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This new Burna album is scalding hot. Might be the best album I’ve listened to by a Nigerian artiste in forever.
Will do a short thread on this song later (specifically the part about Mungo Park) https://music.apple.com/gb/album/monsters-you-made-feat-chris-martin/1527514852?i=1527515469
Will do a short thread on this song later (specifically the part about Mungo Park) https://music.apple.com/gb/album/monsters-you-made-feat-chris-martin/1527514852?i=1527515469
Ok, thread on Burna's new song as promised. Here's the section on Mungo Park (the annotation captures why he wrote it). Full lyrics here https://genius.com/20582651
It's an interesting point that raises some interesting questions - Dr. Park died more than 200 years ago but I was definitely taught that he discovered the River Niger in school in Nigeria in the 1980s/90s. How come?
He did 'find' the River Niger but the key thing here is that his trip was sponsored by people back in Britain. He had to give account of his trip to *them*. From the point of view of people who had never seen the River and only heard about it, Dr. Park certainly found it for them
So the question is how did something that was written from the perspective of someone who 'found' the River for the first time talking to people who had never seen it before end up being taught to people who have always lived around it?
The answer of course is that the account found its way back to Nigerian schools, long after Dr. Park was dead, via colonialism. I can end this thread here without any problems. That's the answer, really. But should we let ourselves off that easy? If your answer is no, read on
I was taught this stuff in school nearly 3 decades after colonialism ended. As I always say when people talk about lawyers wigs etc as 'colonial legacies', One of the biggest colonial legacies was a Parliamentary system. Nigeria had no problem dumping it real quick
Many things about colonialism that Nigerians didn't like (or at least the elite) were done away with very easily. Some things were kept because the elite actually liked them (lawyer's wigs) or just carelessness in many other cases.
And there are many examples of things like this from the post-independence era. The best example is Nigeria's Land Use Act. In the 42 years since that terrible thing became law, it has never once been amended. Not even a punctuation mark in the document. Nothing
The law is crying out for change. The terrible effects of it are plain to see even to the naked eye ("This House Is Not For Sale"). But the elite are happy to continue with a law that means that less than 5% of land in Nigeria has proper title documents
It will be a waste of a tweet to say the Nigerian elite do not shit give a shit about education (except where it concerns them personally). So it is not hard to see how something like that can be left in the syllabus and taught to kids.
As we show in Formation - the River made Nigeria. It is it's defining feature and explains so much about the country's history. To carelessly teach school kids that your country's geographical heirloom was 'discovered' by a Scot explorer is something only Nigeria's elite can do
This leaves us with one final question. What are we to do with the records of foreign explorers, missionaries and colonial officials? Do we simply discard them as tainted. Here is where things get tricky and need nuance. Somi's tweet gets to the point https://twitter.com/somiscellany/status/1294107204811882496?s=20
To use one random example - one European explorer travelled around Osiele, Abeokuta in 1862. He documented passing 1,305 people and recorded that 1,100 were wearing European clothes. Might seem trivial but note that this was *before* colonialism
These accounts, for good or bad, give us an incredible insight into what life was like in 19th century Nigeria. As long as we know the caveats to add -
- Some were outright racist
- Many were ignorant and confused
- Most of the spellings were wrong
- Some were outright racist
- Many were ignorant and confused
- Most of the spellings were wrong
(Side note on spellings - I kept scratching my head wondering who 'Nyffie' was in one of the accounts. Until it clicked to me - the name had been told to him by Hausas who tend to pronounce P as F. It was Nupe)
In Formation we quote one account that was really detailed but the guy's racism was clear on the page. We state this upfront by caveating that this guy clearly held racist views but his account was useful once you know what to use and what to discount
As we discuss in Episode 5 of our Podcast, we made the conscious decision to flip the perspective even when the text was written from a different perspective. This is what Dr. Park saw. But what did the people who saw Dr. Park see? https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/formation-mad-men-and-missionaries/id1518462005?i=1000486159360
Burna is a 'conscious' musician. But the questions he raises unfortunately do not have the easy answers we might want. There are huge gaps in Nigeria's national memory that are only filled by people we might not like. If knowing is important, then we have a challenge as to how
But one thing we can all agree is this - education is too important to be so careless about.
Formation is available for pre-order. Out in Nigeria in October and UK in January 2021. You thought I would end this thread without plugging my book? Go here http://nigeria-formation.com
Formation is available for pre-order. Out in Nigeria in October and UK in January 2021. You thought I would end this thread without plugging my book? Go here http://nigeria-formation.com
