NSUKKA, NIGERIA — Before the white man landed on the shores of Nigeria at Calabar precisely, Nigerians had their own way of life. They had their own languages, fashion, music and dance, aesthetic concepts, medicine, religion, beliefs and even pattern of government.

The French, in the areas now referred to as Francophone countries adopted the policy of association and assimilation which entailed the natives to abandone their indigenous ways of life. To the French colonialists, the African way of life was barbaric.

In Nigeria, however, the British could not work with the association and assimilation policies hence, Lord Lugard introduced the indirect rule system of government as well as imposed their way of life, on hapless Nigerians.

The indirect rule policy was a system where the British used existing leadership to rule the people, thereby reducing the Nigerian traditional rulers to mere stooges.

In the north, they had great success because there was already a highly centralised hierarchical emirate system. They simply told the emirs what they wanted done and the emirs complied.

The British, however, did not get much success in the east and west. In fact, the indirect rule system failed woefully in the East because of the highly decentralised and a cephalous nature of government there. There were no such things as chiefs or paramount rulers. All adult males took part in decision making in every kindred and at the family level, there were also adult males who made decisions. These congresses as it were, were presided over by the oldest male. Even if it worked well in the east, the British did not see this as a government.

The introduction of their own system of government opened the way for other things. African fashion was slowly but surely abandoned, while European outfits were embraced; traditional African religion was dropped in favour of Christianity.

Although, Africans were awakened from their ignorance by the expunging of their illiteracy through education. From that time till date, every thing that is not European has steadily lost its appeal to the Africans.

Now, people prefer to wear European clothes such as jeans, T-shirts, suits and skirts, sewn with foreign fabrics notwithstanding the quality.

Some of our traditional fabrics such as tie and dye popularly called a dire, can be sewn into European outfits ideal for casual wears and the office for both sexes. Other traditional wears can be made from brocade, ‘Akwete’ and ‘Aso-oke,’ which had challenged the creativity of Nigerian fashion designers.

People, especially young ones prefer foreign music to our traditional or indigenous music even when they do not understand their lyrics.

Traditional herbs and roots which were used to cure all sorts of ailments in the past are now looked upon as potential poisons. Time was when the Africans had no other cure for diseases except these roots and herbs. Today, if the Africans look inwards, they may find cure to the HIV/AIDS scourge with the abundant medicinal herbs and tree or roots.

The true African value of everyone being his brother’s keeper has also been ditched. People are no longer interested in what happens to others outside their immediate family. The pride of collectivism has been replaced by individualism which now depicts the African as selfish and not a good neighbour.

One may perceive my thought to be averse to change but that is not the case because there is desirable change and undesirable change, when change involves a total discarding of our culture, which is our identity, you cannot but classify that change as bad and anti-African.

Really, we have had obnoxious traditional practices like female genital mutilation and the killing of twins, which the likes of Mary Slessor helped eradicate. There are, however, other things in the African way of life, which the European did more harm than good by replacing them.

Some of our indigenous languages are becoming extinct due to the fact that young people do not learn their mother tongue and their parents think there is no need to embrace their language as every one wants to speak the white man’s language – English.

In spite of the good aspects of the white culture, such as education, we should not totally abandon ours because it is our identity and when we lose our identity, we more or less, cease to exist.

Udoka is a mass communication student of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.