Most Africans at home and Blacks in Diaspora wonder out aloud where the so-called Giant of Africa went wrong and how it can be corrected. The explanation remains the same in every African country. Our talents, skills and resources are out of control. Successful countries manage and account for these talents and resources but a country like Nigeria sabotaged themselves in favor of anything foreign. We must face reality and stop the drainage.
Who dares demand and enforce accountability as miners scrabble for our resources like the Fortune of war today? Upon all the laws and regulations, gas flaring, electricity and outright theft of natural resources from the North to South are still going on, 70 years after Independence. Even Oil subsidies for the poor have been cornered now to benefit the rich. It goes beyond ethnic and regional rivalry.
The resources from our desert in the North, not to mention its abundance in the South are intentionally unaccounted for in the age of computers where every barrel of oil, diamond, limestone, gold etc can easily be monitored. Known operators hired by (oga at the top) in high places operating with impunity are ignored. When “caught”, they are granted pardon, amnesty and immunity from criminal activities. But we prosecute token crimes and misplace our anger by jungle justice on poor hungry people who steal food in the market.
Successive leaders just before Independence compromised accountability of our resources by contracting it to international corporate companies that pay taxes and report to their home countries. We were given Independence without colonial responsibility. The same disadvantageous relationship Kwame Nkrumah fought and warned Africans about. Local and foreign terrorists, bandits and drug peddlers are nurtured to divert our attention.
The saying that your freedom fighters are our terrorists and your terrorists are our freedom fighters has some validation. Those that came to Africa with goodwill in one hand and sword or guns on the other hand were the nightmare of African countries today because they trained embedded Africans to terrorize their own people in return for Economic Salvation in exile.
We failed to jealousy watch and keep our eyes on the Prize or on the talented people mother nature bestowed on our land. We cannot pretend that we do not have crazy people in our villages or abnormal individuals in a family. The difference is the pressure and norm within the community that curb their excesses. Our Id, the instinctive act is controlled by our personal Ego before the community SuperEgo steps in and returns individuals to their senses.
A society that lost control of its laws and morals, suffered the damages it failed to arrest. Most countries deserve the government they nurtured. Many dictators in authoritarian societies are either elected or rode to power on the back of tiger reactionaries that destroy them fighting for their choice of leadership. The fact that these uninsightful elements are a loud minority pushing the majority to their dungeons is remarkable. What we pray and wish for in our dreams may turn out differently from the way we imagine it: nightmare.
They encourage bad behavior under the justification that there are foreign soldiers of fortune that are needed to fight against their enemies. Invade and bastardize peaceful communities, culture, civilization and dominate. We know these soldiers of fortune are terrorists, bandits, kidnappers and insurrectionist that will come back to haunt us, turning our communities into the authoritarian regimes we detest and fear. If done at home, they also do worse outside.
Indeed, reasonable interpretation of extremists has been intentionally conflated with abnormal behaviors to shield bandits from accountability and scrutiny. We are now in a world where the extreme Religious Right double down and label those fighting for their basic Human Rights extremists on the far Left in order to exculpate their own crimes.
It is the height of naivete to expect those that have destroyed our past, to be the ones given another staff of political mantle to build our future. By the time we realize our worst fears, we would see their projections of inhumanity on others they claim are extremist leftists. How can people fighting and begging for their basic survival, human Rights, preaching live and let others live peacefully, be so demonized?
We all reap what we sowed since we fail to rescue the children of the poor used by those that are rotten and spoiled, in revenge. They have come back to haunt us. Unfortunately, the silent majority that never took part or contributed to the situation we find ourselves in Africa today, locally or globally are not spared of what many call tribulation. Many of today’s victims should not be held responsible for the naivete of their fathers that sold them out. It is not fair.
We all have instinctive guilt but some of us ignore or capitalize on it with confrontation, rude and pugnacious behavior to garner immediate advantage for narrow self interest; ignoring later repercussions on the community at large. Terrorists, bandits and thieves come from our individual families. We were indifferent to many as they grew wings while a few of them were encouraged and glorified after previous dastardly acts that should have raised eyebrows.
Once some individuals can accumulate money by any means, they package it through self-interest groups to fund political parties and think-tanks of educated mercenaries for repackaging. Those sponsored by ill-gotten gains could be terrorists, bandits, thugs and hooligans willing to obey their wish. They gain access to high places including prestigious institutions like the Religious, Judicial and higher learning institutions. These are the people that help shape the policies of the society until everything collapses like a pack of cards.
This is how societies encourage, sponsor and breed dictators with thugs insidiously. They capitalize on shortcuts solutions for every problem facing their societies promising to fix what they couldn’t in ages, from day one. Authoritarian leaders are hailed as heroes while the silent majority sleep on their complacency. Some of the silent majority are so sure, situations can never get as bad as the warnings on the wall; until the situations get worse.
Therefore, there is more blame to some than others when a village refuses to nurture the children. The African village that raises a child is fast disappearing into a global village that lures African youths from communities without input or say in the world “standards”. We are left to copy and invoke “world standards” as if that is the perfect way without any African input.
