The street where I grew up in Kano, northwestern Nigeria, is Independence Road. Every day reminded me of Nigeria’s independence and sovereignty over Britain on 1 October 1960.
This year, as the country celebrates its 60th anniversary, celebrations will be stifled due to COVID-19 restrictions, but with many Nigerians sticking around to celebrate, I hope you will watch the Netflix documentary series Journey of an African Colony, The Making of Nigeria produced and narrated through Olasupo Shasore, former Lagos State Attorney General and Justice Commissioner and historian and writer. The series, which will have its world premiere Thursday on the streaming service, tells the story of Nigeria’s slave industry and colonial profession, and its independence.
As a Nigerian living in Nigeria, I discovered in the documentary a difficult reminder that, in fact, to celebrate Nigeria’s independence, we want to take an inventory of where we came here.
The series begins with excerpts from Britain handing over the reins of force to Nigeria on September 30, 1960. I was pleased that it opened with interviews with two women who attended nigeria’s first Independence Day celebrations. This is a deviation from the same old man-focused for such interviews.
The two women described the joy and pride they felt when they saw such a memorable example in the Rite of Independence Day at the Hippodrome (now called Tafawa Balewa Square) in Lapasss on September 30, 1960. “I’m still looking for that flag, it was the British flag I saw pass, down, and the Nigerian flag, pass, go up,” Francesca Emmanuel, a former federal permanent secretary, said in the documentary. “When the Nigerian flag reached the top, the total The race track lit up and then they screamed, and then the fireworks!It was a memorable little morning, as a Nigerian, I can sense one’s feelings.
Shasore, whose books, A Platter of Gold: Making Nigeria and Possessed: A History Of Law
This documentary reminds me of my stopover in Ghana in 2005 as a component of my overseas scholarship with the Ford Foundation. A cohort of fellows from Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal made a stopover at the famous Elmina Castle to be more informed about the slave industry. the Portuguese in the past 1400, has become a vital obstacle on the route of the Atlantic slave industry. We saw the door “there’s no turning back. ” Once a slave passes, there is no turning back, chained, to foreign lands.
Shasore reminds the audience that the slave industry developed in European countries would not have succeeded without the participation of the population, a concept that began to be vital among Nigerians a few years ago; I didn’t know it myself until Nigerian editor Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani talked about The New Yorker in 2018. In the article, he spoke of his great-grandfather’s role as an industrial slave: “Long before the arrival of the Europeans, the Igbos enslaved other igbos. punishment for crimes, for paying debts and as prisoners of war. The practice differs from slavery in the Americas: slaves were allowed to move freely in their communities and own property, but they were also sacrificed in devoted ceremonies or buried alive with their backs to serve them in the next life,” she wrote.
Sometimes I wish I could communicate with my great-grandparents to hear their stories about the slave industry. Maybe they were enslaved. Perhaps another circle of relatives members of friends were enslaved. Unfortunately, they died decades before I was born. However, my uncle Victor Nsofor and Obidinma Onyemelukwe, professor and board member of my hometown, Nanka, in southeastern Nigeria, showed me that there is a slave market in one of our villages. In fact, the slave industry is closer than I thought. Next time I pass my village, I’ll stop and explore the site of the Eke Ntai slave market in the village of Amako. According to researchers, local slavery in southeastern Nigeria continued until the 1950s.
A recurring message in the documentary is the forced withdrawal of Black Africans from their communities to slaves. As a result, they have lost ties to their roots. However, over the more than two decades, DNA testing has helped Africans in the diaspora regain their roots. For example, the beyond due actor Chadwick Boseman was partly Yoruba (Nigerian) and Limba (Sierra Leoneis), Pastor TDJakes and actor Forrest Whitaker have Igbo ancestry and CNN journalist Don Lemon is part Nigerian, Ghanaian and Congolese.
After the end of the slave trade, the colonial occupation. At the Berlin Conference in 1884, European nations cut off the continent and divided the other nations among them. I think it’s all about human trafficking, sanctioned across the state, the clergy and businesses. Percentage of Britain of the nations that now make up today’s Nigeria.
British colonialists eventually formed a country made up of diverse cultures. Nigeria has over 250 ethnic teams and over 500 languages!These Nigerian nations have struggled to live in peace with others since Nigeria’s independence. Some ethnic teams have called for secession. Between 1967 and 1970, Nigeria fought a brutal civil war, resulting in the deaths of at least 1 million Igbos. My only maternal uncle fought in the war and never came back. Although the civil war between Biafra and Nigeria ended 50 years ago. , the crusade for nation-building continues among all ethnic teams.
I am igbo from southeastern Nigeria, I grew up in kano state in northwestern Nigeria, my wife is from the state of Edo in southern Nigeria and my mother-in-law is from lagos state in southwestern Nigeria, so my two daughters have igbo ancestors, Edo and Yoruba. My nuclear circle of relatives is a microcosist from Nigeria, which once covered other nations. For me, Nigeria won’t have to fail. It would be as if my circle of relatives failed.
I need Nigerians to live in peace. However, the effects of slave industry and colonialism continue to threaten our cohesion. Although Nigeria is self-sufficient on paper, it is not completely independent given its obvious reliance on foreign donors to finance social facilities despite the country’s ability to pay for example, Nigeria’s total annual fitness spending is $10 billion. While Nigerians spend $7. 7 billion on fitness facilities, Nigeria’s government and nonprofits are focusing more on keeping the $1. 1 billion in total Instead, Nigeria deserves to try to locate artistic tactics to fund its fitness formula by finding inwards and redirecting for resources.
Shasore’s documentary made me perceive that all the nations that make up Nigeria have gone through the trauma of slavery and colonialism. We will have to not constantly forget our painful and unusual history so that we can all heal in combination as a united Nigeria.
Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor is Director of Policy and Defense at a Nigeria Health Watch and Senior New Voices Fellow fitness organization at the Aspen Institute.
Read the full story in NPR. org “
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