Ishaq

The thing about imperialism is that it is ubiquitous and impossible to avoid. Nigerians who think they can have intelligent discussions around politics, economics and business without acknowledging imperialism are just like a castrated man who wants to marry a wife and have kids, but doesn't want to acknowledge his condition. I'm sorry, but just because you're in denial, or the subject makes you uncomfortable, or you don't want to upset your white friends and investors by talking about it does not mean that this 800-foot elephant in the room is going to disappear. The imperial system you live under is why you eat imported rice and your bread is made with imported wheat, while your own agricultural land is used for industrial monoculture plantations growing export crops you can't eat like cocoa and cashew. Imperialism is why your kid goes to school wearing a neck tie, a wool sweater, a thick blazer and cotton socks while the temperature outside is 33⁰C. Imperialism is why you put on your TV news and the presenter is chewing her tongue desperately trying and failing to mimic the accent of a public school headteacher from Abingdon-on-Thames, whereas literally nobody in the history of her watching audience has ever sounded like that. Imperialism is why your central bank interest rate is always double digit, which means that consumer credit is literally nonexistent. No amount of roundtable sessions, seminars, and breakfast meetings with the bankers committee and PhD economists can change that basic eternal reality of your economy. Imperialism is why despite having double digit central bank lending rates, your currency somehow manages to always face inflationary pressure and regularly posts double digit percentage losses in a single day. You can do all the clever economic chart drawings and financial engineering you want, but they are completely useless in the face of imperialist decisions like Structural Adjustment Programs, which you experienced by other names from 1986 to 1988 and from 2023 to 2025. Imperialism is why you can have all your lovely ideas for leadership and governance, and a young population that is hungry for good leadership, but everytime you go into a "democratic election", you end up coming out with Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu. You can read all your "Why Nations Fail" and do all your "PVC sensitisation drives" and do all the "protect the votes" on election day, and at the end of all the wahala, the INEC chairman will announce that a crippled goat with craw-craw has won the election and if you don't like it you will go and meet Kekere-Ekun in court. Imperialism is why when you are having sex with your partner, you moan in English and make American noises even though you've never left Owerri before, and your sexual encounters always happen with a specific sequence that starts from oral and culminates in doggy - it's because all the porn you have ever watched in your life has been hosted and curated by American platforms, and you have over time taken on their sexual personality as your own. Imperialism is why you build with cement blocks plastered with concrete in your 34⁰C climate, even though concrete generates vast amounts of heat as it cures, and it can take years to fully cure, during which time it slowly cooks you in your own house - but rammed earth which your ancestors used is only just becoming a thing once again because white people have "discovered" it and put a brand on it that makes it desirable after they once labelled it as 'primitive'. I could go on and on. As long as you're determined to avoid confronting the ubiquitous and all-pervasive reality of imperialism in Nigeria, you're not really ready to confront whatever problem you are facing, from food to healthcare to education to public policy to poverty. If you're not acknowledging that underlying reality, you're just another Nigerian wasting their whole life performing the appearance of thinking, and creating useless content.