Nigerians are a highly intelligent and brilliant people. Our people are very blessed. But we severely lack group intelligence. That’s why in Nigeria it is the Fulanis(who have very high group intelligence)ruling and not the southerners.

In America, despite our numerous individual successes and having high percentage of college educated, masters and PhD holders and being engineers, doctors, nurses, accountants and I.T professionals, other groups belligerently and outlandishly attack and poo on us an get away with it.

Insult and lightly disrespect a Black American, all Black Americans will not care if he’s mixed, or what state of the country he’s from or whether he grew up with white or black people, they will move in droves to protect and defend their fallen comrade. And the whole world will shake and quiver and give them their justice.

If it was a Nigerian, Nigerians would be denying him justice and won’t help their own, is he from my tribe?, oh he lives in abroad, oh he’s a different religion, he didn’t grow up in Nigeria…. And so on. Under normal circumstances any group of people would oppose a man like Trump that marginalized and insulted their people. But not Nigerians, while we were getting deported on flimsy reasons, Nigerians back home were shouting hail Trump! All immigrant groups countries were supporting their people whether it be China, Mexico, when Trump was messing with their people in America, but not us.

See how our men insult and troll our women anyhow always speaking bad of Nigerian women, wheres the patriotism?

You see why our country is the way it is We need unity, self-love, respect and love for our people if we want to progress. Our politicians who come from us, carry this lack of patriotism and lack of self-love and embezzle our funds.

Everything starts at the grassroots

Valid observation.

Lalasticlala
mynd44
Dominique

We need more topics like this in Front page

I'm glad that I've finally heard somebody else make the same observation. I have thought about this for many years.

There was an old medieval Arab historian and scholar called Ibn Khaldun who wrote a book called Muqaddimah in which he discussed the patterns of history. He said that groups that are on the rise, that are about to take over a town or a country have something called Asabiyyah.

Asabiyyah is often translated to English as 'group feeling'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asabiyyah

He said this asabiyyah is formed while the group is out in the wilderness where life is hard and the only way that one can survive is if one is part of a group with a tight bond. The bond they form is what gives them strength and superiority over the other clans and groups. After they have entered the city and conquered they start to indulge in luxuries after a few generations. The asabiyyah weakens and subsequently they in turn get overthrown by another new group coming with a stronger asabiyyah.

I wondered why we have such weak asabiyyah as africans. I came to the conclusion that there are certain cultural traits that make it hard for us to cohere socially and to even risk our lives for our fellows in the group.

1- The privilege given to Age and seniority in our societies. I think privileges of any kind in any society is dangerous. Progressive societies are based more on Merits than on privileges. Once the laws of social decency and morality are not applied evenly across Society it causes the members to become cynical. In Nigeria you can be arguing with someone over a matter and you are in the right, but all the other person has to say is " am I your mate? Abeg gerrout of hia." And that's it, you've lost the case regardless of how justified you are. Who in their right mind is going to take the laws and mores of such a society seriously. It starts with age but soon extends wider to people such as the rich. once you know the laws are not applied evenly then the laws are not respected, they are seen as oppression of the privileged towards the underprivileged. Who will truly commit to such a society?

2-Trust, or the lack thereof. We do not trust each other so we cannot have social cohesion. How can you work from dawn to dusk for somebody and when it's time to pay you the boss starts to mess you around. Come tomorrow, I don't have time, this and that. This too is an extension of the value we give to privilege. It allows those we call Oga to betray our trust without consequences. Sooner or later Trust starts to disappear.
There are so many functions in a viable society that depends on Trust. If you cannot even trust that you'll get your pay at the end of the week then why work? It puts everybody on Short-Term-ism mode, looking for what they can snatch immediately. Yet to build anything of great value we need to think Long Term. We need to be able to make plans: 5 year plan, 10 year plan, 30 year plan. Everywhere else in the world you hear about such projects. In Nigeria, as Fela sang, everything happens Just Like That.

3- Polygamy! This one has generational effects on us. When a child is raised in a Family full of step mothers with each mother defending her own corner against the other mothers it creates a family environment that is vicious. Since the family is the most basic unit of society, the experience of domestic life will be carried out into the public sphere. If you grow up constantly embattled and not trusting your family at home, is it the stranger in the market that you will now trust? Thus poorly managed polygamy over many generations has created a mindset that makes it hard for any significant amount of Asabiyyah to flourish.

This the Nigerian mind, constantly in a state of embattlement. Even in church sef all they do is pray against enemies. This didn't start with church o, it's been the practice from even the pagan days. This constant fear of witchcraft, juju, family members from the village attacking you etc.... This is not the mindset of people who can come together and form an asabiyyah.

These are some of my brief thoughts on this interesting subject matter.

PastorAIO:
I'm glad that I've finally heard somebody else make the same observation. I have thought about this for many years.

There was an old medieval Arab historian and scholar called Ibn Khaldun who wrote a book called Muqaddimah in which he discussed the patterns of history. He said that groups that are on the rise, that are about to take over a town or a country have something called Asabiyyah.

Asabiyyah is often translated to English as 'group feeling'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asabiyyah

He said this asabiyyah is formed while the group is out in the wilderness where life is hard and the only way that one can survive is if one is part of a group with a tight bond. The bond they form is what gives them strength and superiority over the other clans and groups. After they have entered the city and conquered they start to indulge in luxuries after a few generations. The asabiyyah weakens and subsequently they in turn get overthrown by another new group coming with a stronger asabiyyah.

I wondered why we have such weak asabiyyah as africans. I came to the conclusion that there are certain cultural traits that make it hard for us to cohere socially and to even risk our lives for our fellows in the group.

1- The privilege given to Age and seniority in our societies. I think privileges of any kind in any society is dangerous. Progressive societies are based more on Merits than on privileges. Once the laws of social decency and morality are not applied evenly across Society it causes the members to become cynical. In Nigeria you can be arguing with someone over a matter and you are in the right, but all the other person has to say is " am I your mate? Abeg gerrout of hia." And that's it, you've lost the case regardless of how justified you are. Who in their right mind is going to take the laws and mores of such a society seriously. It starts with age but soon extends wider to people such as the rich. once you know the laws are not applied evenly then the laws are not respected, they are seen as oppression of the privileged towards the underprivileged. Who will truly commit to such a society?

2-Trust, or the lack thereof. We do not trust each other so we cannot have social cohesion. How can you work from dawn to dusk for somebody and when it's time to pay you the boss starts to mess you around. Come tomorrow, I don't have time, this and that. This too is an extension of the value we give to privilege. It allows those we call Oga to betray our trust without consequences. Sooner or later Trust starts to disappear.
There are so many functions in a viable society that depends on Trust. If you cannot even trust that you'll get your pay at the end of the week then why work? It puts everybody on Short-Term-ism mode, looking for what they can snatch immediately. Yet to build anything of great value we need to think Long Term. We need to be able to make plans: 5 year plan, 10 year plan, 30 year plan. Everywhere else in the world you hear about such projects. In Nigeria, as Fela sang, everything happens Just Like That.

3- Polygamy! This one has generational effects on us. When a child is raised in a Family full of step mothers with each mother defending her own corner against the other mothers it creates a family environment that is vicious. Since the family is the most basic unit of society, the experience of domestic life will be carried out into the public sphere. If you grow up constantly embattled and not trusting your family at home, is it the stranger in the market that you will now trust? Thus poorly managed polygamy over many generations has created a mindset that makes it hard for any significant amount of Asabiyyah to flourish.

This the Nigerian mind, constantly in a state of embattlement. Even in church sef all they do is pray against enemies. This didn't start with church o, it's been the practice from even the pagan days. This constant fear of witchcraft, juju, family members from the village attacking you etc.... This is not the mindset of people who can come together and form an asabiyyah.

These are some of my brief thoughts on this interesting subject matter.

Thanks sir, for your input. It does seem that we have very low asabiyyah, and for those reasons you described. Africa is generally communal and collectivist compared the European culture, so it baffles me why we have such low asabiyyah or group intelligence.

Our church should be the one to unite and bring us together, but it’s done the opposite with propagating all sorts of paranoia and superstitions of village people and family members conspiring against you with juju.

The culture and effects of polygamy also doesn’t help. That’s probably where some of this comes from, that’s a good point that I never thought of. Our parents/grandparents at a very young age saw their family members half brothers/sisters are competition rather than family. She has a different mother than you, so already there is competition.

We need to fix these ills and problems. It’s the number 1 reason our country is the way it is. Our politicians carry this lack of patriotism mindset to office and end up screwing the rest of us over.

Although it is true we are young nations and it takes time. It took Europe many centuries to get to where it is now. America used to be a poor like us throughout the entire 19th century. It took America over a 125 years to progress. The Asian countries are the exception, they got their acts to get right away and didn’t waste any time.

The Asians suffered decades of disrespect and discrimination like us and got their acts together right away. We need to start getting the ball rolling. And that starts with self-love, patriotism and unity for all Nigerians regardless of tribe, gender, religion, what country they live or what country they were raised, socioeconomic status, skin tone etc