THE AFRICAN MIND...TWO CENTURIES TOO LATE?

                                                                                                                       

One of my sons favourite rhymes is “Ring, a ring o’ roses…..”. The origin of this poem stems from 1665 when London was swept by the bubonic plague. Following this disaster was the great fire of London in 1666. In the 19^th century this great city was also plagued by cholera. All these calamities show that there was a time London was like a lot of areas in Africa and other third world countries, traffic clogged and polluted with poor sanitary methods.

First time we ever met God in Genesis, one of the initial things that we get to know about him was that His spirit was brooding (thinking, meditating). Then He said let there be light and light appeared after which heaven and earth were created out of a waterlogged inky soup of nothingness. He thought and out came an idea that led to the creation of the world. Little wonder that ideas are represented by light bulbs. When The Master of the Universe made us, his grand masterpiece, we were formed in his image to function like him.

From the era of the great crusades to the divvying up of Africa and some other parts of the world because of mineral resources and real estate (valuable concrete things), it was clear the leading powers of the world then, mainly Great Britain and France, were very interested in tangible resources. These nations got what they needed through firepower and force. That was a huge factor in the equation of world domination. The period of the cowboys and the conquistadores also depicted this, what made someone a big boy then was how big a ranch was and the number of cattle one had. This were major driving factors behind everything good, bad and ugly that came out of the wild, wild west back in the day.  Everything was driven by the material things that translated to wealth.

From the eighteenth century, the industrial revolution came on with the machine age changing the landscape of the world. The intangible knocked off the tangible from its perch and the first world countries started placing greater premium on ideas and thoughts. Intellectual property became hotter than the furnace of Vulcan. Great poets, writers, tinkerers and thinkers flourished like crocuses in the developed world like never before, igniting a revolution of revelations. Now you don’t need an army to rule or conquer the world, you just need ideas. Facebook that just finished its IPO, Google, and Microsoft are in very nook and cranny of the world without the clash of swords or a single shot from a gun, no sweat was broken. They empty the coffers of the nations of the globe making the originators of these brands richer than some countries. Men started living like the original prototype, we became like God using ideas and thoughts to dominate the earth. The city of London went from being a slum to a Mega Metropolis.

From time immemorial, the African’s reverence for his peers has always been based on how many cows he had, the number of yams in his barns, the number of wives and concubines acquired, and so on. It was all about the perceivable spawning “my Mercedes is bigger than your” and “I pass my neighbours” attitude. This is why in Nigeria we have a swollen senate that grabs everything in their path to buy a larger jeep or bigger houses or marry a third wife but cannot generate one idea to make their constituency better even to save their lives. It explains why most of our leaders are like inedible snails hiding in the shell of amassed things. They are useless to themselves and everybody. The world has moved on but we are still stuck in a rut.  Thieves and con-men are venerated so they have loads of dosh to spread around or a mansion built like a mausoleum. Even when ideas come up it is mostly how to steal, kill, and destroy negating the plan of the Originator of life. We are still far from the starting blocks, a great distance away from Gods original plan. And until we change, salvation will be farther than Pluto.

It is time to start celebrating ideas and thoughts in our continent if not, the future of Africa would remain in the shackles and manacles of slavery reminiscent of our fore-fathers who sold their tomorrow for trinkets and cowries. A captivity of the soul and mind that is even worse than the physical. It shows our nakedness to the world, brands us as cheap and will continue to make the continent serve at the feet of those who peddle ideas and brilliant thoughts.

We should provide a good environment for ideas to bloom like light sandy soil for palm trees. From our homes to our schools to the working place, IT MUST BECOME A PRIORITY!!!

A great Hebrew king looked at the beauty of the world and was awed but he knew that the visible world was a product of the invisible. He knew that it was good thinking that produces great products. The man got on his knees and worshipped, saying…………………………

 “O GOD, HOW WONDERFUL ARE THY WORKS, THY THOUGHTS ARE VERY DEEP”!!!