THE AFRICAN PARADIGM

On: 3:46 PM By: www.miracleihuoma.blogspot.com 0 comments

If you were asked “What is the problem of Africa?” what will be your sincere answer? Africa as far as I am concerned by potential is suppose to be the greatest continent on planet earth yet it is the poorest. What a paradox! The greatest mineral resources are in African ranging from crude oil to gold, silver, limestone, zinc, and so on. Yet the first four poorest countries in the world are African countries. Using Nigeria as a case study, she is the sixth largest oil producing country in the world but at the same time the 26th poorest country in the world. At the same time, a country like Singapore has no natural resource, I mean not even one but she is rated as a developed or first world country. The present world power as she is called- The United States of America, does not have half of the natural resources most poor African nations have. So what makes the difference if not what a country has? Well, the silver lining between a country like Singapore and a country like Nigeria, a country like America and a country like Somalia is what we want to talk about. African’s problem cannot be encapsulated ideally in one word that is not “IGNORANCE”. You can’t give me any other reason why a continent that is blessed with such natural resources not be able to convert it to its material equivalent. What else will make leaders of a country (Nigeria) during the pre-colonial times sell its people to slavery in exchange for things like powder and mirror if not “gross ignorance”. God was not wrong when he said “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”. Not for lack of prayers and fasting, if it were, Africa would have been the greatest continent because I don’t think that there are so much churches as we have in Africa. I tell you the truth and lie not if lack of prayers were the problem of Nigeria, our problem would have been long solved. If prayers repaired roads, I’m not sure there will be any untarred road in Nigeria. Nigeria and Africa are places of high religiosity which I guess has compounded our problems. But no! Prayers cannot take the place of knowledge! I grew up hearing a cliche or proverb that says “If you want to hide anything from a black man, put it in a book” and I think this statement still holds true today. But anyway, I decided to break out from the bondage of ignorance. I don’t know if you have? Its not by saying it. Your actions will show it. For instance, there is no culture of reading in Africa. An average African youth reads out of necessity not out of culture- He or she reads only when in school. That’s the kind of continent we live in. I never saw my father read more than three books, I’m not trying to down grade him in any way, I respect him a lot and there are so many other good virtues he passed on to me but definitely, the reading culture wasn’t a part of it. And parents, forcing your children to read is not the best option, modelling reading is. And children, even if our parents never passed that culture to us, we have to take personal responsibility to improve ourselves for that is the only way to break the status quo. I see a wind of change coming, but like Mahatma Gandhi rightly said “We must be the change we seek to see”. We are the leaders of tomorrow so we must take responsibility today. Being learned goes beyond knowing how to speak good English, education goes beyond being a graduate of a university. Nelson Mandela said “Education is the greatest weapon we can use to change the world”. That of course can’t be more true, we need to raise a generation of intellectuals who will become problem solvers, that will take us to the next level. Singapore a first world nation today was once a third world nation. And like I said initially, they had no natural resource. They were so underdeveloped that they asked to be absorbed by Malaysia, but because of how poor they were, Malaysia saw them as a liability so rejected the proposal- Singapore was pushed to the wall. So they decided that since they had no natural resource, they were going to develop their human resources- themselves. And that they did, and in no time turned out one of the richest countries in the world. I advocate for a paradigm shift of the mentality of Africans, especially the youths. Lets do it differently! And before I forget, if you want to hide anything from me, don’t put it in a (good) book.