TRADING FOREIGN DEPENDENCE FOR DOMESTIC DEPENDENCE
Have you wondered why Africans are not as patriotic
As Asians, Europeans, and Americans at independence?
Africans traded foreign slave masters for domestic slave masters.
Colonists so eager to exit the scene because of increasing revolt by the slaves,
Were more eager to hand over to domestic slave masters.
Education, not character became the entry criterion into politics.
Natives educated in colonial schools, sometimes in the home country of the colonists,
And so desirous to replace the foreign slave masters, organized mass revolts,
Revolts that led to the mass exodus of the foreign slave masters within decades.
South Africa, Rhodesia, and Guinea Bissau were some of the holdbacks.
Domestic slave owners sans vision quickly replaced
The foreign slave owners in positions of power and authority.
Meanwhile, grooming their privileged children to succeed them.
As they say, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Foreign dependence was traded for domestic dependence.
There was a massive wealth transfer to the domestic slave masters.
To shield their loot, they stashed them in foreign bank vaults,
Bank vaults of the departed and despised colonists.
The colonists may have lost politically, but their
Financial gain compensated for their political losses.
Without any checks and balances, public wealth was
Transformed into private wealth, burgeoning the
Wealth gap in former colonies, as the erstwhile colonists also loaned
Foreign experts who provided advice that benefited the departed masters.
Domestic masters failed to detect and jettison bad post-colonial advice.
Add bad advice to a new visionless political class and
The result is continued colonization by internal “colonists.”
These internal colonists ate their cake and still have it.
Any wonder why the African masses do not celebrate independence?
Slavery is slavery, whether by foreign or domestic masters
Who would want to replace foreign slave owners
With home grown slave masters, and trade
Foreign dependence for domestic dependence?
The military under the guise of restoring civility,
Overthrows the domestic slave masters through military coups.
Why accept handouts from these thieves,
When we can steal from the source?
So, the term military interregnum was born.
This has become a staple in African politics.
The armed military are answerable to nobody.
With domestic and foreign pressure, the military is
Forced out of power, after years or decades of misrule.
As the economies of these developing countries grew,
Their ever-expanding populations meant more poverty,
Poverty inflicted by thieves, in uniform or not.
As the gap between the rich and the poor grew,
The crime rate also grew, as crime becomes a means of survival.
The new domestic “colonists” move into enclaves,
Secured with walls, guards, and armed policemen,
Further deepening the divide between the haves and have-nots.
Are we creating the right conditions for a revolution?
No we are not yet creating the right condition for revolution in most Africa states, because educationally, we are practicing what a South American (Brazilian, Paulo Freire, if I remember), called “Banking system of education” in his book entitled The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The idea is that if teachers just spoon-feed the students without the chance of speaking truth to authority, by questioning, analyses, investigations,challenges issues and problems engage in practical demand for explanations from the teacher, lecturer or professor, they will never be so educated to question, the authority of their oppressors, for their liberation. I recently read an interesting article regarding the classroom in Nigerian Education system. In my view, that was a mess pure and simple: plagiarism is brazenly tolerated, Students are basically not allowed to speak to the authority of the teacher, lecturer or professor as such, without paying a prize for the out of the line projection of intelligence in the classroom. In this circumstance, how can we produce people who could reason from the classroom to the streets, to agitate for “change” in the the peoples treatment by the new slave masters that that Africastallestman spoke of?
All the same, the percentage of, say Nigerians that can effectively speak and write our borrowed Language is currently, very limited. I would contend , not even 20%. Without large well educated masses, the idea of Revolution, will not be engendered from thin air. By 1870, most European nations were equipped by more than 70% of their populations, who could read and write, to be able to engender changes in their systems, by war or peace. We Africans lack properly educated populations to walk the streets against the processes and procedures of our new slave masters. Where do we go from here?
I agree with you that education has deteriorated in Nigeria and indeed Africa. The globalization of ignorance seems to have migrated to America (USA). What does Africa have in common with America? The elites on both continents have degraded public education by impoverishing teachers, neglecting infrastructure, and diverting public resources to private schools.
I agree that most Nigerians, university graduates included are uneducated. Your aforementioned didactic method of education without interaction between teacher and pupil may explain the dearth of innovation in Africa.
The internet which could have served as a medium of enlightenment has been turned into a vehicle for disseminating falsehoods, pornography, and malicious humor.
All said, we hold out hope for a peasant revolution that may be more brutal than an intellectual revolution.
The African brain!