nn 8 Popular National Lies That Won’t Die In Nigeria
1. That Wole Soyinka had a third class degree. After it emerged that Dino Melaye earned a Third Class degree from Ahmadu Bello University, scores of social media commentators dredged up the old lie that even Professor Wole Soyinka had a Third Class degree from the University of Ibadan. There are two lies in this claim. The first lie is that Soyinka got a Third Class degree. No, he actually got an Upper Second Class honors degree. The second lie is that he graduated from the University of Ibadan. He graduated from the University of Leeds in the UK.
Professor Soyinka did NOT get a Third Class from the University of Ibadan.
He started his undergraduate studies at the then University College, Ibadan, but transferred to the University of Leeds after only two years at Ibadan. He spent another two years at Leeds to earn his BA in English Literature. Soyinka and his classmates at the University College Ibadan have repeatedly denied that he graduated from Ibadan and that he earned a Third Class degree. But the lies have taken firm roots and are now impossible to uproot.
2. That the American government predicted Nigeria’s disintegration in 2015. That’s a big fat lie. It’s true that a few private US think factories predicted that given the potentially contentious outcome of the 2015 election, there was reason to expect that Nigeria could be consumed by fratricidal in-fighting that could dissolve the union.
The most widely shared view on this was contained in a project by two Air War College students. Students in the school were given various world scenarios that could impact crude oil delivery to the US. They were then required to come up with strategies to get around this. One of the scenarios was the break-up of Nigeria. In other words, Nigerians created a “fact” out of a fictional, hypothetical college project.
3. That America calls itself “god’s own country.” As I’ve pointed out in previous columns, America’s motto isn’t “God’s own country.” It is “In God we trust.” “God’s own country” is an old American English expression for one’s place of birth— or for a beautiful, forested rural area. The “country” in the expression refers to “rural area,” not a territory occupied by a nation.
It was usual in the past for rural, wooded small towns in America to welcome visitors with the inscription “Welcome to God’s own country” on their signposts, which in modern English would be "welcome to our beautiful small town." Some small towns in Texas (and elsewhere in the South) still have those signs. Perhaps, that’s what caused Nigerians to assume that America’s motto is “God’s own country.”
4. That Sokoto calls itself “born to rule.” At no point in history has Sokoto ever called itself “born to rule.” As I pointed out in my January 10, 2015 column titled “The Stubborn, Undying ‘Born to Rule’ Falsehood in Nigeria’s Political Discourse,” “Sokoto State’s official license-plate catchphrase from the beginning was and still is ‘Cibiyar daular usmaniyya,’ which is Hausa for the nucleus or the navel of the Usman Danfodio caliphate. The English version of the slogan has been rendered as ‘Seat of the Caliphate,’ which I think is a great idiomatic translation.”
5. That Usman Danfodiyo brought Islam to Nigeria. No, he didn’t. The presence of Islam in Nigeria, as I pointed out in my March 22, 2014 column titled “Nigeria’s Curricular Institutionalization of Mass Amnesia,” preceded the Usman Danfodio jihad by several centuries. What Danfodio did was to reform Islam where it already existed. And this happened only in the 19th century. The earliest record of Islamic presence in northern Nigeria (in the ancient Kanem- Borno Empire to be specific) dates back to the 9th century, that is, just two centuries away fr
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