As a Nigerian, this sort of cuts to the heart of our problem: We have no Idea what "Nigeria" is. It is a void at the center of a name. I suggest reading and rereading this, but his point is consistent with his other writings (I'm a fan): At the heart of the modern (particularly western) world (of which Nigeria is a peripheral part of, if not in culture, in its enormous dependence on their technology and trade), there is a loss of centre. The "All" (God) is gone, we think we've killed Him. As a consequence, the all (totality, nature, being) is gone, we no longer have anything holding us together except sheer cultural inertia from the west's Christian past. The fragmentation and tribalism of the ancient world has reared its head up in our fundamentalisms and nationalisms. The only way back is to rediscover (even if in a form appropriate to our times) that center, and it will not be found in our atheistic secularisms and ideologies of "progress"... We have forgotten the past, and we are doomed to repeat its failures.