Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if his gives too much.
I read these lines and I remember Naija and its fear-soaked atmosphere, clammy like a wet blanket and just as suffocating. How could a country with so much beauty potential have turned out so ugly? This land had the potential to be beautiful beyond the singing of it but lies prostrate in the mud and in the sand all because greed made us eat up our grains in a feverish rush of glutinous consumption, and having consumed all the grains, we set about consuming our brains.
The hills are now bent in sorrow and the valleys have become places of terror cluttered with rogues, bullies, terrorists and human vultures, dead souls without culture.
Who can sing in this fetid place? Who can breathe in this suffocating space? This.place kills dreams and renders sleep hollow, full of fear and empty of rest.
Cry, the beloved country, for our unborn children who may inherit emptiness and the whirlwinds that are being sown by actions and inactions.
Multilingualism and cultural pluralism have received considerable scholarly and policy attention in countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and France because of their implications for national integration, identity preservation, and educational development. In many African countries, however, including Nigeria, these issues have often received only superficial attention despite their enormous significance for social cohesion, equity, and curriculum development.
Nigeria is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse countries in the world, with over 250 ethnic groups and more than 500 languages. Such diversity presents both opportunities and challenges for education policy and curriculum development. While diversity can enrich learning and strengthen cultural identity, it can also create tensions relating to language policy, representation, access, and national integration.
This paper examines the relationship between multilingualism, cultural pluralism, and curriculum development in Nigerian basic education. It explores the conceptual foundations of multiculturalism and cultural pluralism, analyses their implications for curriculum development, and discusses the advantages, disadvantages, and threats associated with multilingual and culturally plural educational systems. The paper further examines how power relations, linguistic dominance, and educational policy shape curriculum choices in Nigeria and concludes with recommendations for a more inclusive and equitable curriculum framework. The writing of this paper is informed by concerns for equity, respect for language rights and the imperative for culturally responsive pedagogy. A related motivation was the need to broaden the rhetoric on curriculum decolonisation to include recognising the dangers in the subtle colonisation of speakers of minority languages in multilingual African countries such as Nigeria by speakers of dominant languages in these same countries. Implicit in the above is the invitation to the reader that colonisation is colonisation. Denying a speaker of a minority language education in his/her language is thus a measure that could lead to exclusion. Given the vital link between language and indigenous knowledge systems, such an exclusion could also lead to major losses in indigenous knowledge systems for speakers of such languages
Keywords: Multilingualism, cultural pluralism, curriculum development, language policy, minority languages, multicultural education, Nigeria.
Conceptual Clarifications
Multiculturalism and Cultural Pluralism
Multiculturalism refers to the coexistence of multiple cultural groups within a society. It is commonly associated with policies that recognize cultural diversity and encourage the inclusion of different cultural traditions within national life. Multicultural societies may contain dominant and minority cultures of varying demographic and political strength.
Cultural pluralism, on the other hand, refers to a situation in which diverse cultural groups are not only allowed to exist but are also encouraged to preserve and develop their unique identities, languages, traditions, and values. Unlike monocultural systems that encourage assimilation into a dominant culture, cultural pluralism promotes integration without cultural absorption.
The distinction between multiculturalism and cultural pluralism is significant. Multiculturalism may simply describe the presence of multiple cultures, whereas cultural pluralism implies deliberate policies aimed at protecting minority identities and ensuring equitable representation.
Linguicism and Linguistic Imperialism
The concept of linguicism, introduced by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, refers to discrimination based on language. It describes ideological and structural processes that privilege certain languages while marginalizing others.
Closely related is the idea of linguistic imperialism, developed by Robert Phillipson, which explains how dominant languages expand through political, educational, and economic power structures. In multilingual societies such as Nigeria, language choices in education often reflect broader struggles over power, identity, and cultural dominance.
The privileging of major languages over minority languages in schools can therefore become a mechanism for reinforcing social inequalities and weakening minority cultures.
Curriculum Development as a Political and Cultural Process
Curriculum development is often presented as a technical or pedagogical process involving the selection of learning content, teaching methods, and evaluation procedures. However, curriculum development is also deeply political and ideological because it involves decisions about:
what knowledge is valuable;
whose culture is represented;
which languages are promoted;
which histories are remembered;
and what kind of society education seeks to create.
Education is not culturally neutral. Beyond transmitting knowledge and skills, it also functions as a mechanism for cultural transmission, identity formation, and social reproduction.
Scholars such as Pierre Bourdieu and Michael Young argue that curriculum can become an instrument for reproducing dominant cultural values while marginalizing less powerful groups. In multicultural societies, curriculum development therefore reflects existing power relations and ideological preferences This is especially evident in subjects such as language, history, social studies, religion, literature and civic education. These subjects often privilege dominant cultural narratives while underrepresenting minority perspectives.
Multilingualism and Cultural Pluralism in Nigeria
Nigeria’s educational system operates within a highly multilingual and multicultural environment. The country’s language policy recognizes English as the official language and identifies Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba as the three major Nigerian languages. Numerous other indigenous languages are recognized as mother tongues, although many are not adequately supported within formal education.
This arrangement has generated significant educational and sociopolitical tensions.
For example, children from minority linguistic backgrounds frequently experience what may be described as a “multiple language burden.” A child from a minority ethnic group living outside his or her ancestral community may be required to learn:
the local dominant language;
one of the three major Nigerian languages;
and English.
This creates unequal linguistic demands compared to children from dominant linguistic groups.
The emphasis on the three major languages also creates concerns about:
linguistic marginalization;
unequal resource allocation;
cultural domination;
and the gradual disappearance of minority languages.
The latter concern, that of a concern with the phenomenon of language disappearance, sometimes described as glottophagy, becomes when smaller languages are gradually abandoned due to pressure from dominant languages and cultures.
Models of Cultural Pluralism
The literature identifies several models of cultural pluralism:
Cooperative Model -Different cultural groups collaborate harmoniously while maintaining their identities.
Conflict Model – Cultural groups compete for recognition, influence, and resources, often generating tension.
Coercive Model – Dominant groups compel minority groups to adopt dominant cultural norms; and
Domination Model – Powerful groups impose their culture through institutions such as schools, media, and government policies (Young, 1979; Phillipson, 1997)
In reality, most societies display elements of several models simultaneously. In Nigeria, these models play out in such things as the choice of which Nigerian language should be learnt as L2 and which language should be used as mother tongue in school settings characterized by the presence of learners from different first languages. Given the close affiliation between language and culture, any language choices in such settings ultimately become a choice of which culture to advantage.
Challenges of Cultural Pluralism and Multilingualism in Nigerian Education
These are several and include Language Policy and Inequality, curriculum representation, the reality of resource constraints, the ever-present ethnic and religious sensitivities which may colour perception of educational decision taken, the problem of teacher supply and the availability of pedagogical materials. Let us now take up each of these in turn and discuss each albeit briefly
Language Policy and Inequality – One of the most difficult issues in Nigerian education concerns the language of instruction. While mother-tongue education is pedagogically desirable, implementing it across hundreds of languages is financially and administratively challenging.
Consequently, many minority languages remain excluded from instructional use, placing their speakers at educational disadvantage.
Curriculum Representation
Curriculum content in areas such as history and social studies often reflects dominant cultural narratives. National heroes, historical figures, and cultural references are frequently drawn from major ethnic groups, while minority cultures receive limited representation.
This may unintentionally create feelings of inferiority and exclusion among learners from minority backgrounds.
Resource Constraints
Developing multilingual curricula requires:
trained teachers;
instructional materials;
translation services;
orthographies for local languages;
and sustained financial investment.
Many developing countries struggle to provide these resources adequately.
Ethnic and Religious Sensitivities
Curriculum decisions involving religion, language, and culture are highly sensitive in Nigeria. Disagreements over religious instruction, civic education, and historical interpretation often reflect broader societal tensions.
Standardization Difficulties
Cultural diversity complicates efforts to standardize curriculum, assessment, and educational delivery nationwide. However, a basic truth that is worth asserting is that uniformity of curriculum offerings does not necessarily produce unity.
Teacher Preparedness
Many teachers lack adequate preparation in culturally responsive pedagogy. Without proper training, multicultural education may unintentionally reinforce stereotypes rather than promote inclusion.
Advantages of Cultural Pluralism and Multilingualism
Despite these challenges, cultural pluralism offers significant educational and societal benefits. These include the following:
Promotion of National Unity Through Inclusion
Inclusive curricula help learners feel recognized and valued within the national community, thereby strengthening social cohesion.
Preservation of Indigenous Cultures and Languages
Culturally responsive education contributes to the preservation of indigenous languages, histories, and knowledge systems.
Improved Learning Outcomes
Research consistently shows that children learn more effectively when instruction connects with their linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
Promotion of Tolerance and Intercultural Understanding
Exposure to multiple cultural perspectives helps reduce prejudice and promotes empathy, mutual respect, and peaceful coexistence. Specifically, the Urhobo adolescent who learns about Itsekiri culture is not only bound to become a more rounded but is also bound to display skills of empathy, acceptance and appreciation of fellow learners from other cultures.
Development of Critical Thinking
Multicultural education encourages learners to engage with diverse viewpoints and question assumptions critically.
Strengthening Learner Identity and Self-Esteem
Representation of diverse cultures in curriculum content helps learners develop confidence and pride in their heritage.
Disadvantages and Threats
These are several and include the following:
Risk of Ethnic Fragmentation
Excessive emphasis on cultural differences may deepen ethnic consciousness and weaken national identity.
Cultural Domination
Dominant groups may use education and language policy to reinforce their cultural influence over minority groups.
Linguistic Imperialism
Globalization and the increasing dominance of English create pressures that undermine indigenous languages and cultures. In the Nigerian case, the spread of Hausa language in the North of the country has become a threat to the survival of minority languages, some of which are now threatened with extinction of glottophagy. Without deliberate preservation efforts, minority languages may gradually disappear due to assimilation and globalization pressures.
Curriculum Overload
Attempting to represent all cultural groups adequately may lead to an overcrowded curriculum, but at the barest minimum, efforts must be made to ensure representativeness of the cultural practices of the various groups in society, whilst avoiding the dangers of political manipulation that may accompany such efforts as selection of Curriculum content may become politicized by powerful stakeholders with strong interests, such dangers being especially high in areas involving history, language, and religion.
The challenge of all the foregoing is how to develop school programs that capture the major educational benefits of multilingualism and cultural pluralism whilst minimizing the downsides. The next section examines their implications for curriculum development.
Implications for Curriculum Development in Nigeria
This concluding section commences on the basic premise that Curriculum development in Nigeria must balance two competing imperatives:
promoting national unity;
preserving cultural diversity.
Such a curriculum development should also be culturally responsive. A culturally responsive curriculum should:
represent diverse cultures fairly;
avoid stereotyping;
promote inclusive citizenship;
support multilingual education;
and foster intercultural dialogue.
There is also a need to move away from curricula that privilege only dominant narratives and instead create space for minority histories, local heroes, indigenous knowledge systems, and community experiences. The solutions proposed below are based on these foundational principles
Proposed Solutions and Recommendations
Promote Multilingual Education
Nigeria should strengthen mother-tongue instruction, especially at the early childhood and lower basic education levels.
Develop Inclusive Curricula
Curriculum content should reflect the histories, cultures, and experiences of diverse Nigerian communities.
Strengthen Teacher Training
Teachers should receive professional preparation in:
culturally responsive pedagogy;
multilingual education;
conflict-sensitive teaching;
and inclusive curriculum delivery.
Encourage Community Participation
Curriculum development should involve stakeholders from different cultural and linguistic groups as this is one sure way to ensure relevance and critical stakeholder engagement with school curricula.
Support Minority Languages
Government should invest in:
orthography development;
local language publishing;
translation;
teacher recruitment;
and indigenous language media.
All the suggested policy interventions above come under the scope of language engineering and planned language expansion. These are well discussed in Rubin and Jernudd (1971). At the Nigerian level, these issues mentioned above are well examined in Bamgbose, Akere, and Ihebuzor (1992) and in Ihebuzor and Junaidu (1994).
There is also the need to balance Diversity with National Cohesion whilst making efforts to integrate Indigenous Knowledge Systems in curricula offerings
Furthermore, educational policy should promote shared civic values while respecting cultural diversity. At the same time, and this is the challenging part, efforts must be made to ensure that curriculum content incorporates local knowledge, environmental practices, conflict-resolution traditions, and cultural heritage.
Finally, there is a need for regular and continuous curriculum review to ensure inclusiveness, relevance, and responsiveness of curricula to Nigeria’s evolving sociocultural realities.
Conclusion
Multilingualism and cultural pluralism remain central issues in curriculum development within Nigeria’s basic education system. While cultural diversity enriches education and strengthens democratic inclusion, it also presents significant challenges relating to language policy, equity, representation, and national cohesion.
Curriculum development in multicultural societies cannot be viewed as a neutral process. It reflects broader struggles over identity, power, ideology, and cultural representation. Consequently, educational policy must carefully balance the demands of national integration with the imperative of protecting minority cultures and languages.
For Nigeria, the challenge is not whether cultural pluralism should exist, but how it should be managed in ways that promote inclusion, educational equity, social cohesion, and sustainable national development. Finally, the way that Nigeria manages its cultural pluralism and multilingualism must be such that would advance her pursuit of SDGs 4 and 11.
Selected References
Bamgbose, A. (1992). Speaking in Tongues: Implications of Multilingualism for Language Policy in Nigeria.
Bamgbose, A, Akere F and Noel Ihebuzor (eds) (1992), Implementing the language provisions of the National Policy on Education, NERDC. Abuja, NERDC/FME
Barrow, R. (1976). Common Sense and the Curriculum. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Brent, A. (1978). Philosophical Foundations for the Curriculum. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Federal Government of Nigeria (1981). National Policy on Education. Lagos: NERDC Press
Fishman, J. (1993). “Ethnolinguistic Democracy: Varieties, Degrees and Limits.” Language International, 5(1), 11–14.
Ihebuzor, Noel& Ismail Junaidu (eds) (1994), Proceedings of the seminar on language survey planning, Lagos, NERDC
Phillipson, R. (1997). “Realities and Myths of Linguistic Imperialism.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 18(3), 238–248.
Rubin, J., & Jernudd, B. H. (1971). Can Language Be Planned? University of Hawaii Press.
Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (1988). “Multilingualism and the Education of Minority Children.” In Minority Education: From Shame to Struggle.
Young, C. (1979). The Politics of Cultural Pluralism. University of Wisconsin Press.
Last Sunday was Pentecost Sunday, and our Parish Priest gave a powerful and moving homily. This was preceded by a praise worship session where we intoned the song – “Send your power, we pray thee, O Lord, send down your spirit, we say Amen….” The congregation was moved, and the homily, with its exhortation on the need to come together in a spirit of true fellowship, was powerfully moving. I was moved.
But I expected more, and perhaps for very personal and idiosyncratic reasons. I had expected him to challenge the Catholic faithful to break away from the shackles of fear and reject the debilitating culture of silence that keeps us mute in the face of abuse, maladministration, and betrayal of trust by political leaders. I had also hoped that his homily would weave in Prophet Isaiah’s liberation message (Isaiah 6), together with the calls for social justice from Prophet Amos and his condemnation of the exploitation of the poor.
Was I right to expect this from a Pentecost Sunday homily? I believe I was. Pentecost symbolizes the Spirit giving people courage and voice, the emergence of communal solidarity, and the use of that solidarity to call for justice openly and without fear. Such calls can inspire nonviolent witness and organized action for the common good.
Before Pentecost, Christ’s followers were marked by fear. Then came Pentecost: the chains of fear were broken, and the once fearful rose with courage to speak up and speak out, to the amazement of the public.
Yet the meaning and symbolism of speaking out extend far beyond the reversal of the Tower of Babel and the miracle of many languages. Pentecost signifies much more.
First, it marks the giving of the Holy Spirit, which in Catholic understanding enables believers to speak boldly and bear public witness. This sacramental and charismatic empowerment is often understood as a call to move from private faith to public engagement.
Secondly, for those who feel voiceless, Pentecost’s image of tongues of fire and speech in many languages reminds us that God equips ordinary people to communicate truth across divides and to name injustice in ways others can hear.
Finally, the feast and the homily preached to celebrate it can therefore be understood as both spiritual encouragement and a theological warrant for ethically speaking out against social evils rather than remaining silent.
We must always remind ourselves that Catholic social teaching links human dignity, solidarity, and the common good (John 10:10). The outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost should be seen as a spiritual transfusion, empowering Catholics to develop the courage needed to help create communities where protection of the poor and resistance to structures that harm them become defining features.
By implication, Pentecost should embolden us to speak out against all those whose actions violate the principle of the common good. The need for such bold witness is particularly acute in contexts where public funds are abused and institutions fail. Pentecost can therefore reframe protest and advocacy as communal, faith-rooted obligations aimed at protecting the vulnerable and reclaiming public life for just ends.
Let me end by reaffirming the obvious: Pentecost gives Catholics both the inner courage to speak and the communal framework to act. It sanctifies public engagement by making speaking out a form of Christian witness aimed at restoring dignity and the common good in a society weakened by corruption and silence. Seen in this way, using a homily to invite Catholics to speak up against injustice becomes both a social and spiritual obligation, and indeed, an elevating one.
Experts on Effective Communication advise us to do the following when engaging in verbal communication:
Use variety, vary the stimulus and avoid monotony,
Be credible – if your audience senses or suspects that what you are saying is at variance with your every day practises and conduct, you have lost them,
Use a hook to attract attention, hold and retain attention,
Always find ways to gauge the attention, interest and response of your audience and adapt your delivery to align with these. Remember to constantly tap into that interest:
Spice your presentation with interesting tit- bits that relate to the life and experiences of your audience;
Start your presentation with something catchy -.the hook and keep on using different hooks to sustain interest and.retain attention.
Christ our saviour and leader was an expert in communication, often using a blend of strategies ranging from the amazingly simple yet subversive (the strategy he deploys in the Beatitudes) or plain dramatisation (eg setting a child amongst his listeners) or challenging his audience to engage in self examination (eg when he saves Mary Magdalene from stoning by a not too upright crowd) to drive home his key messages.
But by far, the most effective tools of communication are deployed in the parables. A close look at them shows that they contain all the aspects of effective communication – getting, retaining and sustaining the interest of the audience until the key message has been delivered and the audience has been guided to see what are the right choices This is because every good piece of communication ends with a call to action, a CTA, which may be explicit or implicit, subtle or direct – and the CTA is an invitation to choose and act wisely in the light of the message that has just been delivered.
The same experts on effective communication also point out to us the barriers to communication. These include
a) Language – speech and accent, dialect, non-specific meaning of words, double meaning jargon, technical language, woolly use of language, rambling, insufficient information given
b) psychological – emotive words, personality clashes, lack of interest; audience hostility
c) bias, prejudice and faulty assumptions
d) content not suited to education, status and intelligence levels of your listeners
e) physical environment – noise and distraction from the environment
Again you will notice that the parables anticipate and avoid most if not all these barriers and succeed in delivering winning presentations
Our age is obsessed by the power point presentations, where illustrations and fly-in effects and the jazzing up the presentation often mask inadequacies in content, logic and flow, We would do well to read the parables and learn from them.
In an age where verbose usage is often used to mask cognitive deficiencies, platitudes, social irrelevance of the message or the lack of preparation of the speaker, we would do well to go to the parables and learn how to communicate. And to communicate with interest, focus and effect…and with economy, things which I know I will need to learn myself.
Truth is twisted, lies fall in to assorted lines, by hook and crook, mimicking straight lines, tangled lines tangle lives, tangled lives tangle minds, in vain we seek to untwist a tangled wreck,
the broom, overrun by yesteryear’s cobwebs has lost its power to sweep,
only witches and wild wizards, unable to find rest or sleep now hop around, crossing carpets to and fro, hopeless and hapless on its jagged ends!
May the flour jars and jars of oil in our lives never run dry but may they be always replenished like fountains of eternal gift from God because we have given in support of the truly needy. The lady who gave two cents in the NT Reading represents someone who gives with deep faith, confident in the munificence of God. Her gift and its real value effectively teach us the economic concepts of marginal significance and opportunity cost. Christ’s remarks on her giving teach us that a gift is not measured by its absolute value but by the real effort and sacrifice that giving involves. So even before the principles enunciated in “The Wealth of Nations”, Jesus, our Lord and Savior, was already well versed in economics. If the giving to a worthy receiver does not cause some pain, then there is no gain in it. The gifts of the two women take on enhanced significance when we realize that the two women are widows. We must remind ourselves that these narratives are set in a social context where widows were the lowest of the low, the bottom of bottom of the social pyramid, victims of societal discrimination given the harmful widowhood practices that were so rampant at that time. It would thus appear that the Harmful Traditional Practices we notice in society today have a long history! Yet these victims of discrimination stepped out and made their marks in acts overflowing with faith and genuine care of others. May we have the faith to give like these two women, Amen.
Reactions to recent events in Nigeria, notably the very tragic loss of lives in the crash of a Dana aircraft and the changing of the name of the former University of Lagos to Moshood Abiola University, Lagos bring again to the fore some persisting peculiarities about social media usage in Nigeria. In the former, whilst families and almost the entire nation stood in shock and mourned in a spontaneous outburst of grief and outrage, a group of individuals jumped on the sad event and sought, after a brief interlude of demonstration of solidarity with families affected by the tragedy, to twist it to advance particular agendas. In the latter, rational discussion and review were marred by a combination ethnic undertones in the reactions and comments of a number of Nigerians and again by an “events hijack” by a group of individuals anxious to score political points. The ethnic undertones were indeed disturbing and of such a strength and intensity that some persons were even willing to venture as far as to question the significance and brand value of MKO in relation to the institution that was being re-named after him. This was surprising as it came from a section of the country that had all along clamoured for some fitting recognition for MKO for his contribution to the re-emergence of democracy in Nigeria. Politics does strange things to people’s memory and their judgments! But let us leave that aside for now with the hope to return to it on some other occasion.
My interest is this write up is the behaviour of a particular group of users of social media, specifically “Twitter”. This group is of interest to me because they were in the forefront of the attempts to politically hijack the two events I had mentioned earlier in this write up. This group dominates the Naija Twitter space by the sheer volume of their tweets and see themselves as social activists. It sees itself as the social conscience of our nation and has arrogated to itself the moral high ground of socio-political rectitude and probity. I write this piece as a first sketch of the sociology of this group. My intention is to see what, at a first level of examination, the patterns of conduct of this group on Twitter as a social media can reveal for the field of sociology of groups.
The easiest definition of sociology is that it is a study of society – how society is structured, the rules, the norms, codes and convention that govern it and the power relations which sustain it. Sociology looks closely at institutions, especially at its norms, rules, laws and codes. Central to sociology is the assumption that things do not just happen and that no structure in society, no event, no human action happens by chance. By implication, events in society are linked by a deep nexus of functions, causality, intentions and end seeking behaviour. Sociology assumes that human actions are purposive but are framed in time and space by rules, norms and functions. Events and actions are socially determined, rewarded and sanctioned by rules, norms and conventions which in the end betray power relations, social functions and status.
Sociology also sees every society as being made up of smaller units or communities, which are also mini societies in themselves. Each of these communities would have its norms, rules, conventions, power structure and reward system. In the larger society we can then find a community of writers, a religious community, an Agbero community, a medical community, a social media community and even within this community, a twitter “social activist” community! It is this last group that I will be looking at in this article that attempts, as I have indicated earlier on, a first sketch of its sociology. This first sketch is based on observations from the tweeting habits of this Nigerian “Twitter Social Activist community”, especially the content, pattern, language and style of its “tweeple”. These observations allow one to uncover a discernable power structure, clear pecking order, a set of unwritten rules of engagement, and a package of incentives and reward structures that ensure group cohesion and sustain loyalty. These observations were made from January to June 2012, It therefore covers from the “occupy” period right up to the recent June “sting”. I will be looking at the following – purpose and intention of this group – (stated or implicit), structure of the group, control and incentives, content of tweets, ground rules (stated or implicit), how the group deals with opposition and the spatial distribution of this group. This article is exploratory and I welcome comments and challenges.
Purpose and intention
The major ambition of this “social activist community” is to steer and dominate public opinion to the point of suffocating and drowning any dissenting voices. In the current dispensation, this ultimate end game is to unseat the PDP in 2015. Marketing this agenda and drawing supporters to it has been greatly facilitated by the seeming inability of the Jonathan administration to deal in a decisive way with critical problems of governance in this country, especially corruption, insecurity and decline in our social services provision sector. In the short and medium terms, the objectives are to magnify these failings of the GEJ administration, increase its unpopularity, undervalue and rubbish any achievements it may lay claims to. Regime change through the ballot is the ultimate goal. The means to this end include direct insults to the presidency and the person of the president, distortion of events to inculpate the president, deliberate falsehoods, exaggerations, ridicule, biased reporting and deliberately outrageous remarks meant to inflame and confuse. Members of this group are socialized into behaviours that produce all of these in the tweets. This socialization is achieved through a subtle blend of social pressure and incentives made possible by the structure of this “activist” community.
Structure
The structure of the community looks deceptively flat but it is not so in reality. There is an overall leader and below him/her, another level of leaders. These second level leaders are in charge of their specific “cells” and do their best to maintain a supportive and “mentoring” relationship with members with the aim of cleverly creating a dependence syndrome by these members. Below this second leadership level, and within these cells, there is the broad followership. In this broad followership, you will find an assorted array of persons – male and female, who function more or less as enforcers and hit men and women. Their job is to increase the anti-government tweet traffic and protect their members by hacking at anybody bold enough to challenge tweets from them. In many ways, this “social activist” community functions with a lot of the modus operandi and patterns of typical cults in our tertiary institutions – follow and obey the cult leader, loyalty to the cult and to its overall mission is more important than your individual likes and dislikes; your individual standing in society is actualized and enhanced the more the cult flourishes; your blind and unquestioning loyalty is critical for the cult to flourish. As with cults, so it is with this community where members willingly abandon reason and logic to follow the tweets of their leaders and defend these with passion and fury!
The overall leader of this community is not elected. Rather he/she emerges by self-selection, exploiting any surviving credibility from previous political incarnations to dazzle and befuddle members. This surviving credibility is carefully nurtured, packaged and repackaged and kept in the eyes of this “activist” community who relate with him or her with considerable adulation! He or she shapes and determines of the social activist agenda and direction for the week. This is usually achieved through the use of well-choreographed regular clinics on Twitter where this leader fields and answers questions and then makes broad swipes at persons and institutions. Such clinics then set the tone for the week and the abuse sound byte for that week is usually released during such clinics. The contents of the clinics are constantly shared to all members through the instrumentality of “Following”, retweets, member replies and new tweets by members – the purpose of these being to amplify the leader’s voice and reach. Let us suppose that the leader’s name on Twitter is @Yabiswacko, then the members, especially the second level leaders quickly start sending out tweets like “If you are not following @Yabiswacko now, you are missing a lot. Please retweet”. Because of the architecture of twitter, once you send out this message @Yabiswacko automatically knows it and you suddenly come to his attention as a strong ally! Any member who retweets or replies is also noticed. This explains the rather sudden burst in tweeting and retweets that accompany the leader’s clinic sessions, as tweeple, especially the new recruits and fresh converts, all start tweeting away and struggling to be noticed.
Control and incentives
How does this community manage to control its members? This is intriguing and the leaders of this community have developed and modified the use of a management pattern described in management literature as influence without authority. The modification comes in the form of the subtle blend of thought control tactics with reward and recognition. Leadership is always feeding its members with a specific spin on issues that ends up warping their minds and creating in them a sense of hysteria. It exploits a desire to belong by young people and uses subtle and psychological pressure to get these young people in their various locations to respond along lines that the leader desires. One group-belongingness strategy consists in creating a belief among members of this group that they, the self-certified social activists are the correct, morally upright few with vision and boldness. Further recognition also comes in the form of retweets and mentions by the leaders, something which members crave. Another form of recognition is promoting the member with the greatest volubility and distinction in insolence by the leader with a tweet such as “Follow @Fineshineshinebobo444 – he is a great Nigerian”! Members then retweet! Or this for a group of selected members – “Please follow @hair_ead999 @liteebrane001 @hemuty_kokohead0Y0 @FyneGal789 because they are Nigerian youths with vision”. This type of recognition is anxiously sought after and lapped up by young men and women thirsty for social recognition. The final recognition, the icing on the cake is made when the leaders and his lieutenants follow the tweeter in question. This type of recognition is celebrated the same way an adolescent boy celebrates the first sign of hair growth on his face!
Content of Tweets
Most of the tweets are one liner swipes and insults. Name calling is rampant – goons, thugs, thieves occur with deadening repetitiveness and frequency. Complex situations are reduced to simple statements and blame is shared very liberally, with finger pointing always pointing to the other person. Any event that embarrasses government is celebrated and orchestrated to the point that some tweeple were triumphant at the yellow card incident in South Africa, the failed rescue mission where two hostages died, killed by the captors. A screaming tweet – something like – “British Army invades Nigerian territory” suddenly jarred the twitter space as one tweeple gave expression to the sensationalism which is also a feature of the behaviour of this group. NOI failed bid for the World Bank presidency was celebrated in style and with rejoicing. There is a restructuring in a federal ministry and the first reaction is to gloat because of a feeling that the Personal Assistant to the Minister in the affected ministry is going to lose his job! The Bashorun MKO recognition effort was roundly rubbished as the “clueless” act of a “clueless” and “shoe-less” president, the Dana crash was caused by presidential incompetence, the president tears at the sight of the crash were fake, the cassava bread is a no brainer, GEJ is trying to undo UNILAG by renaming it MAUL because he failed to get admitted there…the list is endless – a sad commentary on how far the slide in mental processing has gone in certain sections of the populace of this country. No visible ideology, no alternative vision, no grand plan are discernable in the tweets of this group. Rather what seeps through is simple intense dislike for the president. A growing number of these tweeple are beginning to have their own blogs but apart from a minuscule of well-argued articles, content and style are one dimensional, single simple story in orientation, and usually marred by bias, deliberate deceptive spins and distortions. Whatever facts are in them are badly mangled by subjectivity and poorly concealed political motives.
Ground rules
Every community has its ground rules. The “social activist” is no exception. You can discern some of their unwritten ground rules from their tweeting behaviour.
1. Never criticise those higher than you on the pecking order
2. Never disagree with those higher than you in public. Use the DM facility, if you must disagree
3. Align behind the leadership and follow them, supporting and backing up their every utterance, no matter how outrageous and out of touch with reality they may be
4. Show unswerving loyalty to the leaders, overwhelm them with adulation and you will get your stripes and more recognition
5. Join the twitter battle to defend the leaders even before you understand what the issue is all about.
6. Defend group members – act with greater fury than the cavalry described in the Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
7. Give credit to the leader using the @Yabiswacko option even in a general tweet.
Such behaviour and the norms which underpin them show that this tweeter community is not about equals who share a commonly held ideology freely associating. They rather reveal an association marked by subservience and pernicious mind control. We are seeing social interaction strongly steeped in well internalize power relations and subservience to authority. Persons in this community subject themselves to the influence and control in a structure that has no directly visible formal authority To understand this, we will need to posit that this influence is exercised through an incentive structure which uses recognition in the present accompanied by the hope of social ascent/mobility in the future.
Overcoming opposition
Dealing with opposing voices involves a swarm and swamp attack strategy when the target is suddenly besieged by taunts and insults by “social activist” acting with fury and frenzy in a co-ordinated storm attack. Reason is buried. Senseless fury and noise are let loose on the Twitter space. And the storm attack is not fortuitous – it is triggered by an innocent tweet say by @CAPO_ogbaegbe to all who follow him “check out my TL for my rants” or by another capo to his brigade – “check out @CAPO_ogbaegbe as he takes on a goon”. Leading the attack are hackers – male and female – who act with energy of unchained sadists, unleashing an un-ending chain of verbal violence, directed not just at the victim but also to his/her family.
Geography and spatial distribution
One should never trust names on Twitter because people use fake names. However, if names are anything to go by, a lot of these angry people are from the southwest of Nigeria. They are very liberal and non-discriminating in their attacks. To qualify for their attacks and insults, you simply have to belong to the PDP, or be suspected to have sympathies for a PDP position. The voice of the South-South and the South East is more moderate in this community. It is not so loud, and their representation is weak. But the very few who do show up appear to want to out-do themselves and their soul mates from the South West – but they are not really convincing, their hearts are not really in it and theirs could be simple posturing. Voices from the North have two key features – they align predominantly behind one voluble and all-knowing gentleman. They are very usually very guarded in their attacks on persons from the North, even if that person belonged or still belongs to the reviled PDP. However, they become very bold in their tweets on persons from the South! We therefore are dealing with a group dominated by the South-West and the North who are using Twitter to attack and run down the president and his party but who are careful and controlled in their tweets on persons belonging to political parties that have the South-West and the North as their home bases. In addition, tweeple from the north are also very careful in what they say about persons from the north, whether or not that person belongs to the reviled PDP. Their take on the emerging revelations from the recent “sting” operation speaks volumes.
Conclusion
So this is the Nigeria “social activist” community. The social conduct and actions as described above are not reflective in the least of social activism as universally understood. Rather, they smirk of the antics of immature political opposition that conveniently tells itself that it is practising social activism. Or perhaps, the title is a convenient label being used by opposition party political activists to disguise their real intentions and its identities. This is not to mean that there are no genuine social activists out there but their voices are usually drowned in the howling noise of this new breed of political party mobilisers, recruitment agents and propagandists. One anxiously looks forwards to hearing more of their voices as they call attention to key social issues of governance guided by the principles of problem solving, objectivity, non-partisanship, impartiality, truth, relevance, justice and a concern for the common man and woman struggling to make ends meet in our struggling country.
Today’s readings touch on choices, decisions and wisdom. In the first reading, the apostle Paul does what he does best – drawing from his familiarity with greek philosophy to use opposites to contrast God’s wisdom with human wisdom. The whole exercise enables Paul to show the profound superficiality of much of what we humans see as indicators of our wisdom. Much of that pretended wisdom is indeed nothing else but vanity upon vanity, just plain shakara! In the Gospel reading, Jesus resorts to a parable to bring out the limited rationality of much of human decisions, especially in the example of the servant who buries his talent and therefore and thereby forecloses its possibility of growth and development. We are, most times, like this third servant in our decision making and in our choices. We arrive at decisions and choices by prioritising faulty and flawed parameters and assigning weights to these. We then reach a position based on the defective considerations that follow from our earlier prioritisation process. This position we have now taken must be the right one, must always be the right one we delude ourselves into believing. We tell ourselves that every other person’s views are inadequate, not well thought out and lacking in social depth, contextual sensitivity and intellectual rigour. We resist every effort to make us see otherwise and we resort to a broad range of strategies including doubling down, trivializing and ridiculing alternative views and voices. Hubris would already have kicked in at this time making us effectively victims and prisoners of our pride, our imperfect analysis and our unconscious biases. We become “Amarachalam ihe uwa jere je kuola nda Onyemachi nwa”. The readings today invite us to reflect and make real wise choices and take sound and rounded decisions which are based on a full consideration of the total circumstance involved – the actors and persons in the constellation of that decision making as well as the long, medium and short term consequences of our choices, decisions and actions. They also challenge us to examine the ethical and moral implications of our choices and what Kantian categorical imperatives would suggest as the best line of action in the situation we find ourselves in.
May divine wisdom invade us, possess us, flood us, overtake and overpower us and thus equip us with the necessary wisdom and balanced emotional intelligence that we need to engage with the world and those around us.
Ka Chineke mezie ukwu, isee!
Noel Ihebuzor
(written in the departure lounge of Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, whilst waiting for a rescheduled flight)
Reflections 