I Weep For Africa!

 I Weep For Africa! I can vividly recall telling some group of friends that to free Africans from all responsibilities in the Trans-Atlantic...

 I Weep For Africa!

I can vividly recall telling some group of friends that to free Africans from all responsibilities in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, rests only on the expansion of the Europeans' cruel dehumanization and commodification of the African people, for intentional misrepresentation of the full account of the unfortunate event. And to really come to terms with the fact that Africans were as involved as the Europeans in facilitating and executing the selling and buying of blacks, is to humbly call out African governments for the gut-wrenching brutalities which they well represent.

It is indisputably an open secret that African governments trade the lives and well-being of their people, for offer to the willing Europeans, Americans and even Asians. Moreover, it was further discovered that even as slavery has been universally abolished and unequivocally recognized as being at variance with nature, a threat to humanity and globally legislated as the worst case of right violation, Africans yet remain neck-deep in modern day slavery. This ranges from domestic slavery to international human trafficking, such other acts that unavoidably cast doubts on the claim of blacks, to humanity.

This therefore unfortunately makes one to ask whether Africans are truly equal or less, to the rest of human kinds. This time propels one to really ask some sensitive but yet relevant, logical questions concerning the continent. It is time to take a deliberate and calculated second look at Africans and the African continent. A glimpse at the entire landscape, reveals grave anomalies that make the heart to skip amongst many other things that will certainly leave one grappling with puzzles beyond normal. At the face value, the African continent appears peaceful and calm while her peoples remain relatively interactive. In actual sense, she is a sea of the blood of innocent Africans who have fallen to the cold hands of injustice, pits of political prisoners and human rights activists, some of whom have been gruesomely tortured to death.

Sadly, cruelty is evidently synonymous with African governments. This is understably the reason why the continent is being referred to as a dark continent. The corrosive abuses and oppressions grossly underlying African governments' socio-political compact, is ridiculing the concept of Africa to transform into a better story of a human race. Such pattern of grave inhumanity, touches off on all that ails Africa. At any given time, that there appears a little glimmer of hope for the continent to thrust forward, there will be this hurriedness to be drowned by what seems as an overwhelming pestilence of moral decadence. It is a recurring decimal of failure that Africa yet struggles even in this 21st century, with the most fundamental elements of human existence. She incompetently wastes every given opportunity to redefine herself, stumbling painfully behind her shadow in such a manner that casts her, beneath the very lowest ebb of human dignity.

It is indeed, a colossal tragedy. And in dealing with  this continental shame and absurdity, it is not wise pulling punches but not without respect. By any standard, it is a tragedy that a country like Kenya can volunteer herself, as a pawn to derail freedom and further tarnish the already bartered image of Africa. Viewed through different lens with such an African country stooping so low to assist the Nigerian government and her British co-conspirators to criminally abduct a  renowned freedom fighter and a human rights activist whilst on transit, then means that there definitely exists no cure to Africa's self-inflicted diseases. 

It is worthy of reminder here, that the British government in it's insane attempt and craftiness to have Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) arrested outside the British territories, woefully failed to obtain the consent of the United States of America, Canada, Japan and other advanced/civilized nations that the IPOB leader had traveled to, in the past few months. The Nigerian government desperately waited for him to step into any of the African countries, knowing fully well, their affinity for lawlessness and evil, coupled with the desire to yet be in the good books of Britain. Kenya carelessly played into the trap. Although the Kenyan government denied  having any knowledge of the shameful episode but it rightly took place within it's territory, nonetheless.

In due time most assuredly, Biafrans will remind Kenyans of this particular affront. They will pointedly be reminded of the very day and period they spat on the face of a noble Biafran, a paragon of freedom. The Biafran people will certainly not forget this disgusting act of betrayal which validates the universal perception of Africans as lawless, unserious, self-destructive, self-seeking, self-sabotaging, unintelligent, undemocratic, cruel, unrefined, self-hating, mentally slavish and brutally inhuman. A picture that so represents Africa as grossly uncivilized. But if therefore there is a valid argument to the contrary, let such be advanced.

In a rapidly evolving world of freedoms, liberties,  vibrant political relationships, cultural logics/definitions and social networks (including scientific innovations), African governments yet play the disabled and disadvantaged children of a quadriplegic mother, due in part, to their overriding tendencies to steal, loot, self-aggrandize, oppress, brutalize and self-pity. They blatantly and shamelessly suffocate freedom and eliminate those that diligently seek it.

Written by Chima Ono

Edited by Peter Oshagwu

For Family Writers Press International