20 Dec 2008 |
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Willing Black Slaves, Unwilling White Masters! The gory history of slave trade is known worldwide by the victims (Africans) and the perpetrators (Whites). Every part has some reason to defend themselves even when the core issue at stake is indefensible: the brutal abuse of Blacks by their White slave masters to foster superior domination by exploiting the differences in power and knowledge then. Slavery, even today, evokes memories of fraud, of forced labour, of torture and of dehumanisation of the worst kind. Historians worldwide are seemingly united in their damning conclusion that some gun-totting European slave traders, centuries ago, kidnapped millions of Africans from their homelands and forcibly transported them across the Atlantics to the Americas. The most dramatic tool of this singular suppression and subjugation is called the compass, a device used globally for navigation. Civilization was thus reduced to the human conquest in which the mighty dominated the weak with ease. Historically speaking the slave merchandise started in August 1444 and spanned a whole four centuries exposing shamefully the depravity of human greed and wickedness which found its roots in differences in colour and race. The history of the African Diaspora traces its origin to the success of this most brutal displacement and unapologetic abduction of a particular race by the other in human history. Today Africa still bears the scars of slave trade and remembers how the early whitemen defrauded history with superior intelligence at their disposal. Yet as we mourn the sad fortunes of our forebears (with majority forced to abandon their original names except the Kunta Kintes) we lament together the existence of modern-day slavery in today's troubled world. Without slave trade one wonders how Africa would have been faring with the best brains that were drained out of its continent. An interesting report back home from Nigeria had it recently that four young boys (between the ages of 18 and 25) were involved in a stoling-away adventure in a ship sailing from Lagos to Spain. Armed innocently with some provisions and a pocket radio they 'hacked' into the ship using a hired boat. As the ship approached the Morrocan naval space, four days on, the boys ran out of food and drink and used hammer to raise alarm -- faced with starvation and fear of death.They were rescued and shipped back to Nigeria.
The Spanish crew were generous enough. They had an easy option of throwing the four 'Naija' boys overboard into the sea and continuing their voyage in peace. (Many a Nigerian had lost their lives this way with no one back home ever knowing about it!). The Spanish crew had to make a detour shipping the boys back to their point of departure incurring heavy losses in the process. The Nigerian local authorities that were on the ground to receive the 'deported' boys were talking about stiff penalties, talking tough as though they were alien to the protracted ubiquitous poverty in the land.
The future of the Nigerian youth is heavily compromised. That is why today armed robbery has become a national phenomenal business involving billions of naira. You have heavily armed fearless robbers (including women) holding a city hostage and going in and out of banks with ease. The police force, ill-equipped and compromised morally by corruption and mediocrity, look on helpless with some of them bloodied, sacrificed and killed. The situation is desperate as human life is reduced to worthlessness and the scramble for money a straight-forward battle between politicians and robbers.
In a nation that has no social security that takes care of the vulnerable and the old, in a nation that produces more poor folks than rich men day in day out it it is to be bemoaned that the natural richness God placed in our lands (oil) has translated to a curse. Nigeria, from all economic indices and indication, does not have any business being poor and sorrounded with more people growing poorer and few rich men growing richer. The failure of leadership has every reason to be blamed for this social abomination! In the face of this social dislocation nothing more is desirable than a responsive leadership that knows what it entails to undertake a social revolution that targets the youths, the leaders of tomorrow. Sadly that leadership is far away from being established; with the current occupant of Aso Rock, Musa Umaru Yar'Adua, marrying more of his beautiful wife, Turai, than attending to crucial state matters, becoming more of a darling good husband than confronting head-on the hard issues of the day the ship of state sinks slowly at the hands of an indisposed President at the mercy of his doctors and Allah's benevolence.
The unsound health profile of President Yar'Adua is chiefly responsible for the unprecedented procrastination syndrome in Abuja. President Yar'Adua is held hostage by those Prof. Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate, described as "reprobates and recidivists latched to the ear of power". A potentially great nation that should be leading the black race to a 'paradise' lost is thus enmeshed in a survival tango with economy and politics.
There is no odd job a black man cannot be seen to be doing abroad to make ends meet. From refuge collection to morgue attendance (or dressing up dead bodies!); from cab driving to restaurant dish washing it is an old story of disguised second slavery. If Africa and Africans matter so much in the global developmental equation, in the international politico-economic considerations what stops the West from doing justice to the African general worsening condition of penury? Why not the extension of the famous Marshal Plan treatment Europe generously received after the 2nd world war devastation? There ought to be a decisive solution to the wars, poverty, diseases, despair and chaos Africa is associated with.
Should a free and fair referendum be organized today in sub-saharan Africa (Nigeria and cholera-infested Zimbabwe for example) majority of the people would expressly vote for second slavery! They would prefer being shipped en-masse to Europe and America as voluntary slaves. Do you blame them? They would be better off whereever they are 'sold' out, their economic status better than the present case in their native lands where petty dictators and unruly rulers ruin their future and abandon them to a hopeless fate.
It was a tragedy without majesty yesterday! Today it is rather a pathetic case of willing black slaves and unwilling white slave masters.The future is terribly bleak indeed!
SOC Okenwa
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