The Demise of a Cultural Heritage - The Lapper is Yielding

Earlier, putting on a trousers is a sign of immodesty, society looked at such ladies with different eyes. But with all this, the trousers was resilient. And today it has conquered, it’s the most preferable clothe for majority of the ladies. There is now a silence acceptance of the trousers, even by the most conservative religious folks. But why has the lapper (wrapper) been treated so unfairly by the younger generation? Is it that the trousers is more comfortable? Is it easier to deal with? Is it more fashionable? Or just trying to look Western? No matter the reasons, it came stealthily, saw a weakness and conquers.  Nowadays, a lady is not up to standard if she does not put on a trousers. The few ladies that still reserve the lappers use them only at home or in the neighbourhood. Going out to the street, visiting friends or festivals, the trousers is the undisputable and unchallenged clothe to put on. I strongly believe that these are the type of cultural practices that we should be fighting to protect. The lapper causes no harm. It only identifies us as Africans with a unique dress. Whenever she is on her lapper with her head tied, you see the beauty of the true African woman. The culture is eroding and there is no one to stand up and rescue it from the deadly coup wage by the trousers. Instead, we fight for female genital circumcision, we fight against children’s right, domestic violence against women, corporal punishment in schools and in homes, we fight against women’s inheritance laws, in general, we ignorantly fight against human right laws, claiming that these are alien to our cultural practices. They are foreign importations. Yes but it is our culture to beat our children mercilessly for stealing the rice even though he was starving to death, it is our culture to be late, (read more about BMT), it is our culture to sell grades for sex (coming up soon) but it is not our culture to preserve the lappers. True African Culture is never static and it should never be. Culture should be base on logic or proper reasoning. Sensible people cannot just accept a culture simply because their ancestors were practising it. “They say, ‘nay, these is what we found our fore-fathers doing’, even when they lacked guidance?”, says the Quran. Let’s re-evaluate our cultural practises, sheave them well and store all the harmful ones in the museums. And let’s don’t reinvent the tyre, but let’s take a look at what others have and incorporate from them those things that are good. The lapper is one good cultural heritage that deserves preservation. And things like secret societies, wives and child beating, giving birth to a football team, etc. etc. deserve no place in our modern society.