Investigative journalist, David Hundeyin, has called on Nigerians to resist foreign influences that threaten to erode the country’s cultural identity.
Hundeyin, in a series of posts on X following the controversy surrounding Paystack co-founder Ezra Olubi, reiterated his earlier position that external influences are contributing to what he described as Nigeria’s “social degradation.”
According to him, a nation of more than 200 million people must see itself as “big and important enough to dictate its own internal culture.”
He questioned why Nigerians appear especially vulnerable to cultural shifts driven by external forces, contrasting this with countries like Bangladesh, Brazil, Indonesia and Pakistan.
Hundeyin wrote: “Nigerians should ask themselves how easy it is to use American money to modify and subvert Bangladeshi or Brazilian or Indonesian or Pakistani culture. How easy is it for outside influence wearing an Indonesian face to convince Indonesians to go from ‘socially conservative’ to ‘publicly tweet about joining polycule’ in just over a decade?”
He also cited the Brazilian example, noting that despite an economic boom, voters were influenced into “obliterating 60% of their own GDP in 10 years.” He further questioned how easy it would be to convince Pakistanis to see Russia or China as adversaries despite their strategic value.
Hundeyin argued that, unlike Nigeria, these countries — though imperfect — have systems that defend both their people and their cultural essence.
He warned that Nigeria risks losing its cultural identity entirely, drawing parallels with ancient civilisations whose physical descendants remain but whose cultural memory has been wiped out.
“There are a lot of things I hate and wish to change about Nigerian culture,” he wrote, “but I do not want ‘The Nigerian’ to disappear from the earth, the way the Mayans or Aztecs have disappeared.”
Hundeyin blamed the nation’s declining cultural confidence on a widespread obsession with wealth.
According to him, Nigeria’s fixation on money has made its society easy to manipulate.
“Because Nigerians worship money over everything else, we are being socially engineered like rats in a lab experiment by anyone who has the money to do it,” he said.
He pointed to the rise of foreign accents in private schools, Western curricula, and building practices unsuited to Nigeria’s climate as examples of this shift.
Hundeyin argued that Nigeria’s brightest minds now aspire to make money without solving real problems — a mindset he attributes to a decade of American-style messaging focused solely on wealth.
He warned that unless Nigerians “touch grass” and regain control of their cultural trajectory, the country risks becoming a global case study in self-inflicted cultural erasure.
“We are not in control of this monster we are riding,” he wrote. “If we don’t dismount very soon, we are going to end up inside its stomach.”
