A SUNFLOWER IN THE WILDERNESS

A name that used to strike fear even in the heart of the stoutest heart in Lagos is Oshodi. It used to be a terrible part of Lagos filled with hoodlums and delinquents coupled with unsavoury and filthy surroundings. But, this was way before Governor Fashola’s reign. He arrived on the scene like a fairy godmother and waved a wand of transformation over the location.

But despite the change, the place is still the last place I would expect any rational business owner to establish an outfit. This reason was why my mind was boggled when I took my dad to a diagnostic center he was referred to in the locale. I felt like a flower enthusiast who had discovered a sunflower in the desert.

Stepping into this cool totally air-conditioned white atmosphere from a dirty, noisy environ, made me feel I had passed through a dimensional time warp. Wonderment coursed through my veins as if I were a hillbilly seeing a mega metropolis for the first time. This site had more efficiency than a computerized bee hive, and there were enough LCD screens to make a clodhopper think he was in Times Square. With the teeming crowd of clients, the activity was reminiscent of an ant colony and also as orderly.

Seeing this laboratory right in the heart of Oshodi was like discovering a coruscating jewel in pig swill. It was almost unimaginable, the only unsurprising thing being that the outfit is owned and managed by Indians and not Nigerians. To cap it all, this business has been a real blessing to Lagosians because their rates are about the cheapest in the whole country. It costs an arm and a leg to carry out the same investigations in Nigerian owned diagnostic centers.

The questions that assailed my mind like a band of Visigoths attacking a legionary base are why, despite  the huge number of radiologists and radiographers we have in this country, it had to take immigrants to establish about the hottest lab in this city.What magic did they employ that our own people do not have?

As I thought about it, it occurred to me that some of the distinguishing factors are VISION AND FAITH. As different as these two indispensable factors might be sometimes there is actually a thin line between both of them, hence it is stated in the Holy Writ, that we walk by faith and not by sight. Faith sees what the ordinary eyes cannot see; vision sees what normal sight cannot visualize. To stand out beyond the frontiers of a life that is middling at best, we need vision. Someone said that the eyes that look are many but that the eyes that see are few. VISION MAKES YOU SEE WHAT OTHERS DONT SEE!

This is why Helen Keller said it is a terrible thing to see and not have vision. She went ahead to say that the most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched but they must be felt with the heart. The question might arise that the Aston Martin 177 (since it’s connected with James Bond, I will give it the most beautiful car in the world) or the impressive Burj Al Arab Hotel can be seen and felt, thereby debunking her statement. But the truth is before they existed in the natural, they had been seen and felt by someone and that is why they materialized in the physical. Innovators had created them in their minds. They had lived in some believer’s heart. FAITH AND VISION ARE OF THE HEART! They make the tangible from the intangible. By the time the invisible things become visible, they become ephemeral and temporal and very soon will be taken over by more beautiful things in another person’s heart when converted from the spiritual to the physical. Before anything can exist on earth, the creator would have already seen it in his inner eyes, there would have been crystallization in his inner man where the physical eyes cannot probe. It takes a spiritual telescope to see the stars of possibility in this immaterial Milky Way. This telescope is vision. Those Indians had seen that center before they built it. Creativity thrives on vision. It is what makes the incorporeal real.

It is vision and faith that built that center in Oshodi, converted the Las Vegas wilderness into a neon city, turned the semi-arid untillable land of the Jews into bountiful yielding soil, and made Governor Fashola transform Lagos from a filthy state into a green land.

For us to move ahead as individuals and a Nation, the twin towers of vision and faith must become an integral part of our lives.

Do you know that lower animals like moles and bats cannot see but get along pretty well in their world? Moles build great tunnel systems and earthy skyscrapers (molehills might not be considered to be a big deal but for a small animal it’s noteworthy) yet we can’t build roads. even though bats can't see, they navigate their air space but our air travel is still nothing to write home about. These animals can achieve these feats even though they lack sight because they have vision.

The truth is that our eyes cannot penetrate the stygian darkness of ignorance, the dense gloom of bad leadership and the murky depths of blackouts that permeate this nation/continent. Sight is useless in Africa because all we mostly behold are heart breaking and incapacitating things. We need vision. Our sight can only penetrate as far as a struck match in a bottomless pit. VISION GIVES A LIFT ABOVE LIMITATIONS WHILE SIGHT BOGS POTENTIAL IN IT!

In martial arts training, blind folds are used so that the trainees can depend less on sight and have other senses heightened. That is quite a lesson for us to place less premium on what we see around us and to increase the depths of our vision. For this nation and continent to move forward, we need more visionaries and more “Imagineers”.

Did I ever mention that Helen Keller was an American author, political activist and lecturer? She achieved all these even though she was deaf and blind. The distinguished lady was the first blind person that earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. SHE DID NOT HAVE SIGHT BUT SHE HAD VISION. So if we should ever listen to any expert on vision it would be her.

What about you? Do you merely see or you have vision? Do you have what it takes to see a sunflower in the wilderness?

ICE CREAM AND FLAVOURS

              

                                                    

If someone calls me a sweet tooth, the person might not entirely be wrong. Amongst the toothsome things that are agreeable to my palate, ice cream about tops the list. There is something about walking into an ice cream parlor and seeing all those different flavors beckoning at you from behind their glassy sanctuary. Chocolate, butter pecan, vanilla, coffee, strawberry, chocolate, name it. They make my gastric juices pop like a profusion of lilies in June.

Sometimes I wonder how life would have been if it were a huge tub of one flavored ice cream. Very boring I would bet, even for ice cream lovers.

Just like with frozen dessert there is something about variety that adds to life and beauty. This also applies to human beings. The sweetness of life is in our diversity. The assortment of gifts, complexion, complexities, race, taste, style, etcetera that we all possess in varying degrees make our world fun and exciting.

You would agree that what enlivens any circus show or carnival is its multiplicity of acts. Each new act injects verve into the show like gas into a racing Ferrari. Each show is unique but together like enmeshing gears they combine to produce a phenomenal display. In war video games, you would see that to defeat an enemy, the soldiers usually have different personalities, one might be a marksman, another, an explosives expert, one might be a machine gun carrier, the other a sapper. Their victory lies heavily on their different specialties.

But the tragedy is that the distinction of our diverseness is lost on us a whole lot of the time. In the cartoon little mermaid, Sebastian the lobster said the seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake; alas this applies to quite a number of people. Like Ariel, the underwater princess, we have a treasure filled trove within us, we possess whozits and whatzits galore but we think its no big deal. We want what someone else has got, we desire to be a part of someone else’s world and be their kind of vanilla because vanilla is supposed to be the rave. The beauty of people who are releasing their flavor to bless the world and the rewards that accrue to them make us want to be them. We would rather squeeze ourselves into someone else’s mould than be us. It would appear that being a clone has more appeal than being an original.

But the truth of the matter is that we all have something to offer in the act of life and no one else can do what we were born to do better than us. We are the only one of our kind just like fingerprints and voiceprints. Without you and me, life would be incomplete. The world would be like a rainbow missing some of its colors. You are the blue, I am the violet. And no color supersedes another. Without our unique individual colors, the rainbow of life will be dark and grey.

We are much more special than we usually think, so there’s no reason to envy any other person.  You are so essential to our world but the problem might be that you have locked up your essence for too long. This might just explain why you feel pretty ordinary. Can you imagine buying your favorite ice cream flavor on a very sunny day and scooping it into your mouth with feverish anticipation but instead of it exploding like a confectionery bomb on your buds, it is all tasteless and insipid. Disappointment and anger will make you spit it out in a hurry. The whole exercise becomes a waste of time and resources.

The verbal illustration above is a depiction of how we are when we don’t release our natural endowments. Our world does not feel us; we are dull and uninteresting, bowed and dejected. Releasing our talents gives us a lift and makes us soar like a Peregrine falcon ruling its skies.

There’s so much locked inside you like an invaluable pearl in an oyster shell. It could be your singing, dancing, football skills, writing, baking, administrative skills, leadership ability, drawing, the list is inexhaustible. Sometimes we can be likened to nameless designer perfumes amongst numerous others on the shelves of the mall of life with our fragrance locked in our containers. Unless our stuff is released, no one will perceive our aroma. Become a self triggered atomizer, fill the olfactory cells of the earth with your essence and take the world to dizzying heights. Saturate your atmosphere because YOUR NAME IS IN YOUR FLAVOUR!!! The name of the butter pecan ice cream is what it is because it tastes like butter pecan and not strawberry, and likewise every other flavor. Michael Jackson is called the “king of pop”, Pele is called the “black pearl”, Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson is known as the” great one”, Hippocrates is the father of medicine, Mohammed Ali is called “the greatest”, Henry Ford is the father of the automobile, Picasso name is associated with masterpieces and so on.

So the question is, what can you do? WHAT IS YOUR FLAVOUR BRO/SIS?

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!!!

LET THERE BE LIGHT

At the inception of everything, before production and productivity, Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness, a watery abyss, then God said “let there be light”. I personally believe that the light that came forth connotes ENERGY or POWER. My reason being that power is the ability to do work and the work of creation could not commence until light was generated from God.

God separated the light from the darkness and called the light day while the darkness was called night. God’s son, thousands of years later said that one can only work in the day, no man works at night. This means that it is people, countries who have light that can fulfill the potential and capacity for work and productivity, while countries or people that live in darkness have stunted ability for fruitful production. This is why high fructification outfits like Michellin move out of the dark energy zone of Nigeria to places where power is constant to ensure ceaseless work and feracity.

God intended Energy to be self-perpetuating, self sufficient and continuous, so he created the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day. The sun and stars are basically made of hydrogen and helium through thermonuclear fusion while the moon is essentially rock with a reflective surface. This shows that God made these light giving heavenly bodies with substances that are abundant and easy to get. These bodies also give clean energy without the emission of noxious substances unlike most of the generators we have in Nigeria. They don’t pollute the environment with noise and require no maintenance.

Lots of first world countries have tapped into this divine method of procreation by producing power that is cheap, noiseless and pollution free. For example wind energy, is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and produces no greenhouse gas emissions during operation. Denmark uses a lot of wind energy. Windmills are popular in the Netherlands. Germany makes use of a lot of solar energy. The USA and China utilize hydroelectric power to a great extent. I have seen an advertisement that says that cars will run on water someday and I would not be surprised to see this reality because it will be in line with the God template for energy production using plenteous, clean materials.

Following the creation of the energy bodies, earth was transformed from being formless and void into a beautiful world and man was put in charge to be fruitful, multiply, and replenish. He could now subdue and dominate. But before all this could be, there was light. This explains why power played a huge part in the in the story of the industrial revolution.

On the wings of this revolution also came colonization. Like Adam in Eden, the western world could dominate the world because they had energy. They could fuel transportation of goods and men to different parts of the world. They could free their people from menial and manual jobs which could be delegated to machines whereby allowing time for fresh thought and inventions. They became more fruitful, their goods multiplied and they filled the earth with their presence (both human and material).

The story of Genesis sheds a lot of light on why Nigeria is still trying to don its racing shoes while other nations have sprung off the starting blocks. For any progress to be made, power has to be constant and light has to stop being scarce. Darkness is oppressive, it hamstrings creativity and potential. The wealth of a nation is in the creation of small businesses which grow to meet the needs of its people and then spread to other parts of the globe (U.S.A and Japan give credence to this fact). But most fledgling outfits in this country expire like premature deliveries before they can see the light of day because of the high cost of diesel and gas needed to power activities. Consequently the spirit of entrepreneurship is deprived of motivation and is exorcised out of our economy like a frail ghost.

When God created light, he did not put it in the hands of any one man, it was a universal benefit that should be enjoyed by all. The sun, moon and stars are no one’s property. So it is extremely repulsive that the energy generation efforts in this country is scuttled by some folks who believe they have the monopoly on power because they own fuel stations, oil companies, generator sales shops, candle manufacturing companies and so on. Furthermore the oligopoly of PHCN should be scrapped and the company should be sent back to the Jurassic period through a time warp. Newer methods should be explored.

There is a new regime in this country and I use this as an opportunity to tell Mr. President that we are tired of inhaling smoke belched from second rate generators, we have had it with Vulcan’s pyrotechnics of destruction caused by stored gasoline, we can’t take one more day of insomnia originating from personal generating sets and we are sick of the deadly gases emanating from these machines. It now seems that these engines of doom have taken over Nigeria like a scene from the movie “Transformers”. Now we have had enough!!! So like an ancient Greek wife begs Poseidon for her seafaring husband and his cronies whose lives have been caught in the maniacal pranks of choppy seas, we plead with you, President Goodluck, Ebele, Jonathan, in your tenure and beyond, please LET THERE BE LIGHT.

VALENTINE BLUES

                                             

We live in a Planet filled with so much hate and strife. There is history of genocide caused by people as mad as hatters like Hitler and Pol Pot, bitterness flying like arrows during the hundred years war. Stories of bloodletting during maniacal events like the Spanish inquisition and the witch-hunt practise of the Zulus. Endless wars in Sudan and Angola. Terrorist acts in Pakistan. Tribal conflicts in Rwanda, Jos and other areas of the world are a daily staple. Marital altercations that make a WWE ring seem like Eros’ haven. Amongst all this, February the 14^th pops up like a jack in the box and we all supposedly go love mad. I think its all pure baloney.

Suffice it to say that irrespective of my being an incurable romantic, I am not a Valentine day’s freak (sorry St Val). I think it is pretty comical that a world like ours suddenly goes nuts like starving squirrels released into a field of acorns over a particular day dedicated to the whimsical antics of Cupid. It is like watching the feeding frenzy of voracious sharks fighting for scraps of bloody flesh.

Beyond the nobility of the Valentine idea, this day is generally subjected to a lot of misuse and abuse. It is a day that a lot of guys put in the sickle to the blood red flowering blooms of hapless damsels that are not meant for them. A day that generates tension for those who don’t have enough to cause a splash and leaves the poison of envy within those who are like rejected islands, surrounded by the plenteous water of those who have too many gifts. This green eyed monster sometimes infects homes where a spouse feels her mate didn’t go beyond the whole nine yards. Ultimately the explosives of bickering and squabbles are set off and the fall out from these are felt for many days thereafter. Everything becomes covered in soot and smoke. Hearts are shattered, limbs are sometimes fractured and some relationships might be nursed in the intensive care before they are restored, while others pass on from there. This demise usually leads to hell.

Would you call this love? What will we say about a politician who spoils his mistress rotten with all manner of valentine treasures but in his constituency are hundreds of kids dying of malnutrition. His beau would most likely feel that he is Cupid’s twin but the truth is there is as much love in that relationship as water in the heart of a flaming effigy of Guy Fawkes. I would tell that lady to run. Such a man can’t love. He is the most selfish being alive.

It is flabbergasting how we work ourselves up into frothy seizures for one day of the year and the next day we are back to square one. In this environment, you see people lunging at each others throat like wired jungle cats. What’s the point of flying your partner to the Caribbean’s on a private jet, give her enough flowers to cause a world wide-plant-a flower-today panic, buy her enough chocolate to cause a one week shut down of Swiss factories, get enough wine to make grapes scarce in Bacchus’ garden and the next day you are back to your old ways. Fighting and brawling in a way that would make a gladiator seem like a pacifist.

The whole event is a repulsive parody which I believe even leaves a sour taste on the Saint’s mouth. I am sure the whole pantomime leaves the good man bedridden on his day after so much puking because if we are as loving as we claim to be on Val’s day, most of the wickedness associated with our world would have by now gone the way of the dodo.

I think the problem is, we have a lot of misconceptions about what love really is. Love is certainly not sex, saying it is would be like saying that the leave is the tree. The leave is an essential part but an off shoot of the tree. Romantic love is an off shoot of love. In the Greek, it is known as Eros and certainly leads to errors in our perception of love. If romantic love were real love, then a lot of the most romantic unions we know would not crash into the flames of hate and conflict which actually makes one think that love is war.

Real love is agape. It is sacrificial, not selfish and pure like water from an artesian spring. Love is not a perfunctory function, it is real. It originates from God. God is love!

Remember the Good Samaritan? He did not make the pages of the greatest book on earth because he gave away chocs and flowers (these things are great and there is nothing wrong with them) but by caring, by showing kindness, demonstrating affection and paying someone’s hospital bills while the thieves who waylaid the man would have gone to buy all manner of goodies for their paramour if it were the 14^th of February. For the Samaritan, love wasn’t a one off thing or something reserved for special days but a way of life. He loved his neighbour as himself. He gave all to a stranger in dire need. He made someone he did not know his neighbour. Love was coming out of Mr. Samaritans pores for a dude he did not know from Adam. If we could all love like this man our Earth will be a better place for it.

Okay, St Valentine fans, kindly remove your boxing gloves and let me shoot straight with you. I am not trying to rain on the Saints parade or spoil your fun instead I want to make him more famous. A day’s celebration is not enough for him and the essence of his being. His way should become our culture. LOVE SHOULD BE CELEBRATED EVERY DAY WITH GENUINE KINDNESS AND CARE FOR EVERYONE!!! SELAH!!!

 

THE AFRICAN MIND

                                              

There was an inscription emblazoned on a T-shirt that stuck to my mind like a barnacle to the hull of a ship years ago. It read “IT’S A BLACK THING, YOU WONT UNDERSTAND”.

The African mind is one of the richest on this planet. It is so rich that bulrushes could grow on it like they were on the Nile bank. It is one of the brightest lights of our solar system but paradoxically it is covered by a cloak of stygian darkness (both mental and in the case of Nigeria, physical).

What is it about the average African mind that makes it as impenetrable to erudition as a diamond to the digging efforts of a toothpick? Why is it that we receive tons of certificates, enough degrees to make a thermometer self conscious, yet all the education doesn’t translate into literacy? What is it that makes the exposure of most of our leaders to the western world’s progressive way of doing things seem like pouring water on the backs of ducks?

Sometime in the past, I heard of a professor of obstetrics and gynecology who married a second wife because his first didn’t provide him with a male heir (amazing, considering the fact that he is an authority on the fact that man determines the sex of a baby by his donation of an X or Y chromosome). What about the PHD holder who throws away his learning to become a juju priest. Mindboggling examples but they are just a tip of the iceberg.

I graduated from a medical school where lecturers act like gods strutting around Olympus. They look down on you, insult you and even send their registrars on errands that a dignified house boy might not do. God help you if you don’t kow-tow to them because that might mean the end of your training or repeating a class. But the surprising thing is that most of these people graduated from schools abroad where things are done differently. Places where mutual respect and preservation of dignity are a culture.

This trait is not limited to the medical circle alone. It permeates every area of our lives. People who are privileged to be in lofty positions look down on others like they were scrapped faecal matter from the heels of a hobo. People treat their helps like a southern farm owner treated his slaves before the American civil war. When they go on their shopping trips abroad, they see doormen, bell hops all treated with respect but it does not positively affect their thinking patterns when they get back home. Subjugation, tyranny and domination remain the way of life. The victims on the other hand, swallow it as destiny while going about arse kissing and bootlicking to be in the good books of the oppressor while wishing for their own turn (thereby ensuring the continuous spinning of the vicious circle).  This is the reason life term presidents are a norm in Africa even when they have made a hash of things and the people under them are going through great affliction. Unlike their European counterparts, power is seen as a birthright. They steal, kill, destroy (like the devil) in the bid to acquire leadership powers and never realize that leadership is about service even when they have gone through a Cambridge/Oxford/Harvard leadership course.

We all want to work for multinationals and NGO’S mainly because of the benefits attached to them but in our own businesses, we pay our workers peanuts that a self respecting monkey will snort at. The crazy thing is that the paltry sum comes with the kind of burden that Pharaoh laid on the Hebrew slaves. Work load that will make Atlas feel like he is having an ice cream party in a park. Absolutely amazing!

In his book, “From third world to first world”, Lee Kuan Yew said he couldn’t understand Africans because during a meeting of the worlds leaders, their lifestyle was the most profligate yet they were the ones asking for world aid. That is a paradox that can cripple a normal mind.

What makes Nigerians commit ritualistic killings for money? Why do we languish in poverty when we have been blessed with so much resource? Why are rich people sacred cows that are above the law because they have money?

Amongst black Americans, the incidence of drive by shootings, single parenthood, usage of hard drugs, unemployment is more than among whites.

On the Nigerian road you will find well dressed graduates reduced to fists and cuffs because of minor altercations.

We believe so much in witchcraft and demonic forces causing every kind of ill when we are the culprits. Like the Yoruba adage that says the insect eating the spinach leaves is on the spinach. The church which is supposed to be our last bastion of hope does not even help issues on this front.

It is a huge conundrum that makes me wonder whether the cause stems from Noah’s curse on his son Ham (who is said to be the originator of Africans). I think one of the main reasons is that the deprivation and lack that is so rampant in this country has scarred the landscape of ours minds so much, spawning greed and rapacity in the process.

To me, the hue and cry that all our problems were caused by the white man is all poppy cock and persecutory delusion. We traded human lives for trinkets and stuff. The surprising thing is that we are still doing that today. The reparation theme is all hogwash.

We trade the future of our children for accounts in Switzerland; we sell tomorrow for foreign currencies and drug money.

It is all so mystifying and for me like a puzzle presented by the Riddler to the Batman on which rides the survival of a whole race.

I am desperately looking for answers like a lost desert traveler looking for an oasis but I believe a major panacea to the diseased African mind is love.

That will be the story of another day but in the interim let’s ruminate on this and send in answers on how you think we can heal the African mind because it is truly a black thing and isn’t easily understood.

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