I am a Yoruba from the western part of Nigeria. We were brought up to be conscious of the invisible web that binds everyone in the same family or the same village together. We are taught the importance of the mystical earth we all make our living from, the significance of the community stream we all drink from and the potency of the ancestral bloods that flow in our blood streams.
We grew up with the consciousness of being relatives or distant acquaintances to people in the same indigent communities. We refer to elderly men as fathers and elderly women as mothers. What of our senior neighbours? We call them brother So and So, and sister So and So. We call our school teachers, uncles and aunties. We are fixed in a brotherhood cocoon and relationship matrix.
As good as that communality is, there is a generational flaw that had bedeviled this practice. We hardly respect individuality or the right of an individual to be himself. It seems as if the right to be oneself is subsumed in the desire to form a communal bond. Take for instance, when elders talk in the public, the children that are present are often asked to keep quiet and observe.
A child, no matter how intelligent he is, is presumed to be rude if he expressed a contrary opinion when elders are deliberating. In some families, professions are fostered on individuals; marital alliance sometimes, are created by inter-family arrangements; while religious affiliations of all the members of the family are mostly based on the preference of the head of the family.
In most of our marriage ceremonies, wives are counselled to like and love only the things that their husbands prefer. If for instance a husband likes watching sports on TV, and the wife prefers drama series, she is counselled to sacrifice her desire for drama and develop an unnaturally wild enthusiasm for sport. The children must live the dreams of their parents, and so on.
While I am not advocating a completely individualistic and disjointed society, but individuals within a family or community should be given some space to express their peculiarities and individual preferences.
I grew up among the conservative Christians. We were conservative in everything. Most of the ladies I grew up with did not like makeups, earrings or trousers. But many years after, I discovered that several of those ladies have adjusted their preferred way of appearance while they still maintained their Christian faith. I concluded that while growing up in our little village, these individuals were not given enough space to be who they really wanted to be, but when they got more space as a result of exposure, education, interactions and travelling, they sorted out their individuality and broke away from the community censorship.
As Africa opens her windows to Asia, Europe and America, she should glean from their social modules, the respect for individual's right to be who they really wanted to be without any undue interference. This will discourage hypocrisy and two-face personality.
©EXRADALLENUM OLUSEGUN AKINSANYA
Artwork By; Asidere Duke
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