Why Are They Our Heroes?

I go through the history books and all I see are heroes that Europeans or their system have given us.

The history books look like we had no heroes prior to the coming of Europeans. Even the ones that are mentioned are written about as if they were just savages whose methods and achievements are no more relevant today, and this makes me wonder why we believe this and even pass them on as our history.

Let me start from my own backyard. The Ɛʋɛ people have had heroes from as far back as we can remember. The Aŋlɔ-Ɛʋɛs can remember Togbi Ʋɛnya, Tɔgbi Tsale and the list can continue if we care to know about individuals who had achieved great feats at warfare agriculture, poetry and music, medicine, arts and spirituality. We can find individuals who had excelled at leadership and even talked on behalf on the accused like the professionals we call lawyers today.

But sadly what do we have? A historian who prides himself as being Ɛʋɛ and Aŋlɔ for that matter would be ask to name a great leader that have ruled his land and shockingly, the leader that comes to mind as exemplary would be a leader that was made in the 1900s when Europeans had already subdued our land.

These historians would mention a chief who had outwitted other chiefs at betraying his own and so was awarded by Europeans for it. And another will add on by mentioning another chief who had outlawed his own cultural practices to adopt European cultures because he was schooled by Europeans. They would write long biographies on these traitor chiefs and puppets in order to immortalize them, and I wonder why?

How could this be an achievement? And how does an award from an enemy become a proof of greatness in your land? Little, as I know I can confidently say that no one will award a man who is doing something hurtful to him. Because by rewarding he encourages him to do more hurting. Therefore if a man is being awarded and praised by our enemy then he is obviously their hero and cannot be ours too at the same time.

Another such disturbing history comes to the fore when professionals are being mentioned. Again you will find heroes made of black people who were trained by Europeans to champion the interest of Europe in Africa. Talk about lawyers who had annexed lands for European Queens and kings and dethroned patriotic African leaders to install European puppets. And again I wonder why this should be the history or the heroes that we should worship.

At best these people should be considered traitors so that when we eventually gain back our senses completely their era would be documented to represent the lowest points in our history and not the beginning of our greatness. Because in truth, we used to be great when we had an identity, were together and in control of ourselves (which is not the case anymore).

When those days return we should be able to identify heroes that were created by the Europeans and their system and be able to tell true evil ways and how they set us back and teach our young ones what they are made of and why they should never aspire to be like them.