After several weeks of observation, David said to Chioma: “I want me and you to become boys and girls.” Chioma blushingly replies: “Are you sure… let me think about it and confirm from my people”. From then, both of their families began researching and gathering necessary information about their prospective in-laws for a cordial relationship. With pleasing reports and agreements on their demands and contributions in the new relationship, David and Chioma were joined together. Also, with proper social research and agreements on rights and duties from different groups in Nigeria, Nigeria can rise.
In the earliest phases of human organization, production was scattered and atomized according to family and communal identity.[1] Over time, production grew, leading to product specialization, larger industrial collaboration and socio-political alliances between former independent communities.[2] One community produced steel, another rubber and another leather or tin, all to be used in manufacturing wagons. These industrial collaborations and socio-political alliances come after negotiation of rights and duties from social researches before signing agreements. Social research becomes vital to provide crucial information for agreeing on rights and duties in a new partnership. Hence, progressive nations flourish when different parts free discuss and agree to contribute their roles to their political alliance.
Unfortunately, the political alliance from production-aimed social research and negotiations is missing in Nigeria, and other African nations. This is because “Africa’s nation states were formed by foreigners, lines drawn by Europeans on maps of places they had often never been to. They carved out territories, cut up kingdoms and societies of which they had little idea… They [African countries] lack a common conception of nationhood.”[3] Instead, the British colonialists formed Nigeria by violently yoking several unconsented communities and kingdoms under a federal system[4][5] for exploiting natural resources.[6] At independence, the colonialists installed a system of government to sustain the colonial control of the various people’s resources. So, government seizes and auctions all communities’ resources to the former colonialists’ in exchange for foreign goods, services and money.
As a result, many Nigerians call for restructuring and resource-control to enable each people manage their resources for local productivity. Social reorganization from agreement becomes a first step to a new Nigeria, as “two cannot walk unless they agree”. However, the reorganization may not produce intended results without proper social research on the various people’s values and resources before agreement. Many ethnic communities and kingdoms in Nigeria have great values,[7] human and natural resources to contribute for a better Nigeria. Hence, a proper social research will lay a good foundation for Nigerians to agree, collaborate and use their resources to develop Nigeria.
The steps for undertaking an effective research for reorganizing Nigeria may include:
- Reaching out to the leaders and members of the various communities in the various senatorial districts to encourage them to showcase their social structures, values, transformable human and natural resources, existent and abandoned schools and previous industrial efforts.
- The teams may need to disclose the research results on the media. Then, people can create plays and dramas to show the different communities’ social values and industrial potentials.
- The winning stories will be decided by the readers’ votes about the stories’ ability to examine and practically portray a possible productive collaboration between the people.
- They can also be encouraged to collaborate with Nollywood (or Hollywood) in casting the stories as movies to show a Nigerian national conference with its challenges and eventual success in the agreement of Nigeria’s kingdoms and communities to live and work together, and in privately owning and using their human and natural resources for social development. Such would be a movie that predicts the beginning of Nigeria’s social and economic liberation.
The research and disclosure are necessary to provide the necessary information for a true political and productive alliance between Nigeria’s various peoples. When social structures and laws are imposed on people without their consent, they become rebellious, uncooperative and unproductive. But when the people develop their social structures from negotiated agreements based on social and productive values, they collaborate willingly. To develop any society, no matter how remote it is, install schools, corresponding industries and responsible banks. But before installing the schools, industries and banks, you have to understand the people and their environment through social research.
[1] Walter Rodney, How Europe underdeveloped Africa, 2009 edition (Abuja: Panaf Publishers, 2009). P217
[2] Ibid. pp217, 139-140
[3] Richard Dowden, Richard Dowden, Africa altered states, ordinary miracles. New York: Public Affairs, 2010. p3
[4] Ogban Ogban-Iyan, Re-inventing Nigeria through Pre-colonial traditions, in Issues in contemporary political economy of Nigeria, (ed.) Hassan A. Saliu. (Ilorin, Sally & Associates, 1999). P77
[5] cf. Richard Dowden, Africa altered states, ordinary miracles. (New York: Public Affairs, 2010). p.445
[6] Cf. Walter Rodney, How Europe underdeveloped Africa (Abuja: Panaf, 2009). P.293
[7] Pre-colonial African values were mostly communal, and productivity was measured on contribution to society instead of consumerism