Hello Africans, Did You Know You Are Now Old Enough To Enjoy Self-Determination?
The Smart African, 22 January 2022
Given the behaviour I see daily in Nigeria (where I am presently), and the types of conversations that I hear, I believe we Africans need to regularly remind ourselves that: we have been around on Earth for as long as other communities! I think we need such a reminder on a daily basis until we actually begin to create a civilisation that works for us. For instance, in the time that the White man has been on Earth he has created a civilisation that works for him. So by now, Africans ought to have been able to reach that status too, of having a general culture out of which a satisfactory civilisation would have been built.
If we look at it, for many centuries now, the African has been known to be the labourer of the world. He is the one used for very hard labour either for his own Rulers, or for foreign people – he is seen as the Enslaved Race of the Earth. As a kind of human beast of burden, doing the heavy work. Like an ox. Or a mule. Today, Africans flee the Continent either legally or illegally in order to find work in Europe, Arabia, Asia or the Americas, most often doing the low paid menial jobs that the citizens in those countries will not do.
Let me quote from “The Arab-Muslim Slave Trade” by David Gakunzi, Jewish Political Studies Review. Vol.29, No. 3/4 (2018) pp. 40-42:
“Yet the Arab slave trade, a major component of African history, lasted more than 13 centuries. It began in the early 7th century and continued in one form or another until the 1960s…”
The Arab enslavement of Africans started 1000 years (!) before the European one did, even though Black people like to focus solely on “what the White man did to us”. Just as the White enslaver would say, the Arab enslaver said the same thing about our forefathers. Quoting again from the same article,
“The Tunisian Arab historian Ibn Khaldun (1332 – 1406) wrote that ‘the only peoples to accept [my emphasis] slavery are the Negroes, because of their lower level of humanity, their place being closer to the animal stage’…”
We can continue either shrugging off these terribly unflattering and even insulting descriptions of Black people, or, we can wonder in disbelief at our forefathers who thought it would ever be okay in the end, for them to sell their children and their young people into slavery (or be forced to allow it to happen, if you prefer). Ibn Khaldun used the word “accept”. That means that the MAJORITY of the people did not fight those Africans who were encouraging and aiding the enslavement of their people. We know it was the leadership class ie the Traditional Rulers who against the good of their own people, cooperated with foreign slave merchants for immediate personal gains.
Fast forward to today. Africans are still suffering and having terrible lives because of what we call “bad leadership”. That means that it is still Africa’s leadership class (Political, Traditional and Religious) that continues to be the enemy of the welfare and happiness of Africans. They can do so because unlike White people who in centuries past fought their rulers to get the freedoms they enjoy today, Africans still have not realized that they too need their right to Self-Determination. Africans in the past, and still today, bow under whatever the powers-that-be inflict on them, and on their children. To an observer with a more mature way of looking at life, it means that they actually “accept” whatever is thrown at them.
Essentially, the right to Self-Determination is the right of a people to determine their own destiny. In Nigeria the people have simply “accepted” the ridiculously high levels of corruption and the backwardness it brings along, by saying with a grin, “We are used to it!”
When there is no electricity and someone can’t do a particular task that requires it, he responds with: We are used to it! Not action.
When there is fuel shortage and therefore long queues at petrol stations in an oil producing country like Nigeria, motorists respond with: We are used to it! Not action.
When car journeys that should take a few hours take nearly a whole day because of terribly potholed roads, drivers respond with: We are used to it! Not action.
When there are heaps of rubbish and human/animal waste littering the streets with no sanitation system and no waste disposal, citizens respond with: We are used to it! Not action.
Being used to a bad situation is not where a real man should be. It is not ADULT thinking. An adult is someone who sees a bad or dangerous situation then goes about to change it, and thus he improves his community. The White man is able to live in that type of progressing civilisation because he has Self-Determination so he controls what happens to him, and to his children. That is because he controls what the leaders can do. How does he manage that? It is because he is the one who writes, then agrees to his national Constitution, not his politicians. A nation’s Constitution is always written and ratified by “we the people”. A national Constitution spells out the roles of leaders, the limits of their powers, and the expectations of the people.
If we stick with Nigeria, the men there are ignoring their duty to abolish the illegitimate 1999 Constitution foisted upon them, and which creates the backwardness and now existential threats that they and their children face. Ignoring to do the right thing means ACCEPTING this bad situation. Nigerians should remind themselves that as Black people they have been on this Earth for as long as the White man, and so it is high time to rise to their responsibility to be Adult, and thus do the needful to get Self-Determination for their Ethnic Nation. Just as the White man acts to give himself a good civilization, the Nigerian man also needs to act. Fortunately, the non-violent NINAS Movement has an ORDERLY PROCESS to get it done. Link to their website:
Dear Africans, look at the civilisations of those other communities whose countries we so desire to live in, and let us never forget that our People have been on Earth for as long as theirs have been, so that means that we are now old enough to enjoy Self-Determination! Hence, we Africans (acting as Adults) must first desire, then seek to control our destiny, ourselves.