Tonye Altraide

 

Many Africans refer to anyone older than them as an uncle or aunty. This is meant to indicate a term of respect and to symbolize certain condescension towards older people. You will find this culture, which is most especially rampant in Western Nigeria, also prevalent in many other parts of the continent. My mum is Yoruba and since I was a child, for as long as I can remember, I have been addressing my cousins as uncle Jide and aunty Kemi etc.

I’ve always known that the term uncle/aunty is to denote siblings of my parents, only. However, I kept on with this habit to please the people around me and to pander to their sensitivities of respect. So in my early 20’s, I decided to stop! I figured that I could address an elder as uncle but still yet disrespect them in the same breath. So what’s the point of the prefix? As you can imagine, well if you are Nigerian or close to any Nigerian, I clearly brought fire upon myself. Breaking away from norms, customs or any established culture in Nigeria is like fighting a war with an army of ants.

My cousins informed their friends and they all hounded upon me one evening to challenge my decision. When that didn’t work, they also called my mum who attempted to call me into order. All of this was disappointing, but my main fury stemmed from the fact that the arguments they brought were all illogical.

 

1 “You are now a London boy, that’s why”

I heard this so many times, and it sinks my heart that we belittle ourselves so much. It sinks my heart that my family, those who are meant to be closest to me, think that I am incapable of having a mind of my own and that the only reason why I will stand for something is because my impressionable young mind has been influenced by the lights, glitz and glamour of living in the city of London.

 

2. “If you were going to stop someday, why did you start at all in the first place”

This one I found utterly ridiculous. You start off doing many things as a child without really knowing why you are doing them. As you grow older you begin to develop the courage to ask more questions and to seek reason. It might be hard for people who cannot think for themselves to understand this, but you shouldn’t just carry on doing things just because your parents did them. What worked for them might not work for you so you should find your own reasons. As a child, I didn’t know the implications of what I was doing and it meant nothing to me. As an adult, I realise this and I understand that calling someone uncle/aunty doesn’t stop me from respecting him or her.

 

3. “It is because you are now old enough to have a woman”

For some reason, my ability to take a stand on something was linked to my manhood. So, I guess when I have kids, my ability to make a decision will be called into question ‘because I can now father kids’. I found it very difficult to engage with this one and it revealed more about them than about me, if anything.

As I discover more of myself every day, I believe it is important to deconstruct misinterpretations of certain values in our society. Values that we have fostered due to culture. I figured that respect was not in any way linked to whether you address a person by the prefix of uncle/aunty. I figured, that I could carry on addressing my cousins as such but yet find many other ways to disrespect them.

I realised that the purpose of the word uncle/aunty was only there to make the addressee feel reassured that the addresser was still being submissive to them. I realised, that I could manipulate many Nigerian elders simply by calling them uncle/aunty first – which serves to boost their ego – then following that with a completely derogatory or noncompliant statement afterwards. In fact, this is a ploy that is already used in many social circles.

I come across so many people in my daily life – friends, family, colleagues, etc. who I have the utmost respect for. I relate with them perfectly fine without the need to address them by uncle/aunty regardless of their age. I believe that whosoever started off this habit, which has amazingly carried on till date, had it all wrong. I have decided, based on my own logic and reasoning, that from now on, I do not want to be a part of propagating a culture of miseducation which has completely debilitated the minds of previous and current generations of African youths. And let it be known that that decision was all mine

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Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Tonye Altraide is a culture enthusiast and an Engineer.