If you accompany Trouble on his travels through Africa and the additional Continent of AfricaWorld, you would have to wonder why Africans do not wish to make life better for themselves and their children.
Subsistence Existence is dragged or derived from the concept of subsistence farming.
Let's see why;
Read on.
When talking of continents, there are two additional ones now. There is the the ArabWorld, most of whose land mass is in the continent of Africa. And there is the AfricaWorld comprising Africa and the slums and dump sites around the world.
The Africa world writers and intellectuals
These writers and intellectuals of Africa World like to say what people in Asia and Europe and North America are doing to make life better for themselves and their children and anyone else who cares. They do this as if the mere listing of the actions of Japanese or Chinese or Indian leader would make the African leader (be it Nigeria, Ghana, Congo etc) do the same. Time and endless time again, the writers and intellectuals of AfricaWorld continue to do this without any positive response from their political leaders.
The political leaders
These political leaders have seen these countries, met the men and women who lead these countries, walked the clean streets of these cities and travelled in the regular and regulated means of these countries. Have the leaders been encouraged to imitate these persons, places and things. These leaders have seen palaces, slept in places around the world, yet come back home to ramshackle buildings decrepit in the extreme and hang notices indicating this to be the palace King. This is grossly disheartening.
The Nigerian experience
Catalogue of wastages Nigerian Airways wasted. Nigerian Railways railroaded into destruction. Nigerian Roads reduced to motor paths and dirty fishing ponds without fish. Middle of Government secretariats become dump sites, etc etc .
The way out of this mess
The only way out is to have an indigenous inspiration to make things better for ourselves not listing of what others have done.
What inspired others
The inspiration that spored others to seek betterment in their lifetime are majorly poverty and disease and the belief that poverty and disease is not the fate of anyone, neither it is wished in anyone by some malignant deity or neighbour. Also the underlining belief that poverty and ill-health can be done away with, can be avoided, inspires the effort to seek better seedlings, better forms of food preservation, deeper understanding of the causes of illness and disease. Without this basic belief, it's difficult to get through.
Inspiration from other people's life
A few examples here: Obafemi Awolowo
The sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, as premier of the then Western Nigeria, devoted himself to study, reading and researching the needs of his constituency, came up with a blueprint on Education, (he gave free education) Economy,(he established industrial estates and agrobiz) Health, Housing, Electricity and good life for everybody. His constituency was better for it.
Nelson Mandela
This African icon, defied evey odd and fought for the freedom of his people. The minority Whites oppressing the the majority Blacks in South Africa. A world where the satisfaction of of the best of one set of people was achieved by the worst of the other set of people fall fellow humans). He felt this was not acceptable, he launched out the offensive. Something must be done to school the wealthy and the wretched, the powerful and the weak, white, black or any colour; that only a shared wealth is good for all humans. He was ready to die or live for it. Apartheid was broken and deposed, South Africa had her deserved Independence.
Unfortunately, inspite of these shining lights as examples, Africa still wallow in ignorance, poverty and disease. Darkness is still holding sway as if no one has shown us the light. This is not acceptable in the 21st century. It must be confronted head-on.
Conclusion
The question our writers, thinkers and all intellectuals should be concerned with should not be how they did it in India, China or Japan with the mind set that we can do it here to make life meaningful for us and better for our generations ahead What we need from them is to *tell us how we can go beyond being satisfied with living a subsistent existence in our world, African continent. Enough is enough, period.
Regards
Udu Benedict
Boklacmega writer!!