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Sat, 05 Oct 2024 Feature Article

Let Africa Breathe

Let Africa Breathe

The reason for the division of labor and honor system in many cultures is to heighten the best talent in every field to the best of individual abilities where many people can excel. But if every member of the same society pursues only one goal, other areas where many can be proficient are crowded out by a singular pursuit. This is how rich countries without natural resources excel.

The story of how MTN and phone technology spring up into big employers of our Youths is worth noting and repeating in many unexplored fields. We have so many graduates to the highest levels in Africa. But the pursuit of only money by do or die has killed many ingenuities.

The African Honor System has been replaced by money first, second and third. No country or people that worshiped printed papers as a means of exchange for goods and services has ever prospered on others’ currencies they cannot print. Since there are alternate shortcuts to bypassing printed money or cash. One of the advantageous means is to increase printed money or reduce the value to cowries like Zimbabwe dollars to make their goods and services cheap.

Most times we forget that money is a promissory note, not the real property or goods. Many of us would do anything for money, not our community. Some Nigerians beseech the Ukrainian Embassy to fight for Ukraine. Other Africans would die for any country but theirs. Only some love the country more than money, by any means. Obsessive love of money has killed African ingenuities. When was the last time you heard a Nigerian say he would die for his country?

Who can believe that after 64 years of Independence, Nigeria cannot account for the goods, products and natural resources leaving the country because most of these are diverted to private well known sticky hands of individual kleptomaniacs. These are Cabals all over the Country that are well established but have never been held responsible for their debilitating greed that kills the Nation and most of its people. Indeed, most of them dare their fellow politicians if elected as Presidents to prosecute them!

Consequently, the pursuit of money by any means has resulted in the reckless and inhumane slaughter of people, destruction of properties by bandits; hostage takers for ransom; exploitation of followers by religious miracle charlatans in the name of God or Allah; acts just as fatally insidious as the deeds of politicians embezzling funds for hospitals, treatment of the sick and children. The same politicians, lure by foreign reserves, waste outrageous amounts of dollars on themselves and their families abroad for education and treatment unfunded at home.

These enemies within are worse than those from outside. Africans blame their colonial masters for everything. Even more so for what Africans do to fellow Africans; just to gain immediate and initial advantage. Regardless of how profitable a better endeavor may fetch if invested at home to yield future profits. They see how foreign businesses invest their money for a longer duration than their African partners, unwilling to wait.

African leaders are only interested in immediate cash. When you trust your own people enough to appoint or elect them into the position of governing or managing your resources but only want to help themselves into their pockets, hide humongous cash in graves, cabinets and storage, they are just as treacherous as their colonial masters. Both African leaders and colonial masters have in common: laundering their loot outside Africa.

If African Freedom Fighters wake up from the dead and beyond to witness their own children rampaging their countries as politicians, we wish they would take them with cold blooded hands beyond. Innocent observers cannot believe that African politicians and militricians would be the ones killing countries that were flowing with milk, honey, talents and many natural resources into abject poverty. Africa has replaced Asia of the 60s as the face of poverty today.

It becomes obvious to the foreign borrowers that there is some fundamental shift in African negotiators’ mental capacity that prevents them from identifying or empathizing with the people they serve that are in abject poverty at home. They see Africans in foreign countries negotiating for loans wasting money on luxurious tastes. While those they seek money from display modest tastes. Once there is any allocation for projects at home, these vultures keep vigil as it becomes available so that they can be snatched before implementation of projects at grassroots level.

This is how foreign businesses know our African businesses cannot survive for long. There is nothing more insulting and provoking than the same politicians and their cronies claiming to be the beacon of hope for their countries. These are wolves preaching to sheep to keep the hope and stay alive until they are ready for sacrifice. Just as the Christian and Muslim missionaries told us to pray while exchanging Bible and Koran for our resources.

But the colonial explorers stated they paid our chiefs for slaves and our natural resources. The children of the African chiefs that sold us into slavery are worse, because they portray themselves as the beacon of hope. Knowing at that point in time, they are fooling their people while their cronies were busy negating the culture of virtue they preach.

However, nouveau politicians and militricians took advantage of the situation with deliberate indifference. Grabbing and looting everything in sight while ignoring the plight of their people as if they are not fellow humans in Africa. They behave as Emperors dancing naked in the world marketplaces. Greed with voracious appetite for what they refused to produce at home and disdain for local products, reduced Africans to glorified slaves around the world.

Nigerian politicians and militricians made the sixty-four years after Independence worse off than before. This is after all the labor, sweat and sacrifice of the Freedom Fighter that made some progress in less than ten years as the world taunted Nigeria as the “new potential Regional Power”. Education, Primary Care, Cooperative farms, Industrial and Housing Estates were developed at the rate never seen during the colonial period. Diaspora Blacks and Africa pinning hope on Nigeria as a Big Brother!

However, today there are more than enough Nigerians willing to help foreigners loot the country dry in exchange for a pittance as kickbacks from whatever mercenary can take the country out. This is the reason Europeans, Americans and Asians are rushing to Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. While some Youths call Nigeria a rotten enterprise, jungle or zoo, foreigners see Nigeria as the best place to make quick money if you can hold your breath long enough.

African Brain powers are used to impoverish African countries while foreigners are using the same brain powers to develop their countries by increasing their wealth at home with cheap labor like their good old days of Slave Trade.

Farouk Martins Aresa @oomoaresa1

Farouk Martins Aresa
Farouk Martins Aresa, © 2024

This Author has 693 publications here on modernghana.comColumn: Farouk Martins Aresa

Disclaimer: "The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect ModernGhana official position. ModernGhana will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements in the contributions or columns here." Follow our WhatsApp channel for meaningful stories picked for your day.

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