Nigerianness’ noun
[ the quality of being Nigerian]
A few weeks ago a tweet about Nigerian writers in Diaspora lacking in their description of Nigeria due to geographical divides became a trending debate as many readers joined in to drop their “hot takes” on the issue. It is no longer new to see Nigerians who are born and currently living within the country act as gatekeepers of the culture against western influence mainly from white people who seek to appropriate the culture for views, likes and profit on social media platforms like Tiktok, Youtube, Instagram etc,. This gatekeeping has also extended to the Nigerian brothers and sisters currently living among the African Diaspora across Europe and America, many of whom migrated to the Americas and United Kingdom in the 1960s all through the 1980s due to the immense political unrest within Nigeria that led to the civil war that raged all through the mid 1960s-1970. The fall out of this war created ripples which affected persons of all ages and all that was left in its wake was millions of deaths, insecurity, starvation, economic crisis and fragmentation to name a few.
The families who migrated hailed from various tribes in Nigeria, the majority being Yoruba and Igbo. Leaving all they’ve known to journey across the Atlantic in search of stability, peace and financial freedom with nothing but their culture, values, beliefs and experiences to the white man’s land. As a result, the first generation of Nigerian children who only had a little taste of living in Nigeria as Nigerians before migrating were on the receiving end of bullying, taunts and not-so-subtle racial slurs from the whites due to problematic African stereotypes; the representation that Africa is filled with people that bore facial similarities with apes, had black skin that was considered dirty and village-like accent. They also thought they lived in trees and mud houses with thatched roofs, fashioned strips of clothing from leaves and ate smelly food. To escape the onslaught of judgment by these stereotypes, Nigerians had to blend in with the western world by toning down their “Nigerianness” and even embracing their culture and norms, and in so doing incurring the wrath of Nigerians back home who faulted them for selling out and outright denial of their roots by compromising their beliefs, their norms, their values, and the culture. As a result, many feuds have broken out on social media between the resident Nigerians and the Diaspora Nigerians, with the ones back home claiming to be more Nigerian than their western-living counterparts. In 2022, Nigerian culture is at the forefront of the mainstream media which has brought global promotion of Nigerian culture, music, food, books, arts, movies and its people, thus there has never been a better time to be Nigerian than now. According to the post made by a twitter user on the 8th of august 2022, many Nigerian readers rushed to express their displeasure over the representation of Nigeria in books written by diaspora Nigerians. They lamented that the description of Nigeria by their western counterparts appeared forced and were distorted exaggerations of what they think Nigeria is. Many reasoned that the caricature of their works are only a result of having no connection to their roots, the fact that they reside miles away from home being at the forefront of the reasons. Therefore this begs
the question of what it means to be truly “Nigerian” and who or what defines the fluidity of being Nigerian. Are we Nigerians simply because we live in Nigeria?
Quoting the great Mahatma Gandhi “A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and the souls of its people.” Therefore, the definition of culture as the way of life which reflects shared values, beliefs, norms, customs and traditions of a collective can also be experienced in different dimensions. This is known as a shared experience, which is any experience that causes individuals to identify with one another, this could be anything as simple as food, music, language, art, etc. And what that thing stands for in each culture. For example, a meal like Jollof rice. As a Nigerian, what comes to mind when you see a hot steaming bowl of Jollof rice? You immediately think: party rice, it could be weddings, burials, naming ceremonies, birthdays, graduation, freedom – those that graduate from learning a trade. Any party, and as such it is a meal that is linked with celebration/festivity. The other day, there was a video on Instagram of the Igbos celebrating the new yam festival at a park in Canada, masquerade and all. Inasmuch as an experience is a unique thing that happens to each individual, the Nigerian experience does not solely belong to the home-bound Nigerians. The way an individual experiences his culture is different from the way his direct sibling experiences it, but does it make them any less Nigerian than the other? Just as the home-bound Nigerians have different experiences of being Nigerian, It’s the same for the Diaspora Nigerians too.
Consequently, in a bid to continuously gate-keep against people who would appropriate the culture, home-bound Nigerians often come across as elitists or “ultimate validators” of Nigerianness. This has contributed to various feuds and twitter wars between the two counterparts, one seeks to gate-keep against the other who they see as outsiders and the other seeks to be a part of the culture which they have been shut out of. Regardless of the differences in geography and individual experiences, the Nigerian spirit is not dead, it’s alive, and it’s within them, in their hearts and souls. It is ingrained in their DNAs. Wherever they go. They carry it along as a part of them. Therefore, no matter how westernized they become, at their very hearts and soul, they still remain Nigerian, because like Geert Hofstede said “culture, like air we breathe, is both in us and around us.” and they both have the right to describe Nigeria based on their own “Nigerian” experiences.