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10.10.2020 Feature Article

The Sponsored Research and a Time to Reflect on Chenua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.

The Sponsored Research and a Time to Reflect on Chenua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.
10.10.2020 LISTEN

When the colonizers wanted workers they chose the hardened black man, but in Chenua Achebe's book "things fall apart" Okwonkwo's first son, Nwoye, whom Okwonkwo found to be weak and lazy eventually converted to Christianity. The book narrates how this son had doubts about the laws and rules of his own tribe.

Anyone who wishes to conquer a group is very happy to find members of that group who feel disenfranchised or have doubts about the group because they become an easy target in the quest to disintegrate the group.

D.K Fiawoo noted that the most destructive single factor in Christianity was the uncompromising stand of the missionary who believed that the Christian religion was entirely opposed to the indigenous institutions and social customs of the Aŋlɔ people.

In a 1933 bylaw the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (E.P) started by the Bremen mission forbade members from associating with "pagan", in pagan ceremonies and from using charms, advocated disavowal of belief in witchcraft, divination and trial by ordeal.

Fiawoo argued that from the inception of organized educational institution, the school has been an integral part of the church, the school fed the church with adherents and the church indoctrinating the school. This association he said offered no salvation to the traditional values and beliefs.

Debrunner in 1969/70 conducted on interview on students attending higher Evangelical school and these were his findings.

A large majority of the students interviewed agreed that

i. the traditions of the ancestors are all pagan and paganism is bad

ii.If we held the traditions of our ancestors, we should not have become civilized and barbarism would prevail forever.

iii.our ancestors have lost the way to heaven they worshipped creatures instead of the creator

iv. Our ancestors are deluded by Satan, the church brings God and salvation and the God of our ancestors were false Gods.

Greene added that one can assume that the missionary education must have at least raised doubts about certain traditional religious beliefs including those concerning supernatural abilities of the leaders of Aŋlɔ.

Now my argument is this, before you reference a book to debunk the history of the Aŋlɔ people, regardless whether the person in a professor a PHD candidate or even just an undergraduate student. Check their religious background, the schools they went, what they believe and who sponsored their research.

A person who had lived within the era that I have described above and attended such missionary schools will actually be taught to deny the existence of witchcraft and disregard the knowledge, tradition and believes of his ancestors. So how would such a person in the first place collect data from a source that he has been indoctrinated to disbelief and doubt?

If he has been taught to deny the existence of witchcraft, how would that fellow go ahead to document that a war was worn with witchcraft? He would rather prefer to determine the winner of a battle based on the amount of ammunition the sides had, as that was physical and easily defended in an institution where laws had been set for members to deny or disavow the belief in witchcraft and consider the customs and traditions of the ancestors as pagan worship.

Our history goes beyond what any learned person has been paid to write in their research. For we all already know from kindergarten that he who pays the Piper calls the tune.

So we won the Datsutagba war if Aŋlɔ had lost, it would have been annexed. But even today there is a lot of confusion about when Aŋlɔ became a British colony whilst Greene said it was annexed in 1850, Kumassah says 1874.

Axɔlu menye amevɔ o!
M.A.Y Kulewosi

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