Your time is come, Africa Arise!
Apart from being the mother board
of the planet from which the continents broke away, her civilization is as old
as humanity itself. It is only antiquity that can explain the length of her
life. At least, the Ethiopias and Egypts of this world have lingered all of
recorded and narrated history of the earth.
Yet, Africa has remained the magnified
shadow of her magnificent self. So much potential with nil realities, enormous possibilities
yet unattained. Often assaulted by forces within- her opportunist leaders, and plundered
without by humans from other lands whose selfishness and greed has meant
failure for the land they plunder. “Scramble for Africa”- such a demeaning word
and insulting gesture passed on Africa; she was divided as spoils by looters,
her sons and daughters chained as common commodity and shipped away across the
sea not for something noble but as shearers, plough men, harrowers, tillers and
fighters of and for their lands. Such remembrance is not blessed; and yet perpetrators
whose unkind souls had been termed gentle and have been pronounced to rest in
peace, what peace is this sort brethren?
To hate them is not the tone we
must ring here. And to deny a pardon is to open the eternal gate of self
imprisonment to ourselves. That we don’t need, for it will only fertilize our
already sown seed of sorrows. We must forgive, forget and like our hero, Madiba,
reconcile and work with our former scramblers and spoilers to build the world
and bring her the stability it badly craves. But this we would do, to charge up
ourselves and discover the path our explorers trod to gain control over us.
We might not have even come to
that bitter remembrance of the old affliction their blood-stained hands
inflicted on our fathers but for the current disregard their selfish progeny
have meted out to our sense of humanity as independent people. Independence
itself, now a thing to question. Questions that I hope Africa may be able to
answer at this time to define her sovereignty. It is no other moment for Africa
but a defining one. Whether we are a people that worth our onions or we have
dwelt in self deceit ever since our various independencies. Self deceit is
worst than cancer.
Perhaps, we have hated ourselves
that much; or why should a people, the aliens, or what do you call a human
group who engages herself in habits less of bestiality can condone? What they
call rights of man, even animals would spit were it to be declared their dues.
Humanity in foreign lands has downgraded to something short of bestiality; we
must be alerted, alarmed and of course be wary of the aliens’ encroachment of the remaining human domains left in Africa. Playing
their romantics, foreign aids will cease unless we become less than beast. Is
it aids they have been giving us or AIDS? This is the time we must define our
relationship and more importantly our personality and/or sovereignty if only we
can come to self determination and the much needful liberation.
It is never their fault though!
Or how does one say it, that a nation vastly enriched as Nigeria is abjectly
impoverished? Not for dart of resources or the persistent wrath of nature as
often witnessed elsewhere in destructive hurricanes, wind storms and damning
quakes that swallow available reduced resources as if they are the abyss. But for
the errors too rampant of our self-anointed rulers: rulers whose necks are free
of the laden that naturally yoke claims to leadership. It is enjoyment galore
for these uncanny opportunists. Where they appear serious, it is a trade they
make of their subjects, the land of their nativity and of course, of posterity.
They have sold us to these strange ones from that side the Atlantic. Why then
can’t they say they will ground us by the suspension of their AIDS?
However way it is viewed, to me
it is still an insult, nay, an assault. Our opportunist friends or rather
fiends at the helms have belittled us before them for their own personal gains.
Gains turned pains on their guilty hands. Africa, no country in the region, not
even Niger or Somalia, deserves the beggarly state the West have classed her.
They need us for their own survival or why the mad rush for Africa in the days
of old, even now still? As much as it must be said and known
everyone the world over need another. They need us, we need them. But
it will be inhuman to harass them with our relevance and usefulness to them and
so they should stop harassing us with our needs of them. After all, everyone
hold the right for self determination.
Now, that shame stares at us in
the face, what must we do? The reproachability in the declaration of Hillary
and David the other time cannot and must not be taken as mere rhetoric. It is a
can of sewage sprayed on our already dented figure and we must now act to win
our independence or remain a slave forever. We must act now to reenact our humanity
or we join them to fall under the wrath of His Divine Majesty. Or what did
Sodom, even Gomorrah invent that turned them to ash heap that that side of Atlantic
have not done? Now, that it was unanimously chorused into law by their Senate,
that other than the matter of homosexuality that man can mate with beast,
sodomizing the innocent lesser creatures, a breeze of madness is oozing forth
from over the Atlantic. If man has so downgraded himself to less than the lower
animals must he also further drag down the beasts already termed lower? Beasts
have their rights and now they must find a way to protect it. And, surely, they
will fight. Nature will fight. If the HIV/AIDS menace has not mesmerized us
enough, what we will soon witness on the globe will be worst a catastrophe
capable of casting man into a permanent state of malady. Nature is angry.
Even of old, when the Creator was
angry with the Hebrews for offences less of this grade, such as a man unduly
mating with a woman, a natural use of self you may say, but in that instance, a
contravention of the will of the Unquestionable, the Unmade Maker, He had
commenced their wanton destruction until a Phineas would do the right thing to
stave the wave of the wrath of God. God was pacified and He would stop the
rampaging carnage. A Phineas!
Where is Africa at this time of
general human malaise culminating into a complicated madness? Where is the
nation that will tell the West to go to hell with their aids or AIDS should she
stamps out sexual indignity and assault on marriage. Man can not marry man and neither
can woman a woman. Pronto! Where is the Africa that will rebuff foreign
aids and/or AIDS to seek the guidance of the Holy One to help build a virile
nation and continent? Will Africans from Seychelles to Zimbabwe arise? Will
Africans in Nairobi, Casablanca, Pretoria, Cairo, Accra, Kano, Lagos… arise to
raise the banner of sanity and wave high the flag of human dignity across the
blessed earth? If peradventure, the wrath of God may stop, His anger relaxed
and His blessedness raise Africa to heights of glory. Let Africa stand by her
core values at this one time and run by her convictions that we still are humans.
Jasper Peter Akinola, a former
Anglican Primate rose on the ground of the church and resisted, damning any
consequence, the strange doctrine of homosexuality leading other African
churches and beyond in the process to stand for the truth that male and female
created He them and that marriage is marriage when it is honorably consummated
between Adam and Eve. Now, an African president must arise through the window
of nations and defend humanity once and for all damning any consequence. Could that
nation be Nigeria? Let her arise. Could that senate be Nigeria’s? Let it enact
the law. Or will it be Pretoria or Cairo? Whichever, whoever, wherever, the
world is craving a new era and a new focus and a new leadership and direction
altogether. Arise Africa, it is your
time!
