Many informed Africans sort out the difference between Nzeogwu and the first coming of Rawlings identical mission that had to do with resetting the brains in Ghana to default stage and the betrayal of a noble patriot in Nigeria that cried against ten percenters. The consequences of both bloody coup d’etat are obvious in both countries’ morality today. We claimed corruption is the greatest evil infesting Africa, hoping ruthless leaders like those in China would deal with it.
Ah, we went from the frying pan into the fire. Little did most of us realize that leaders that promised to root out corruption actually breeds and regale in Terrorism. It is a fact that only the Freedom Africans Fighters planned and implemented programs while those that stepped into their shoes rested in slumber on their oars. Some of us are still wishing and praying for better days ahead while others have lost hope because the good times they lived or dreamt are gone.
Their children and grandchildren never know an African country as a potential Regional Power.
Consequently, frivolity, indulgences and hedonistic tendencies have replaced practical local implementation and planning. Even the most developed countries worldwide still implement and plan for their immediate future while African countries are dying to pay any price to share their success. It does not matter if we sell our crude resources and use our meager foreign income to import and buy the refined crude products we are too lazy to refine. We have a country like Nigeria whose debt servicing has surpassed its income. Who put this curse on Africans?
Those patient enough to delay immediate gratification will reap the benefit of the seeds planted. Take a good look at the children of a country to predict its future. Those who want to walk before crawling always fall on their faces. Our rush to get rich quick, accumulate lovers, foreign instead of local designer attire, cars and park in luxurious rented homes instead of building ours catches up with us sooner than later. Africans say those that watered their future step on softer ground.
How did we get here? We value foreign readymades but our own. We pray to foreign Saints, Saviors even the slave owners name sugarcane plantations they created after themselves as St. Kitts, St. Thomas, St. Vincent and an African leader built the biggest Church in Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). While we pray or cram Misbah and Rosary in foreign languages we reject Africa’s religions. We discard our names so that to be baptized into new religions, Anglicize local names.
The best education you can provide anywhere is that provided locally that is so good it attracts foreign income as fees. Americans go to Mexico and India for cheaper qualitative treatment like the King of Saudi Arabia used to receive in University of Ibadan. It is a major source of income at the universities we run to abroad. The belief that the only good education for your children is the one obtained abroad is part of the colonial mentality planted in us from the beginning of the destruction of African civilization and slavery. Education is like a language taught and practiced for advancement in each country and continent. Space science is not only in English or French.
In fact, we all know European Nobel Prize winners are recognized in Art and Science from different countries and languages. It is one thing to learn the language or mis-education of your oppressors but a different scenario to absorb it against your self-interest or culture as Stockholm syndrome. Victims do identify with their abusers. The benefit of studying at Oxford, Harvard, Mcgill or Toronto is no greater than learning different languages to communicate, negotiate and share ideas. It is not to excel in a country or continent that is not yours. If your education cannot benefit your country or continent, consider your knowledge wasted because no matter how good you are, discrimination or natural preference for their own overrides your wasted talents.
Using the sake of the children to justify the only good education they need abroad are mere bragging rights. They are our wasted efforts since most of them will never benefit our culture, country or continent. Children trained abroad have more personal family problems in their local environment to deal with than African problems. Mark this, the further their birth ties to Africa, the less financial remittances they are going to send back to Africa. Indeed, you deprive local children of foreign income by depleting Central Bank reserves in your children’s favor while their poor co-students work to pay their own fees.
You are converting the hard earned money from poor African students to poor families our governments refused to take care of or ignored, back. These patrons of foreign colleges and hospitals generate income to run universities and hospitals abroad; neglecting our best universities in Africa. They are indifferent to Makerere in Uganda, Fourier Bay College in Sierra Leone, University of Cape Town Ghana, University of Ibadan (where foreign dignitaries used to come for treatment), University of Nigeria Nsukka, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria and many others begging for maintenance funds to be up to par with those established with abroad.
These prodigal Africans would rather donate money to European and American universities in exchange for honorary degrees. We revere African scholars contributing their best abroad and nominate them for awards at home, not local talents. Just like the youths beating their chests black and blue if a member of their ethnic got a job abroad as head of dog catchers. They will buy your talents cheaply without a choice on your own part. They will tell you: if you think you are that good, your talents will be more useful where you belong.
If this is not craziness, what could this be? Compare it to the reasons African looters get financial visas and awards abroad. They must have either sold out Africa like Judas sold Jesus for pieces of silver or as remorse for exposing the hideout of Mandela in South Africa as a Freedom Fighter. Noriega of Panama, a well known drug dealer was tolerated in the States as long as he remained a useful spy until he got too cocky for his usefulness. Swiss banks and Panama safe haven remain the best places for Africans to hide the loot to buy awards or visas.
Our complaints and regrets today are over the caliber of indifferent Africans that are ruling individual countries. Many of them are worse than colonial exporters. Unfortunately, these complainants include some of us that have never gone home after our studies or qualifications as youths to contribute when able or vigorous like those that save Africans from Ebola. Some of the postgraduate students that got grants and scholarships abroad absconded. During the first coming of Rawlings, on their visits back home, they were detained until they paid back.
So, we go home on vacations or when we are old and frail. Africa needs our talents and not a plot to bury our dead cold bodies. Therefore, when we complain about terrorists, bandits, ritualists and drug dealers ruling African countries, we are the ones that left the void, a big hole in the wall through which unsavoury lizards made their ways.
Farouk Martins Aresa @oomoaresa
