By Babatunde Jones
If we are surprised by the current events making waves in the media regarding the accusation of the President of African Development Bank , we may be termed a bunch of bad students that learn little from history.
I said we with reference to the Sub-Saharan Africa without blinking an eye.
Among the African-Americans, the year 2019 was earmarked as the 400th anniversary of the first slaves that landed in the new world circa 1619. It is likened to the 400 years of liberation of the Hebrews in Egypt.
To be fair to the European stocks, since we moved out of the biblical garden of Eden, the world has never be a place of pity where you leave your neighbour alone (who may be endow with what you lack) without pouncing on his or her estate to become yours.
The Danes had at one time occupied the English before (hence most Yorkshire blood abounds with Danish DNA). The Russians or rather the Slavs (did you pick the origin of the word SLAVE there?) had their own history of subjugation by the Germanic tribes. Vikings ravaged Europe in their heydays for plunder and domination
Leaving Europe to Asia, the current rival power to the U.S. by name China was at a time conquered by the Mongols while the Bengalis in India had their own stories to tell.
Turning the memory vessel back home now, Oyo empire did not earn her reputation as being Mother Theresa to her conquered neighbours of about 6000 plus towns and villages in West Africa bringing in ISAKOLE to the coffers of Alafin in Oyo.
Going by the above, Sub-Saharan Africa seems to be the only region of the world that had been on her knees for far too long with a pitiful and almost hopeless present and God forbid, the future too. China and the rest of Asia has now mastered the ways of the West and learnt how to effectively use the same against them thus leveraging the teeming citizens out of poverty. No more direct interference in their internal governance compare to SSA.*
India is a technology rival in most sectors that matters. Where is Africa and Africans
The power holding us down seems to have one major, recurring weapon that consistently deliver and pin us to stagnation. That weapon is to catch the leader or the leadership by the jugular. Once that is done, the rest becomes sheep instead of Amotekun.
We are not intellectually inferior otherwise we wouldn’t have produced great people in all human fields even though the Western press and media continue to shroud these in the closet. There is T. Dorrance of Campbell Soup food processing conglomerate; John H Johnson of Ebony Magazine; our Awolowo, Prof. Awojobi, Deinde Fernandez and so infinite to appear on this short treatise.
Those are the visible heroes. Many had been buried in antiquity deliberately or forgotten by the non-investigative attitudes among our institutions. Saint Maurice was a popular saint in medieval Europe. Christopher Columbus had a negro assistant that possibly had his caramel (the ocean going vessel then) after Santa Maria. Crisspus Attuck took the first heroic bullet in 1776 during the Boston Tea Riot that commenced American revolution
But the question that is most useful to us is why is the motherland Africa the way she is, despite the reservoir of natural resources and privileged weather we have among many of our blessings ?
Minerals do not process themselves, humans do through efficient social organisation and technological applications. This tasks fall on the leaders. Leaders are cadre of gifted people of extraordinary means in whatever fields the divine sees fit.
The British use to boast that they excel most in self-organising wherever they find themselves. That is the major need for a society of people, tribes, race to survive and dominate the environment otherwise they perish. No two ways about it.
Since the beginning of the tri-continental slave trade our heroes, prophets, leaders and genius have either been murdered, bought over, frustrated or forced into exiles. They are then replaced with agents, errand boys, local warlords or in the word of Fela Kuti, ANOTHER CERTIFIED SLAVES doing the bidding of the distant masters , all to our detriment. Every body knows this. It is not hidden.
The Japanese adage that says the tallest reeds get mows first is fulfilled more among our people. The second a hero or a genius rear his or her head the sequence takes over.
For how long.?
Today it is Adesina taking the usual bullet or bashing. In the past it was Awolowo, Thomas Sankara, Patrice Lumumba and other countless dead heroes and heroines.
Whose turn will it be next among the children we are painstakingly rearing ?
To make matters worse back home our fighring spirit had been blunted with (mis)education, religion of IT IS THE WILL OF GOD. The appointed local caretaker are also doing good job of providing cogs in the wheel of progress at home with myriads of misrules, tribalism, importation of terrorists, and corruption of no small means.
I bring this write-up to encourage us to make sure we wage either peace or war in the struggle so our freedom in the South West and Southern Nigeria generally succeeds.
Only then can we truly have a nation independent of foreign influences. Only then will we stop standing aside while they kill our prophets*