Nigeria: The Barbarians of Africa

opinion

Last week I wrote an essay titled "12 Years A Slave and The Case For Reparations". It was a historical account about the travails of the African and the black man over the last few centuries. Frankly, it was very moving. I shed tears as I wrote that essay- tears for our people and their pitiable plight and tears for the challenges and sheer cruelty that our forefathers experienced in the hands of those that regarded us as nothing more than sub-human barbarians and chattel.

Yet one wonders who the real barbarians were: were they those who found it so easy to treat their fellow human beings as thrash and vermin, worthy only of hate and fit only for servitude, suffering, hard labour and bondage or was it those that were the objects and victims of that pent-up hate, that were regarded as nothing more than animals and that were denied even the most basic right of being regarded as and treated like human beings? I rather think that the term "barbarian" is better reserved for the former group rather than the latter.

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