Cowboy Snippets: Biodun Olamosu (2000) Crisis of Education in Nigeria

Another day, another mug of tea - and another reference to cowboys in Nigeria.

Now, in recent months I've read plenty of literature that discusses the impact of Hollywood and Italian Westerns and their notoriously ambiguous heroe, 'the Cowboy,' in Nigeria. I have recently found a reference to these films in an interesting context, Biodun Olamosu's (2000) book Crisis of Education in Nigeria. Olamosu shares with many other Nigerian commentators that I have come across a disdain for cowboy movies and in particular their alleged subversive effects on Nigerian youths. – I say 'alleged' because I am instinctively doubtful of argument that claim to identify singular causes of what may be described as anti-social or disorderly behaviour or, indeed, crime among young people, in fact, among any social group. And, this response is even more pronounced if the blame is almost exclusively put on any one medium (video games, music, films, books – over here it's currently fashionable to blame the Qur'an-, social media), foreign or otherwise. I can't help it. From where I stand that looks like a suspiciously convenient argument to absolve oneself and one's own society of all blame and to instead scapegoat someone or something else. Preferably something that wasn't around when 'we' were their age so that we can conviently blame 'today's youths.'