Jonathan Ibom

Modernity and tradition do not have to be enemies. The question is whether we have the confidence to carry both. And this is where tradition becomes more than culture. It becomes memory. When a generation forgets how its people understood family, responsibility, community, land, leadership and identity, something deeper than a festival disappears. A connection disappears. And when that connection disappears, the next generation has to start asking: “Who are we?” “What belonged to us?” “How did our people live?” “What did they believe?” “How did they solve problems?” “What did they value?” “What did they teach their children?” Sometimes we spend years looking for answers that were once sitting inside our own communities. That doesn't mean every answer is still correct. It means we should at least know the answers before deciding to replace them. You cannot properly preserve what you don't understand. And you cannot properly reject what you have never studied. That is why I am becoming more interested in conversations with older people. Not because everything older people say must be accepted. But because every generation carries information the next generation may never recover if nobody asks. There are things written in books. There are things preserved in museums. There are things documented online. And then there are things that exist only in people's memories. A story your grandfather knew. A rule your grandmother understood. A meaning behind a ceremony. A reason behind a particular custom. A name whose meaning nobody has bothered to explain to the younger generation. When that person dies without passing it on, the information may disappear with them. That is why memory matters. And that is why I don't believe the answer to our identity crisis is simply to “go back.” We don't need to go backward. We need to understand where we came from well enough to move forward without becoming strangers to ourselves. Our ancestors lived in a different technological world. Their environment was different. Their challenges were different. Our challenges are different. So naturally, some methods must change. But values can survive adaptation. Principles can survive technology. Identity can survive modernization. Wisdom can survive innovation. That is the difference between preserving a tradition and freezing a people in the past. I don't want us frozen in the past. I want us conscious of the past. There is a huge difference. I don't want young people to reject education. I want education to connect them to life. I don't want us to abandon technology. I want technology to serve our people. I don't want us to romanticize every ancestral practice. I want us to understand the thinking behind them. I don't want us to pretend our ancestors had no problems. I want us to understand how they dealt with the problems they had. And I don't want us to copy them blindly. I want us to learn from them intelligently. Because perhaps the greatest respect we can give our ancestors is not to imitate everything they did. It is to continue what they were trying to do: Solve the problems of their generation. They inherited a world from those before them. They made changes. They left something behind.

WHAT TRADITION REALLY MEANS We have talked about our ancestors. We have talked about how they organized communities, raised children, cultivated land, built families, resolved disputes, created systems and found ways to live together. But there is a question we need to answer before we go further: What exactly do we mean when we say TRADITION? Because I have realized that many of us have been taught to understand tradition in a very narrow way. When someone says “tradition,” people immediately think of masquerades. They think of traditional clothes. They think of festivals. They think of dancing. They think of rituals. They think of old people doing things the way their grandparents did them. And sometimes, they think tradition simply means refusing modernity. I don't think that is enough. Tradition is much bigger than that. Tradition is what a people learn, preserve, practice, question and pass from one generation to another. It can include our values. Our language. Our stories. Our understanding of family. Our relationship with land. Our methods of raising children. Our ways of settling disagreements. Our systems of leadership. Our responsibilities to one another. Our understanding of right and wrong. Our knowledge of our environment. Our celebrations. Our identity. Our institutions. And even the questions our ancestors were trying to answer about life. Tradition is accumulated human experience. And that means something very important: Not everything old is automatically good. And not everything new is automatically better. That is where I think we have gone wrong. Sometimes we reject something simply because it is traditional. Other times, we defend something simply because it is traditional. Both approaches can be dangerous. The real question should be: Why did they do it? What problem was it solving? What value was it protecting? What did it teach? What were its limitations? Can we improve it? That is how I believe we should approach the past. Not blindly. Not emotionally. And certainly not with the assumption that our ancestors were either perfect or primitive. They were human beings. They made mistakes. They discovered things. They adapted. They built systems. They disagreed. They solved problems. They created things that worked. And some things that probably didn't. That is exactly why studying tradition matters. Because if we don't understand why a system existed, we may destroy it without understanding what it was protecting. Imagine removing a door from a house simply because you don't like the design. You may later discover that the door was there for security. You can replace the door. You can improve the door. You can build a better door. But you should first understand why there was a door. That is how I think we should approach our heritage. Not: “Everything our ancestors did was perfect.” And not: “Everything our ancestors did was backward.” Instead: “What can we learn?” This also changes how we understand modernity. Being modern does not have to mean becoming disconnected from where you came from. Technology does not erase ancestry. A smartphone does not erase your language. A modern hospital does not make your history irrelevant. A university education does not mean you should know nothing about your village. A modern road does not mean you should forget the land beneath it. A successful business does not require you to become a stranger to your people. We can build modern houses and still know the stories of our ancestors. We can use modern technology and still preserve our language. We can attend university and still learn practical knowledge from home. We can use modern systems of government while studying the principles that held communities together before them. We can improve agriculture with technology without abandoning the land. We can travel around the world without becoming homeless in our own identity.

This is why I keep saying: Our ancestors built more than houses. They built systems. They built relationships. They built accountability. They built agricultural systems. They built kinship networks. They built age-grade structures. They built leadership structures. They built childhood environments. They built methods of raising young people. They built ways of resolving problems. They built communities. They built celebrations. They built identities. And they built all of this without the technology we have today. Were they perfect? No. Did they get everything right? Absolutely not. Would they change some things if they were alive today? I'm sure they would. But perhaps they would also look at us and ask: “With everything you have now, how did you lose some of the things we already figured out?” That's the question I want us to ask. Not: “How do we go backward?” But: “What should we carry forward?” Take the wisdom. Leave the limitations. Take the discipline. Improve the methods. Take the community. Add technology. Take the connection to land. Add modern agriculture. Take the responsibility. Add modern education. Take the identity. Add the wider world. Move forward without becoming strangers to ourselves. Because maybe our ancestors didn't have everything. But they built something. And before we replace it completely, perhaps we should first understand what it was. 8 days to the journey. The journey is getting closer. And I am going to look. Not because I think the past was perfect. But because I want to know what was there. What did they build? What did they know? What did we lose? And most importantly... What is still worth carrying?

Nigeria at 66 has become a nation where the president violates the constitution and the National Assembly approves of it

So before I leave for this journey, I want to ask you something. Not to attack you. Not to convince you. Just to make you think. What did your ancestors know that you never learned? What did they believe? How did they solve problems? How did they raise children? How did they understand morality? How did they understand spirituality? How did they feed themselves? How did they organize their communities? How did they celebrate? How did they prepare their young men and women for adulthood? What did they get right? What did they get wrong? And what have we lost in the process of becoming “modern”? Maybe our ancestors weren't waiting for civilization. Maybe they were already living their version of it. Maybe civilization is not simply having newer things. Maybe civilization is knowing how to live well with the things you have. And perhaps the awakening I am searching for isn't about becoming somebody else. Perhaps it is about remembering enough of ourselves to decide what we want to become. 9 days to the journey. I am going back to look. Not to worship the past. Not to destroy the present. To understand. Come with me.

And then there was the preparation of men. This is where the institution I am about to enter becomes personal for me. Growing up, I noticed something about boys who passed through it. Before they went in, they could be ordinary children. After they came out, something about their confidence had changed. They appeared fearless. They could say no. They could stand their ground. Their age mates could not easily intimidate them. People sometimes called them stubborn. Rebellious. Difficult. But I kept wondering: What if some of what we called stubbornness was actually confidence? What if some of what we called rebellion was simply the ability to stand your ground? And because the institution was mainly for men, there was also an expectation of responsibility. You were being prepared to become a protector. A defender. Someone who could carry responsibility for other people. Not necessarily a violent person. A responsible person. A man who could endure. A man who could say no. A man who could stand when others were afraid. A man who could protect without becoming an aggressor. Strength with responsibility.

And they knew how to enjoy themselves. There were festivals. There were periods of celebration. There was festivals around the rainy-season period, when people gathered and enjoyed themselves. There were cultural institutions and periods when people stayed indoors for days, eating, drinking, talking and enjoying one another's company. Young men could sit together in their twenties. Cook. Play music. Drink. Talk. Train their dogs. Laugh. Just live. Somehow, we have become so serious. Everything is money. Everything is survival. Everything is tomorrow. Everybody is rushing. And eventually, everybody is heading toward the same grave. So when exactly are we going to live? Our ancestors worked. But they also knew how to enjoy being alive.

They also built community through ordinary things. I remember going to my grandmother's side and visiting our neighbour, Uncle Matthew, to watch movies. There was no television where my grandmother lived. But Uncle Matthew had one. He had a generator. And when that generator came on, people gathered. Children. Teenagers. Adults. Sometimes dozens of people. One person's generator became everybody's entertainment. Nobody needed to own everything individually before they could enjoy life. Someone had something. They shared it. Everybody benefited. That was community.

And they also knew how to build with what they had. Mud houses. Plants. Local materials. Local knowledge. They used the environment around them. A living fence didn't require cement. A mud house didn't require the same industrial supply chain we depend on today. This doesn't mean their technology was superior to modern technology. It means they were solving problems with the resources available to them. And that's something worth remembering. Development should not mean pretending that everything before us was useless. We should be able to inherit old knowledge and combine it with new knowledge. Tradition should not be the enemy of innovation.

And then there was food. Our ancestors had a direct relationship with the land. People farmed what they ate. Even people living far away could return home during farming periods, cultivate their land, return to wherever they lived, and come back when it was time to harvest. You could have land at home without having to purchase every square metre of it like you might in an urban area. There was production. There was food. There was a connection between people and their land. Today, someone can have land sitting unused in the village while struggling to buy food in the city. Someone can have somewhere to stay at home but spend years struggling to pay rent somewhere else. I'm not saying everybody should abandon the city. I'm asking: Why did we allow the connection between home, land and production to become so weak? Modern technology should help us improve agriculture. Not make us forget it.