Ruminations of an old-time online forumite

The interest I have for hearing the views of people I have never met goes back a long, long way to when I used to listen to 'Focus on Africa' on the BBC. I would hear the presenter read out one letter after the other criticising politicians, rebels or even the BBC itself. It made me think "Wow! So all these people out there have all these different opinions!" It wasn't long before I ventured to dip my toe in the water and send my own letters to the BBC. The toe-dipping eventually became a full blown swimming adventure, as I became a regular correspondent and even had some of my letters read out.

But something was missing. Only a fraction of letters were ever read out, because of the time limitations. And the letters were really just announcements, so you couldn't get the correspondent to expand on his views. Oh sure, occasionally, you would have another correspondent reacting to something that a previous correspondent had said, but this was the exception rather than the rule.

So when I discovered the (now defunct) NigeriaNews online forum where I could post my views and directly correspond with other Nigerians, it was like I had come out of the darkness into the light. Now I didn't have to rely on some central organisation deciding or not whether it should relay what I said to the world - I could speak directly and let my views be known on ethnic and religious conflict, the way to economic prosperity, and the solutions to all of Nigeria's problems.

I soon discovered that the NigeriaNews forum was too small a community for me, and my message had to reach a wider audience. So I kept on searching, and by chance I found the NigeriaWorld forum which had an even more varied and exciting mix of people. Now I could really go to town and educate everyone on what they needed to know.

And then I realised several things:

- On a messageboard, tempers run much higher than in real-life, especially when it comes to issues like ethnicity and religion, and civil discourse flies out of the window;

- There was a lot of frustration and sadness with the current situation of Nigeria;

- My views on solving Nigeria's problems were just one of many; the world would not fall down and bow before me, because everyone believed THEIR solution was THE solution;

- There was no such thing as free speech;

- There was a lot of ignorant people who were unwilling to let go of their incorrect and prejudiced information;

- There were also a lot of intelligent and insightful people who passed across a lot of valuable and interesting ideas to me.



After a while, online discourse began to lose its novelty, especially when I saw that the same old arguments were just being repeated in different versions. And today, I rarely take part in the stock arguments concerning Nigeria's political future. This is not because I don't believe those arguments are pointless; to the contrary, it's because the earlier arguments I was involved in have helped to properly form my views on Nigerian politics. But having served this purpose, there's not really much more to gain by continuing to get involved in these same old arguments.

So does this mean I will never take part in Nigerian political debate? No; it's just that the topic would have to be a particularly novel and insightful one that has not previously been explored. But given that more and more people are discovering the joys of online forums and want to first express their views on on ethnic and religious conflict, the way to economic prosperity, and the solutions to all of Nigeria's problems, I think more obscure topics will have to take a back seat for a while.