The Nigerian identity is really confusing and what people end up with when they want to identify as Nigerian is funny. For instance, the local attire we call native are all made up of imported materials and clothing. In fact, some of our 'traditional' attires are almost identical to the 'traditional' attires of some Asians and Middle easterners.
Somehow, in the recent past, some foreigners managed to sell their clothing materials to us as our native attires. And we put them on proudly today as 'native'.
In some Nigerian companies today, they reserve Fridays as a day their staff can put on their 'native' attire. That's just another way of saying, on Fridays, you guys put on a different foreign attire.
When some people want to design offices to have a 'Nigerian' feel, they put something like a Keke (tricycle) in it. The tricycles were manufactured in India. That simply gives the office an 'Indian' feel. I wonder how Indians feel when they see those.
What of putting the face of some of our gods as part of the office wall art? Many Nigerians are already in religions that forbid such. What of the diagram of that ancient Benin empire walls? No one knows what they look like because they were destroyed and no one is reconstructing them. Israelis have reconstructed every single place mentioned in the bible that appeared in their country. The Iraqis have made efforts to reconstruct the once-great city of Babylon and its mighty tower of babel. The Chinese great walls still stand till today and forms a huge tourist attraction.
But as for us, we are stuck. Our identity almost returns null.
There is almost no way to make your office or home feel Nigerian. Like, what is a Nigerian design? Does it exist?
Okay, I remember now, a hut. Yes, you can put a hut inside there, a hut or a bush bar that looks like the bush bar in every other country in the world.
Maybe paint a scantily dressed Nigerian female in foreign attire going to fetch water at the stream on the wall.
That would do too. Even though that's not how Nigerian females dressed in the past. They used to not have any coverings on their chests and it was considered perfectly noble. But we have demonized that too and called it indecency.
So there we are again where we started, there is hardly any way to design any office to be Nigerian. We the lost tribe, we not even searching, we confused.
Welcome to 21st century Nigeria.
