Time to make the world reckon with Nigeria (11)
Iliyasu Gadu
Ilgad2009@gmail.com
08035355706 (sms only)
If any race qualifies to be the world’s master race it is us the black race. Our continent Africa is the cradle of mankind. It is here too that the very first civilization was recorded. Genetically our genes are found in all the races of humankind. Our gene is the foundational block of all the other races in the world. This is even proven in chemical experimentation and analysis. If you put all the colours in one jar the result you will get is a black colour. Our culture and forms of its expressions are the bedrock of global popular culture. Black people are the most naturally connected and earthy race among the races of the world.
We are also the strongest, most resilient of all races. Blacks had endured the most horrendous treatment ever subjected to any race of humans long before the Holocaust. The western civilization was built on our resources and on our sweat and blood. Think about scores of African slaves packed like sardines or arranged like yams bound in chains hand and foot in the hold of a crude ship with little air, for a journey of months to the Americas. Also think about African slaves bound in one long file accompanied by whip holding Arab slave dealers being marched across the Sahara desert to slave markets in the Middle East.
Yet we survived all these and are still standing. For us to have outlasted all attempts to exterminate us where other races had gone extinct with far less inhuman treatment means that God has a special reason for keeping us alive. We are the true nemesis of all human races. Going by Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest we are truly the inheritors of the earth.
That is the essence of Nigeria. Nigeria is like the first born child of a very prominent chief who had died and whose legacies must be advanced. That Africans and indeed black people the world over are still being subjected to inhuman treatment is principally because there is no Black Country ready to take up and advance the interest of the black race in the comity of nations. No other country in the world is well positioned by way of resources, culture, diversity, history and location to take up this challenge than Nigeria.
It is not a role that Nigeria can avoid or continue to shy away from. Indeed in its abiding quest for transformational development, Nigeria will sooner or later be confronted with this reality which it must find ways to fulfil. It is an imperative embedded in Nigeria’s DNA. The question then is how does Nigeria meet this challenge?
The first in the order of priority is for our elites and leaders to raise their consciousness, obligation and responsibility to Nigeria, to a level at par with the leadership of world leaders. Very often one hears our elites and leaders say “We cannot compare ourselves with so and so countries. We have to be realistic”. The statement may be correct to a certain extent, but when closely examined it is actually a cover for opportunistic inaction and deliberate abdication of leadership responsibility. There can be no other reason to explain why a country of 200 million people with such a surfeit of resources and other second to none endowments and advantages should continue to embrace and wallow in mediocrity and underachievement. When a leadership develops the kind of consciousness necessary to make its mark, it will surely find the means to do so the odds notwithstanding.
Some comparative historical lessons are instructive here.
In 1776 when American colonists in the original thirteen states developed the consciousness to seek independence and establish the American nation, they were able to find the corresponding strength and resolve to confront and defeat Britain their oppressor which was at the time the most powerful country in the world. Similarly when the Jews having suffered continuous oppression for centuries in Europe culminating in the Holocaust resolved to return and set up the nation of Israel, they were able to surmount all odds to achieve their goal in 1948. Today no Jew anywhere in the world can be oppressed without incurring the wrath of Israel whether he or she is an Israeli citizen or not. Britain an island nation with little natural resources has faced down and defeated repeated attempts at invading and conquering it from the 1588 Spanish armada Hitler’s blitzkrieg. China which is on the verge of becoming the preeminent power in the world today took the path to its present position in 1949 led by a conscious leadership after centuries of foreign subjugation.
In the current circumstances of our world, Africa faces two major immediate issues to which it must find answers; the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath, and the fierce strategic competition between China on the one hand and the western countries led by the United States of America on another. These issues have been joined by the existing ones of institutional racism, economic and political subjugation of Africa and black people all over the world.
Nigeria as the leading African and Black Country in the world must square up to these challenges. It must cut itself loose from the self-abnegating consciousness that denies it the right to achieve what it must achieve. All the feeling of apprehension that our leaders often entertain about possible sanctions or punitive actions if Nigeria moves to assert its real self in the global arena in pursuit of its manifest destiny is unnecessary. Why fear people who in their minds fear us for what we are? No country however powerful can afford to ignore Nigeria or take action against Nigeria without an injurious blowback to itself. By its very essence, Nigeria has a built-in insulation against any intended or actual attempts that will be mounted by any foreign power acting either singly or in concert with others to prevent it from taking its place in the world.
What remains now is for our elite and leaders to throw off the abiding yoke of fear and uncertainty that has characterised our engagement with the world. It is time for Nigeria to confidently lead the renaissance of African and black peoples and for the world to accept and reckon with that. In that is our salvation as a nation.
Ghana taking the shine off Nigeria
– By Boma Nwuke
I watched the funeral program of George Floyd at the Foundation Of Praise Church in Houston,Texas
It was emotion-filled”a charged atmosphere from what I could see from the comfort of my sitting room.
Emotion-filled because the Speakers revealed furthermore what it meant to be black in the United States of America. Their tones were sombre, empathy evoking but inspiring
That was the perfect platform to ventilate their anger for pains inflicted on them for centuries
But they didn’t do anything untoward;they were focused on what they wanted the world to hear; they were not distracted; the support for them by the world meant healing to them, they could feel that the time for change has come, their resilience has paid off, their silence was awakened and their dry bones have risen
I heard of the American civil rights movement which met horrifying resistance by the whites
a lot of Americans of African descent lost their lives,Martin Luther King Jr was one.
I have had the privilege of touring his place of birth in Atlanta Georgia,told of how he was born,his early age and the struggle he believed that ended his life
I watched George Floyd’s funeral program because as a media person I liked to believe what I see,and break news to others.
Besides I felt the pain of the African Americans and I thought perhaps Nigeria the giant of Africa would be at the centre of the funeral program but I was wrong,
Rather what I saw was Ghana'”s Ankara cloth sewn to bandana which adorned the neck of dignitaries,
If I thought that was all, I was mistaken as Mrs Wright Co pastor of the church announced that George Floyd was in addition to given a memorial service in his honour has his statue erected by Ghana President Nana Akufo-Addo
I couldn’t believe my eyes nor did I believe what I heard, I came to the conclusion that Ghana knew how to play international politics,
Like it or leave it our neighbors have watched their hands well to eat with kings.
If there is anything in the world that is stable is change and we can see things turning around for our brothers and sisters in the USA and other western nation’s
Ghana is mourning with those who are mourning and it won’t be out of place to foresee good measures running towards it.
Let our people learn.
Time to make the world reckon with Nigeria (1)
Iliyasu Gadu
Ilgad2009@gmail.com
08035355706 (sms only)
Nigeria is God’s greatest gift to the black man. Everything about Nigeria; its population, resources, diversity, location and many more endowment attests to this. Nigeria is about ten to fifteen countries in one. It is the vibrant and vivacious fulcrum of the African continent and Africans in diaspora.
Nigeria ought to be what Israel is and does on behalf world Jewry. Nigeria should be like the United States of America which is the guarantor and protector principal of the white supremacist world order. Nigeria should mirror itself like China which to a large extent is the global torchbearer of the mongoloid/mandarin race. In its essence Nigeria is the beacon not just of Africa but of descendants of Africa wherever they exist in the world.
But does the world understands and recognise this? And if it does why is Nigeria not accorded the recognition deserving of this status? Is the fault with Nigeria or are there powers bent on denigrating Nigeria for their own interest? Or is it a combination of both?
And how then can Nigeria break out of this quagmire, connect with its essence and thereby establish the willing or unwilling recognition of the world as the flag bearer of Africa and its people?
The first essential rule to observe in world interaction is that nobody recognises and pays you compliments willingly if at all. The hard, cold reality of the world is that recognition and respect among nations are earned to a large extent by a convergence of mutually inclusive interests. In other words parties are persuaded by compelling reality defined by potential or actually manifested capability of mutually assured injury, to come to an understanding that it is better to pursue a win-win course of relations.
On another level, nations especially the more powerful ones with an eye for global influence try to enter into strategic arrangements with regional states in pursuit of their interests. The regional state or states so approached by the powerful nations to be their client state often smartly leverage on their strategic importance and try to cut as much deal as they could also in pursuit of their own interest.
I am not aware that in our dealings with the economically and politically powerful countries of the world we let them know that we are not just representing the interest of the 200 million people of Nigeria but a billion plus Africans and Africans in the diaspora as well.
I do not also get the impression that we have tried to impress on the Americans, the Chinese, the French and others that it is in their best interest to recognise the strategic importance of Nigeria in their engagements in Africa.
Without this critically important element of realpolitik we find Nigeria in a situation where its potentials and aspirations to establish itself as the authentic global representative of Africa and peoples of African descent is not realised.
To some extent it is our own making. The impression the world has of Nigeria is of a country at odds with itself fuelled by the self-destructive activities of its fractious elite. Where elites of less endowed countries than Nigeria have immersed themselves into the task of nation building, our self-indulgent elites are full of regrets questioning why God in his wisdom and mercy had to put this country together as it is. They would rather that God indulge their wishes and dissolved the country into bits and pieces to suit their puny image of themselves. It is rather like the person who was given a big fat cow asking instead for a small, scrawny goat!
Armed with this critically important knowledge of the mentality of our elites, the principal powers of the world know that they do not need to break a sweat in their interaction with Nigeria. Although the foreign powers are well aware of Nigeria’s potential and capabilities should the country gets its internal acts together, they only reckon with the Nigeria that presents itself before them. In the International system, nobody thinks for you or gives you what you don’t ask for. And so on that score Nigeria always ends up short of what it should really get from the world by virtue of its endowments.
The second explanation is the time honoured tactics employed by more powerful countries in neutralising or containing potential or actual opponents through a variety of psychological means.
In our collective case as black people, the Caucasian race have determined that our consciousness should be comprehensively bombarded with all kinds of ideas real or contrived to get us accept that we are indeed a lower specie of humankind as their ‘’experts’’ have claimed. This is to justify the historic economic and political subjugation of black people and the continuing exploitation of their resources to the advantage of the Caucasians.
With this mind-set which has become embedded in a self-fulfilling way over the generations in the mind of the average Caucasian and translated into state policy by Caucasian nations, there is no way Nigeria can hope to be accorded any meaningful recognition in the Caucasian dominated world system.
That is why God caused the creation of Nigeria as a country like no other in Africa to lead the renaissance of the black people of the world. In this regard, it is by divine design that it was the greatest Caucasian power at the time, Britain that stitched this country together nurturing and guaranteeong its existence against other competing Caucasian powers. It is also by the same divine hand of God that Nigeria has and is still standing solid against known and unknown internal and external machinations to undo this divine gift to the black peoples of the world.
The question is when and how will Nigeria fulfil its manifest divine destiny establishing the appropriate recognition that it deserves in the world in the face of what looks like daunting odds?
Farewell George Floyd
George Floyd will be committed to mother earth Tuesday in his home town of Houston, Texas.
He was killed by a policeman Derek Chauvin who knelt on his neck for about 9 minutes resulting in his death in Minneapolis, United States of America.
Minneapolis has been in the eye of the world for two weeks as a result of the brutal killing of George Floyd.
The death which many across the globe saw as racially motivated stoked protests from people of all races in America and the rest of the world.
Never had the world seen such protests.
The Arab spring which ignited protests significantly in human population would be described as a child’s play in comparison to the protests against the killing of George Floyd.
George Floyd’s name has resonated among tribes, race , among the rich and poor.
Perhaps if the killers of George Floyd knew what sweeping reforms his death would have on America and the consequences their action would earn them, they wouldn’t have dared subject him to such debasement .protests of his death has entered the fourteenth day and there is nothing to suggest that it is going anytime soon.
George Floyd’s body has arrived his final resting place but the atmospheric charges of Black lives matter grows louder.
George Floyd a Security guard before his death has become so popular that it won’t be an offence to nominate him for martyrdom.
There is no gain saying that George Floyd was the sacrificial lamb inadvently used by the trigger happy , knee happy police used to free African American from systemic discrimination against blacks for centuries.
For no fault of theirs African Americans were sold to white farmers more than four hundred years ago and it beats our imagination that after Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery, blacks are still living subhuman lives.
It is gratifying to see American past and present leaders in various shades of opinions speak against horrendous treatments of blacks for this, there is hope for a new dawn.
George Floyd your death has changed perceptions swayed opinions and set a new beginning globally. The sins of Men committed centuries ago are being brought to limelight,
smile on because your race and other marginalised people have overcome.
You pleaded for breath but you were denied your right to breathe.
You have made all deprived people to breathe.
