SOCIAL MEDIA STORYLINE EPISODE 160 THE INVISIBLE CHAINS: MENTAL COLONIZATION IN IGALA NATION AND NIGERIA AT LARGE By Comrade Enemona Abel Ellah When the colonial masters arrived on our shores, they did not come merely with ships, flags, and guns. They came with something more potent, more lasting, and more devastating than the physical conquest of lands—they came with tools to colonize the mind, spirit, and soul of a people rich in culture, wisdom, and sovereignty. This is the untold story that continues to haunt the Igala Nation and Nigeria at large. They came with sociologists and anthropologists—not to appreciate or elevate our civilization, but to study us like specimens. They examined our behavior, our values, our society, and our systems, not to learn from them, but to understand how to break them, control them, and eventually replace them. They documented our ways only to distort them and make us question the very essence of who we are. They brought PSYCHOLOGISTS, not to heal but to manipulate. These early mind engineers were tasked with studying our mental patterns—how we think, how we learn, how we respond to authority—and with this information, they helped design systems that would train us to distrust our own wisdom, depend on foreign approval, and glorify everything alien while rejecting everything indigenous. Then came the HISTORIANS, armed with pens instead of guns, yet no less dangerous. They rewrote our stories, erased our heroes, Like Attah Ameh Oboni 1946 to 1956 the Piller of resistance to foreign oppression, Attah Oguche Akpa 1911 to 1918, Attah ocheje Onukpa (nokwa) who rejected the division of igala kingdom and a was banished and assassinated in Asaba, Attah Ameh ocheje who rejected the gift from Queen Elizabeth and said he didn't trust the white men and the cannot settle with us in idah and should took them oko eja and give them lokoja for farming in an agreement to pay 700 cawories but 160 was paid remaining to complete the payment after 40 years or Attah will revoked his land back which was done in 2020 by Abuja high court. What Ayegba oma idoko 16-15 16-16 single handedly won a wars between Jukun and Benin without a external assistant despite the Benin kingdom was assisted by Portuguese slave traders with suphistigated weapon he won. Amichi Ebulejonu, Abutu ejeh and others. They diluted our legends, and disconnected us from the very roots of our existence. They made it seem like history began when they arrived. For instance, they told us that Mungo Park discovered the River Niger—as if our ancestors did not live, fish, farm, and build civilizations around that same river long before Park's boat touched its waters. They sent religious missionaries, many of whom were sincere, but many others came with an agenda: to replace our deep-rooted spiritual understanding with a belief system that would make us submissive and dependent. Our native spirituality—rich in science, healing, astronomy, ethics, and community balance—was labeled evil, demonic, and backward. With that theft of spirituality, we lost our internal compass and surrendered our spiritual sovereignty. They unleashed POLITICIANS, not to empower us, but to create confusion and division. They designed systems that alienated us from our time-honored, centralized authority, and effective kingship structures. Our traditional institutions, once the bedrock of justice, unity, and development, were weakened. Power was handed over to puppets who served foreign interests and fostered disunity among ethnic groups. And when all else failed, they brought soldiers—to silence, eliminate, and intimidate those who resisted. Every act of resistance was met with violence, every voice of dissent was muted with blood, and every effort to preserve independence was met with a ruthless show of force and all this are still happening in our democracy today. Then came the educationists, the final architects of mental domination. They crafted an educational system that told us what to learn and what to forget. We were taught to recite Shakespeare but not to memorize the proverbs of Attah Ayegba oma Idoko and others elders. We were taught European history but not the heroic sagas of Igala warriors like onoja Oboni and Ibaji warriors which supposed to serve as architect of igala military zone. We learned about Newton laws, but not about the mathematical genius embedded in African architecture, traditional medicine, astrology, and agriculture. Till today, we are still victims of a carefully designed system of lies. We celebrate “independence,” yet we remain mentally enslaved. Our political systems, educational structures, economic practices, and even religious expressions are still patterned after the colonial mold. We have exchanged physical chains for psychological ones. The Question of Our Time Now, the critical question is this: how many of us are still mentally colonized? The colonizers are long gone, but their systems still control our decisions, our tastes, our religion, our governance, and our perceptions. Many of us have accepted abnormality as normal, and we ridicule those who seek to question the system or free themselves from it. Today, Comrade Enemona Abel Ellah is one of those attempting to break free. He dares to challenge the mental prisons and social constructs imposed on us. Yet, he is mocked by those who have grown too comfortable in captivity. To them, thinking critically is a crime. Questioning tradition is rebellion. And anyone who tries to awaken the masses is jobless, unserious, or delusional. But the truth is this: those who resist the system are not the problem—the problem is a society that has made ignorance fashionable, pretending to be asleep in the face of injustice and submission honorable. A Call to the Igala Nation and Nigeria at Large To the Igala Nation, remember that we once had a proud and centralized kingdom respected across regions. Our ancestors governed with wisdom, built with purpose, and lived with dignity. We must reclaim that legacy—not just through empty pride but through practical reawakening: rewriting our history, restructuring our governance, reimagining our education, and reviving our spiritual and cultural sovereignty. To Nigeria, it is time to interrogate the systems we inherited. We must ask hard questions about the source of our division, the foundation of our development model, and the relevance of our education to our realities. True independence is not in flag-raising ceremonies or national holidays—it is in the liberation of the mind. In this 160th episode of the Social Media Storyline, the message is clear: until we dismantle the psychological chains of colonization, no true freedom, unity, or development can be achieved. Let this be a wake-up call to all—freedom begins in the mind. By Comrade Enemona Abel Ellah An advocate for truth, mental liberation, and national reawakening.