THE AFRICAN MIND PART 2

                            

IS HAM’S CURSE THE INABILITY TO ASK WHY OR HOW?

Amongst a series of sesame street alphabet books I read to my boy, I particularly like the one that deals with the letter W. It’s titled “Bert wonders why”. Every time I traverse the rich landscape of this letter with my son, we both see Bert wondering why a lot of things are the way they are. His head is filled with more question marks than there are on the suit of the Riddler. As time passed on it has slowly dawned on me that the book is a deliberate attempt to spark something in the mind of the young, a conscious effort to fuel the leaping flames of a toddler’s curiosity.


One of the monikers Africa is known by, is the “dark continent” and I believe this comes more from the dark clouds of nescience billowing over the soul of our race than our skin colour.

My pastor said that whatever the African does not understand he puts a label of mysticism on.  After a couple of drowning accidents in riverine areas where there are strong currents, the local dweller would most likely attribute the event to a powerful force in the river and idolize it while a Caucasian who comes along would do some measurements and build a bridge over the river.


The phenomenon of lightening was a bit too much for man to fathom which made us in Nigeria attribute its power to Sango, the god of thunder but stopped at that juncture. Life was peachy so long the god was given his dues. He later became associated with the Nigerian Power Holding company popularly known as Nepa and it is not a surprise that we are still besieged by epileptic power supply in this modern age. Some might argue that the Caucasians also had Thor, who was Sango’s Scandinavian equivalent but they did not stop there. During the 1700s Benjamin Franklin became interested in electricity and spent almost a decade conducting electrical experiments. Ultimately he discovered that lightning is an electric current in nature and also that it is dangerous. The man was inspired to invent the lightening rod which protects people and their property. Now the constancy of their power supply can be likened to that of the seasons.


Edward Jenner in the 18^th century noticed that milk maids did not generally get small pox and started wondering why and how to prevent the dreaded disease. His probing mind uncovered the breakthrough we have in immunology till date. I stand to be corrected but I haven’t yet heard of an African producing any vaccine for any disease even those that are predominant around here. In Africa, small pox was attributed to the wrath of aggrieved gods and the patients were left to die.


This difference in approach to life and its complexities is the bane of the African life. We come short when it comes to analysis and research. We almost have no statistics for any thing in Nigeria. This shows up in our books, movies, politics, education, name it. Without research to add to our creativity, our productions come out as abysmal. Try watching a medical scene on a home video. CAUTION! You might just puke. But when you watch flicks like Gray’s anatomy, House or ER, you almost always think you are seeing real doctors in action. Erich Segal spent four years on his book “Acts of Faith” and it turned out to be a bestseller. He spent that amount of time unraveling all the intricacies connected to the plot. We need to borrow a leaf from his book.


There’s something that prevents Africans from asking why things are the way they are and how to circumvent restrictions. Instead we attribute everything to angels and demons. Our churches also do not help matters sometimes. Medicine men are a dime a dozen, feeding off people's folly like scavengers on carrion. We spend loads of time binding and casting, sacrificing and chanting, bowing and kneeling and never ask why. If anything, the forces that are held in so much awe thrive on the obtuseness of the dark mind like microbes in blood agar.


In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, it was noted that the South Korean Airline had a lot of crashes, causing a lot of disquiet in air travelling circles. This necessitated some research and the inference made was that the underlying problem is cultural. This discovery went a long way in ameliorating the challenge but in this environment we might still have been entreating the gods of the atmosphere and binding the Prince in charge of the air. The fact that someone thought of why and how, simplified a prodigious problem.


Amazingly when we travel to more enabling shores, the African mind becomes like a golden eagle that has been freed from a titanium cage and soars to unimaginable heights. This proves that our challenge is cultural. There is something about the black man’s culture that thrives in ignorance. His culture exhibits gravity like pull on his mind. This explains why sometimes a Harvard business school graduate with enough qualifications to make him the beau of Athena would get entrenched in the same rut of nepotism, greed and myopia that an unenlightened compatriot finds himself in when it comes to running a business in this country.


Our society is more interested in the certificates and laurels that come from education (which is why parents will pay for their kids to have exams in special centers where they will have the latitude to cheat, students will pay lecturers in the satellite campuses of our universities to pass without receiving lectures amongst other things) but will despise learning, the light that dispels the darkness of dumbness.


I can almost wager that if it were an African that an apple fell on instead of Sir Isaac Newton, he would have quickly bitten into its luscious succulent skin and thanked the spirits who bestowed such kindness on him or he would have run off in a frightful haste believing that it was the devilry of his household enemies. But it was not so with the great scientist, that common incident sparked off a trail of questions that that led to the taming of gravity.


For any one with insight it is so obvious that the African continent is brimming with potential and great wealth, human and otherwise even much more than our first world contemporaries. The fact that we are still way behind them is strongly attributed to the curse that Noah placed on his son Ham (the African line descends from him) which made him subservient to his brethren but one of the ways to break the shackles of this jinx would be to become regenerated from the inside out. Secondly like the sesame street puppet Bert, WE HAVE TO START WONDERING WHY!!!

                              

LET THERE BE LIGHT! PART 2

The problems that plague Nigeria are more than a swarm of angry bees that sting a bear invading their hive.

In the first part of this article, I mentioned that prior to the formation of the world; God had made energy and light. Based on this sequence, I believe a lot of the ills this nation is experiencing will disappear if our power problem is resolved. Darkness is a favourable medium which makes evil grow like a poisonous mushroom in the dark womb of the rain forest.

Power failure has contributed to numerous bad things happening to Nigerians over the years. Examples are fire outbreaks, carbon dioxide poisoning, complication of respiratory diseases, insomnia, food poisoning from eating spoilt food, diseases caused by the administration of denatured vaccines stored at wrong temperatures amongst others.

Light was created to by God to be free and attainable by all and sundry, therefore every citizen of this nation is entitled to uninterrupted power supply especially in a nation blessed with so many rivers and  lots of sunshine.  A land where a speaker and his cronies can make away with N10b in two shakes of a lamb tail is a place where there is a surfeit of wealth and resources. There is therefore no excuse for us to remain in this abject state of economic and social paralysis.

A lot of countries that do not have the wealth of natural reserves we have enjoy uninterrupted power on a constant basis. This shows that generating continuous energy is neither an impossibility nor rocket science.

But the truth is the government seems not to want to make this dream a reality and like its happening in many parts of the world, we might have to peacefully but firmly ask for it. IT IS ABOUT TIME!

Patrick Henry said give me liberty or give me death and changed history by being in the vanguard of the move for American independence. We must ask for what rightly belongs to us. Any government that is not ready to assist us in making this country better should go. Democracy is about us the people anyway, not about leaders who don’t give a hoot about us and stuff their pockets to the detriment of millions of people.

This is a season for change, a season of possibilities for us and our children. We cannot continue living under the inimical shadows of callous leaders. We want light and we want it real fast! No one can afford to sit on the fence on this one. Darkness is a curse, a plague that inflicts to stagnate and destroy. When God inflicted Egypt with it, everyone was affected both the ruler and the ruled. It destroys creativity, kills vision and extirpates progress. This is a clarion call to all! A bugle that should awaken us from the slumber of complacency!

His Excellency, GEJ, has made a lot of promises but I believe he should start with the power sector; a country in darkness cannot become first rate and at best would follow the weak beams from the flash light of developed nations.

Harry Truman said the buck stops at his table. GEJ, concerning this odorous issue emanating from the bowels of Hades, no excuses will suffice. Make the buck stop at your table! PLEASE LET THEIR BE LIGHT!!!