I hated Black Panther. I remember the backlash I got for saying so, but I couldn’t help it. A black society molded entirely in a white mind felt like an insult wrapped in celebration. The accents, costumes, and aesthetics didn’t mask the fact that it wasn’t our story. It was theirs, told in the way they wanted us to see ourselves. When will we start valuing our culture, our ideas, and our identity without needing Western approval?
The education problem in Nigeria makes more sense to me now. It isn’t just about poor funding or mismanagement. It is the lingering hand of empire. Back in the 60s and 70s, the intellectuals and visionaries who challenged global power structures weren’t just silenced because they threatened control. They were eliminated to stop us from understanding the world and our place in it. It wasn’t just about killing individuals; it was about killing ideas. And unfortunately, the plan worked.
Today, we are starved of context, of global awareness, of the education that connects the dots. Foreigners walk into Nigeria, disrupt systems, and leave with everything they came for while we argue about the surface issues. The ignorance of regional and global politics has chained us to the same cycles of exploitation, and many of us don’t even notice.
Learning Nigerian history in isolation won’t fix this. Without understanding the connections, how regional and global forces intertwine with our struggles, history becomes a shallow exercise. But I’ve realized something even more disturbing. The moment you bring up external actors in Nigeria’s problems, people switch off. Students get frustrated. “What are we supposed to do about it?” they ask, as if understanding the problem isn’t the first step toward solving it.
It is exhausting because it shows how deeply colonialism has conditioned us to avoid critical thinking. Tell Africans directly that we’ve agreed not to think, and they’ll deny it. But the denial cracks open the moment they ask for solutions or accuse you of blaming others. We’ve been programmed to defend the very systems that keep us subdued.
And then there’s this hunger for Western validation. Look at how we celebrated President Tinubu’s recent visit to France, where the French military band played an Afrobeat song. The videos went viral in minutes, and the entire country lit up with excitement. Nigerians poured praise on the French for honoring our culture. But here’s the painful truth. Why does their recognition of Afrobeat feel more significant than the countless times we’ve celebrated it ourselves? Why does their applause matter more than ours?
When oyibos sing our songs, we go wild. When we sing theirs, it’s normal, expected, unremarkable. This isn’t just about music. It is the colonial superiority complex we’ve internalized. We crave their approval, often without realizing it, and we’re too quick to give ours away.
This isn’t about shifting blame. It is about opening our eyes to the full picture. It is about seeing how much we’ve lost and how much we need to regain. Education has to go beyond memorizing dates or names. It has to reveal the forces, imperialism, geopolitics, and capitalism, that shape our lives and policies.
We’ve let colonialism convince us that our indigenous knowledge systems are relics and that they don’t belong in modern governance, agriculture, or conflict resolution. But these systems worked for centuries before colonial intrusion. Instead of building on them, we’ve allowed outsiders to tell us they’re useless.
We can’t afford this anymore. I want my students to stop asking, “What are we supposed to do?” and start thinking critically, connecting the dots, and reclaiming agency. We may not have all the answers, but we have to start asking the right questions.
We have to stop measuring ourselves by Western standards. We need to stop loving the parts of colonialism that demand we see ourselves as less. Only then can we truly break free.
Stephanie Shaakaa
University of Agriculture
Makurdi,
Benue State.
