Africa: Key Issues in the Changing Dynamics of the Social Process in Africa (1)

opinion

I BELONG to a generation of Africans, indigenes of the various nationalities of Africa, inheritors of the machinations of slavery and colonialism. Bequeathed an inept leadership made up of fellow Africans, leaders and peers alike who share a jaundiced view of African development. This confused perception is not due to a lack of understanding of the issues at stake but the fact that our collective psyche have been traumatized by the re occurrence of the tragic in the history of the nations of Africa. In Nigeria where I was born, I was told by my parents that my birth was conceived before the drumbeats of civil war started, I still recollect my being among travelers in a canoe in the company of my mother and two other siblings, unaware of any danger during the civil war in a bid to return to Benin City. From history I have learnt of all the wrangling of the first republic that led to the military incursion into the polity and subsequently the civil war. The coup that led to the emergence of Murtalla Mohammed shook the country to its foundation; His cold blooded murder also was of no less consequence. I am trying to resist the pull into this vortex, but the questions keep nagging and reverberates the agitation, why do we regard ourselves as citizens of the same nationality while we engage every means possible to destabilize the union? Why is it always the same clique of elites, civilian and military that have ruled since independence? Why have questions asked since independence not been answered till today? Are we citizens of a one nation or victims of a system? Who are the despots? I have also tried to phantom if it is possible for a people to fall under a collective trance for decades, make the same motions, bequeathing from father to son a culture of docility to enable reprobates fritter our commonwealth, but who or what creates the spin? In this treatise I have tried to re echo the spirit of Pan-Africanism which formed the background for the founding of a new black movement into which I enrolled as a teenager, its founding and progress over the years and the significance of Benin Kingdom to the history of Africa and why this ancient city today is home to one of the greatest black consciousness movements in the world today.

BENIN KINGDOM

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