan, which were similarly colonised by the British, cling to their cultures, whereas Nigeria isn’t?
But is it all about indigenous and foreign cultures that are good or bad that must be retained or discarded? Culture differs as it is said that “one man’s meat may be a poison to another”.
Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, had apparently illustrated it. Addressing the public, recently, on 11th January, 2026, The Conclave News reiterated EFCC’s usual battle against corruption and financial crimes.
“Economic and financial crimes do not flourish merely because laws are weak or institutions fail, but because society has, over time, tolerated ideas and narratives that portray wrongdoing as smart, profitable, and even admirable”, The Czar also uttered.
What does one expect from a country and people, where useful indigenous traditions are often ignored and demeaned, with its naivity institutions and individuals? Ironically, numerous Nigerian organisations and folks simply adore and imbibe foreign ways of life, so illogically
