Even the most highly educated among us are tightly gripped by denial and superstition.By any measure,Nigeria is one of the “most religious” countries in the world. Our churches, mosques and other houses of worship are fully packed. Even criminals especially them pray daily for redemption. Top leaders gather every weekend their palms turned up in supplication to the Almighty to ask for more political power. The poor and the barefooted chase after gospels of prosperity. The thief, the looter, the rapist, the molester, and the killer all seek God’s grace. But these sinners seek not the redemption of the Lord, but His complicity in their sin. Their quest is to enlist God in their evil. Don’t get me wrong I am not saying that the culture of fatalism is derived from a human gene pool, or that it’s a genetic pathology of inferiority. No it’s all environmental, and has been beaten into us, and then nurtured. Africa didn’t have these tendencies of hateful self- immolation before the Arab slave trade and European colonialism. I am not saying we didn’t have other forms cultural sickness. No we did. But the three historical traumas of the slave trade, colonialism, and the Cold War did us in. These traumas convinced us that we are half-child, half-devil. That’s why we converted into Islam and Christianity. That’s why we forsook our cultures and now go by Paul, Peter, Robin, and Jane. As I’ve written before, culture isn’t cast in stone. It can be reverse-engineered, re- engineered, or discarded. But this can only be done through a counter-culture in a deliberate and national process. The difference between great civilizations and unremarkable ones lies in culture. It’s not that one culture is subordinate to another. No it’s that one culture self-interrogates and revitalises itself whereas another atrophies and collapses into itself. This was the great difference between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. Elites are indispensable in the construction of culture, but it’s the people the hoi polloi who bring culture to life. Culture may come from below where subalterns live but it must infest society to become vibrant.