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Is there a divine curse on the black race which is yet to be exorcised?
Have we been carted off to damnation through the deification of our
lesser gods of ogun, iyemaja, obatala, ifa, sagbeto and many other
symbols of divine disobedience littering our continent? Is it divine
curse or greed that still shackles us to the coat-tails of Lebanese,
Indians, white South Africans and Europeans to the laughable degree
that they now control the fortunes of black Africans from Angola to
Zimbabwe?
Is there any truth in the mythological belief that blacks are
especially suited to suffering, brutality and deprivation? Could that
be the reason why the United State and Britain was built on the blood,
tears and brawn of the black race through gruesome slavery? Could that
be the reason why we are able to take on dictators after dictators and
still bounce back as if nothing had happened to our collective psyche?
Why is there no translation of massive renaissance of progress and
prosperity after horrors of our sufferings, first, in the hands of
colonialists; and second, under the iron fist of our mad rulers? Are we
the way we are because of our low intelligence? Is there a fault-line
in our collective genes?
Richard Lynn, Emeritus Professor of Psychology and a hardened
torchbearer for race merchants, once said that black Africans are the
most retarded of all races. This despicable Ulster icon must have
watched with horror the retardation of our brains through mindless
plunder of sacred national resources by a few cabals. Also, in cahoots
with Lynn was Professor Jean Philippe Rushton’s alarming conclusion
that our brain is smaller than those of other races, leaving us less
intelligent but more highly sexed and aggressive.
In a politically correct world, it is no longer fashionable to regard
blacks as inferior to white. It is even becoming a taboo to discuss the
prickly topic of intelligence among races. But right wing race writers
are refusing to be silenced so easily. They wonder why former white-led
black African countries like Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and
Zimbabwe are far more successful than those guided by black hands. They
wonder why most of black Africa remains a primitive jungle where
social, economic and political activities are in a permanent state of
chaos.
Today,
progressive-minded black Africans are paralysed by pessimism. They
believe that black Africa’s problems go beyond the usual shibboleths of
corrupt leadership, mindless brutality, tribalism and broken vision. We
might have some flashes of genius among us like the Anthony Enahoros,
the Soyinkas, the Achebes and the Tahirs but our collective space is
colonised far more by imbeciles than visionaries. Is our problem due to
some spiritual forces working against us as suggested by venerable, Dr.
D.K Olukoya, the general overseer of Mountain of Fire?
It
is emotionally and psychologically sad, that, in this side of heaven,
black Africans are mere drifters in a changing world. Black Africa has
lost its own connexity so much that we now exist in a vast oasis of
darkness. The database of our minds contains the evil of hate,
jealousy, greed, wickedness, senseless injustice, disorder, disharmony,
mistrust, brutality, poverty and widespread primitive witchcraft. All
the byways of civilised human conduct and behaviour are non-existence
in majority of black African city-slums and chaotic capitals.
Now
let us reach out into the deepest black Africa and confront the
supposed jewel in the black man’s crown-Nigeria. I have always
maintained that the destiny of the entire black race, for good or bad,
rest gingerly on Nigeria. We are the most populous black nation on
earth. Nigeria’s 140 million suffering humanity represents 21 per cent
of the continent’s population. The present coma condition of the giant
of Africa is absurd, irrational and shameful. I could hear the groans
of the dying in the absence of drug in our hospitals. Daily, the
wounded souls of our unemployed youth readily find expression in the
terrors of darkness as they turn to armed robbery to feed forgotten mum
and dad. Many optimists still believe that the abundance of our natural
and human resources may usher a future prospect of prosperity. Bring on
the Nigerian Dream!
Sadly,
we have more dreamers in Nigeria than anywhere else in black Africa. We
have been locked in that dream time capsule for 48 tortuous years of
eroding hope. However, the pessimists on the other hand will stress
that Nigeria is a metaphor for everything that is wrong with the black
race. Nigeria, with all its fabled wealth is seen as hell on earth.
There must be something far beyond the failings of leadership for
Nigeria to remain unable to deliver a society as socially enlightened
and economically vibrant as any other country.
Indonesia,
Singapore, Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia are as corrupt and tribally
volatile like Nigeria but the difference is clear when you compare the
level of their poverty with Nigeria’s. Majority of these countries
started new life when the embers of colonialism died out in their
respective countries.
Today,
we are all laying claim to South Africa, with all its contradictions,
as authentically the black man’s paradise. My position on South Africa
has always been clear. If South Africa had been left to the laps of the
Mandelas, Mbekis and Zumas, it would have remained like any other
blackman’s ghettoised society of decay and death.
There
is a relentless logic in the assertion that black Africans cannot birth
a society based on fairness, love, compassion, even development and
social justice. The belief that every citizen has a stake in the
corporate destiny of our continent is drowned by national hatred and
jealousy as seen recently in the treatment of Nigerians by South
Africa, Libya, Botswana and Ghana. These African nations are erecting
billboards of ‘Ba shiga’-no entry- against us but across the Atlantic
ocean, the Europeans are coming together under one super state of
vibrant economic prosperity and free movement of trade and human. Black
Africans, who are we?
The
subtext is loud: we are not the same, though we wear the same pigment.
Why are we embracing the heritage of bitterness against one another?
Why is brother fighting against his brother? Even, the ‘Fulanised’
Northern Nigeria, during the dark days of boot camp regimes of the
Generals concocted a laughable pyramid of racial hierarchy. The
blue-blooded Fulanis suddenly found themselves one big notch above the
Yorubas and the Igbos due to their light skin and monopoly of our
military high commands. In a country where so many groups, each jealous
of its own physiognomy, live side by side, but at heart we hate
ourselves, speaks volume of who we really are.
The
constant trope of hopelessness in black Africa, a land flowing with
milk and honey formed the theme of two daring journalists who
courageously opened the lid on our continental infamy. Keith B.
Richburg is an African-American journalist and former bureau chief of
the Washington Post in Africa. His damning book, Out of Africa, is a
courageous work of truth, detached objectivity and unsentimental
portrait of who we really are.
His
sobering conclusion was that, though he is black, he is nevertheless
grateful that his parents made the journey to America!!! Karl Maier, in
his book, This House Has Fallen, went for Nigeria’s national jugular
and concluded that we are in crisis.
These
two heroic writers have seen so much tyranny and oppression of the
voiceless majority by a tiny cabal of rulers who shot to power either
through the guns or rigging of election result. Like this writer, they
have seen black Africa’s rulers’ natural embrace for military coercion,
propensity for wastage, political terrorism and total absence of
sympathy for the suffering masses.
In
conclusion, I have to admit that I am a victim of black Africa’s
dislocated vision. I have wrestled with the moral anguish this piece
throws at me. Is it right to beam a writer’s search light on the infamy
of the Dark Continent? Is it right to submit to a writer’s liberty and
paint a depressing pen portrait of my people, the black Africans?
However,
the rational weighing of available facts suggest that black Africans
are different and are mostly too willing to destroy the fabric of their
own society for personal gains as we saw in the likes of Abacha,
Mobutu, Idi-Amin, Samuel Doe, Houphouet Boigny, Eyadema, Koroma, Haille
Mariam, Kabanda, Arap Moi, Kabila, Barre, Aideed, Garang, Bongo and
Mugabe. Can anyone still tell me who we are?
Tijani, a social and Afrocentric scholar, lives in London.
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Posted by Robot| 22.09.2008 11:12