The Royal Colonial Institute Speech

Dear members, dear attendees, dear friends.

Today is a special day, a celebrated day of the year. Today is our annual dinner of the Royal Colonial Institute, of which I am beyond grateful and thankful to be a part of. We celebrate our achievements which we have accumulated throughout this year, and I am here to address a rather tendentious topic. We have colonies all over the world which have brought us where we are today. Nonetheless, there is one colony at hand which I would be honoured to discuss with you on this day.

Let me indulge you on a journey down to North-Western Africa. Just south of the Sahara, we have - yet another - colony. The Igbo culture. Over recent time, I have been informed discomfort with the existing colonialists present in Igboland. These reports did not settle, therefore I decided for myself to personally witness this at hand and draw conclusions from there. The reports did not disappoint.

I have made it my mission to get to know these people, to understand them. And so I did. The Igbo people were few of the kindest, open and accepting people I have ever come across in my lifetime. Yet to see them being mistreated to this extent makes my heart bleed.

How would you feel if - despite your acceptance of a new culture - had your own torn from you? They love their culture, and this intricate culture means everything to them. What do we do? We strip this from them, not even taking into consideration any possible harm we are causing them.

There is one other flaw we have. May I ask who of you knows how many cultures the Igbo consists of? I bet none of you know. In fact, I count on it. The culture consists of many many villages and is one of the most diverse cultures around the world. Each village has their own traditions and ways of living. We're classifying them as one Nigeria. Is thar morally correct in your opinion? Is this just?

I don't expect you to discuss this with me, I do however expect you to take this to heart. Not just to heart, but to think about this too. I ask you to do something about it. They embrace Christianity without a problem, they want to implement ideas, so why forcefully mistreat them to do what we want, instead of helping them fuse our cultures together as one?