Authoritarian Legacy of the Colonial State: Subsisting Impact of Nigeria’s Colonial Experience

Abstract

The colonial masters left lots of things that have become bane of Nigeria today; of paramount importance is the compulsion of the diverse nationalities that make up Nigeria state to be together and the prevalent socio-political disorder and economic misfortune in the country. This led to the problems of identity and ethnicity which she has been managing over sixty years after independence. Consequently the British colonial involvement in Nigeria, and continued western political, economic, and religious influence over the affairs of formerly colonised Nigerian territory, warrants critical examination, if proper context of the subsisting impact of colonial experience is to be understood.  This paper is purely descriptive and qualitative and relied on secondary sources of data. It adopted the realist, dependency and Marxism theory for its analysis. The paper found that the disadvantaged position of Nigerian state amongst its peers in the international scene is traceable to the legacy of colonial dominance, exploitation, imperialism and subsequent postcolonial political regimes in the country, where a few individuals wield power and manipulate the citizens arbitrarily without accountability. The study concluded that for Nigeria to be freed from the shackles of colonial bequests and underdevelopment, there is the need for the citizens and the leadership to restructure the polity and create their own indigenous identity, culture, technology, and general ways of doing things that would be intertwined in good governance to accommodate present realities. 

Key words:  Authoritarianism, Colonialism, Nigerian State, Imperialism, Nation Building.