A British politician recently declared:
> “I don’t want us to become a multicultural country where different people have different communities, no shared values, fragmented loyalties… I think it is getting harder to integrate people because immigration has been too high.”
At first glance, it sounds like the usual anti-immigration rhetoric. But when you step back, the hypocrisy is breathtaking. The United Kingdom—a nation that deliberately engineered Nigeria, a multicultural patchwork of over 250 ethnic groups—now turns around and says multiculturalism doesn’t work.
So let’s be clear: Britain is condemning in London what it created in Lagos.
The Colonial Experiment Nobody Asked For
Nigeria did not choose to be multicultural. Britain forced it. In 1914, Lord Lugard and his colonial superiors in Whitehall stitched together the North and South into one artificial state. Why? Because the British needed the South’s wealth to subsidize the North’s administration.
It was never about unity. It was never about nationhood. It was about empire and profit. The cultures, religions, and identities of the people meant nothing. Britain drew a line on the map and called it Nigeria.
The result? A country born fractured. Hausa-Fulani Muslims in the North, Yoruba in the West, Igbo in the East, and countless minority groups—each with distinct languages, loyalties, and traditions—thrown into one political cage.
Britain Condemns Abroad What It Cannot Stomach at Home
Now, more than a century later, Britain dares to say multiculturalism leads to “fragmented loyalties”. Well, of course it does. Nigerians know this too well. Our civil war, endless ethnic rivalries, power struggles, and secessionist movements all trace back to Britain’s reckless colonial experiment.
The UK can close its borders if it chooses. It can argue immigration is “too high.” But Nigeria cannot walk away from its forced diversity. Britain designed Nigeria this way, and we have been paying the bloody price ever since.
It’s the height of arrogance: the same Britain that could not integrate Ireland without centuries of violence is the one that believed it could weld 250 African nations into one and call it a success.
Own Up to the Legacy
The uncomfortable truth is this: Britain admits through its own words that multicultural states are almost impossible to manage. Yet it left behind Nigeria, knowing exactly that reality.
So when British leaders wring their hands about the “failure” of multiculturalism at home, Nigerians should remember: they are not just talking about their own society—they are describing the failure they deliberately imposed on us.
Nigeria is not a natural nation; it is a colonial creation. Britain built a multicultural time-bomb, walked away, and now condemns the very system it left us with. That is not just hypocrisy—it is historical betrayal.
Until Britain admits this, every lecture on immigration or multiculturalism from London will ring hollow in Lagos, Abuja, or anywhere in Africa still scarred by colonial cartography.