Guest Post
By Temidayo Ahanmisi
From the way I see it any African
who scoffs at Pan-Africanism is lost to me. We can never work together on
anything that would move the black race forward...or even move this Nigerian
pseudo-nation forward.
As far as I know ideas do not really die, good or bad.
If Nazism is not dead, why would Pan-Africanism deserve to die? If the US for instance can yet negotiate terms of engagement and survival with its Aryan Nation elements & their spin-off ideologies, why would a Nigerian like me want me to trample Pan-Africanism under foot and subscribe to his own philosophy of round-about motion-as-movement?
Truth is, Pan-Africanism threatens the status-quo. Pan-Africanism calls for a level of courage that we fear we are incapable of accessing. We have been laid back and unquestioning as our default definition of life abundant.
We have become vaunting ‘House Negroes’ as of old, who want to straddle the fence between our pathetic desire to lick the boots of those we erroneously view as our betters, while yet desiring to reap the fruits of the rewards from the labour of the ‘Field Negro’ whom we yet hold in disdain because his unabashed ‘blackness’, which is our shared identity shames and discomfits us.
The real truth laid bare is that we wish Pan-Africanism dead just and only just because it threatens imported religions like Christianity & Islam - the last bond with our colonial masters.
The ideals of Pan-Africanism threaten foreign religious thought by demanding rigorous reassessment and overhaul of such cultures, philosophies and the attendant lifestyles such philosophies birth and sustain.
We do not want to admit, like victims of abuse who yet live in denial that these religions and religious cultures are a yoke around our neck and that as long as we cling fast to them we cannot re-negotiate the terms of our shared humanity - slave to master.
These religions have become one of the biggest impediments to development in Africa today. Inasmuch as every single African does not share a common religious belief, then the only decent thing to do is to tear religion & its myriad influences away from the shared public space of every African nation state. This ripping out should be decisive & unequivocal.
Religions come with their accompanying Philosophies, Cultures & Ideologies - these are the concepts that make for a life in worthwhile...a healthy, self-conscious life. Now the cacophony between competing ideologies makes nonsense of every foreign religion's pretensions to the universal creed of peace without which no man can live with dignity and grace amongst all men.
The Muslims want peace on their own terms, likewise the Christians. The weak & marginalised sections of society have become the ‘grass that suffers’ as a fall-out of the war of attrition between these competing elephantine blocs of ideologies & their adherent ideologues.
Women's bodies, apparel & lives have become battle grounds for war & propagation of draconian ideals that are becoming increasingly stifling to the real development of this specie of humans.
The more endangered bloc is the children - the life blood of races & civilisations.
While other civilisations have made projections into a future in which their children will ascend to world dominance & subjugation of all forces - temporal, spiritual & elemental - so as to keep their racial pre-eminence, we Africans & of course Nigerians are expending our ever dwindling energy & other needful resources to raise slaves & cannon-fodder for the furtherance of the aspirations of these coming generations of masters. This is an outrage.
While we raise Christian boys & girls to become Christian men & women who will in turn push Christian ideals that are nothing in essence but European & Jewish ideals & cultures; while we raise Muslim boys & girls to become Muslim men & women who will in turn push Islamic ideals that are nothing in essence but Arabic & Asiatic ideals & cultures – other races are reinventing themselves, waking up to the one over-riding identity of what they are first and foremost – Human.
They realize that as human beings they have one obligation to themselves & to their universe – to live; to advance; to evolve…and by so doing ensure the propagation of their unique civilization into any foreseeable or even yet unimagined perpetuity.
It is patently evil that as Africans, adults from their teens to their centenary years have to start from scratch to assert their inalienable right to above all exist – before they can even begin to contemplate racial survival & other accompanying ideals. It is evil…we inherited this evil from generations past who had one & only one legacy to their progeny – Slavery.
This slavery has been pushed on by the shackling of the minds of Africans through the decades & centuries even after physical slavery had been abolished. This slavery was propagated using models of identity which marked the slave children as properties of their respective masters first, before identifying them as the humans that they were supposed to be – a humanity that is a natural right of even just existing. The skins of these slaves could not be branded anymore & so their very minds & even their ‘’souls’’ their basic essence had to be branded.
Now we have ‘’Christian man/woman/youth/child; we have Muslim man/woman/youth/child…what we do not have are human beings…who happen to be Africans by birth.
This usurpation of the true hierarchy of creation & existence has led to deeply ingrained disconnect in basic reasoning & imaginings that the very world vision of these African humans are altered irredeemably from the very moment they can string a complete line of thought…their very consciousness is affected by imported thought patterns. They therefore cannot have belief systems that can sustain life in its very essence.
How can a creation which does not have right to free thought ever have true right to life and real freedom?...How can such ever be assured of true development & growth? Every pretension to advancement that this continent can ever lay claim to is a sham as long as organised religion remains in the public space and dominates even the private lives of Africans.
We have become ‘’church-states’’ where governments pay increasing patronage to religion to ensure the retardation of the citizenry. Now the citizens who are ‘’Christians’’ & Muslims’’ first before they are race, gender or any other individuation cannot take up arms psychologically against rapacious governments because they are called upon by virtue of their religious alliances to obey without wrangling those in authority over them…these of course being existent governments & authorities – religious as well as political.
Being so shackled & left with limited room for expression they turn their internal wars and agitations inwards and begin to oppress the weaker elements for sport. They cannot then agitate for better public governance, but would turn to celestial forces to plead their cases and shuffle around aimlessly, hoping that as they have been indoctrinated to believe, these forces would come to their aid and liquidate the oppressive elements remotely, so that they would have kept their religious moral consciences unsullied throughout. How pathetic! How so blind…and how so patently immoral!
How can responsible parents cage their children’s futures so?
How can a civilisation hold its evolution in abeyance this way?
How can a race to who even the very cosmic forces of creation have bestowed just about every benefit imaginable to creation make a travesty of its own existence so strenuously?
We the Africans, few as we are right now – to whom our basic identity as Humans is the foremost identity to which we hold any allegiance over any other – have decided to wake up and reclaim our right to be just what we should be…Human beings living with dignity and courage; Human beings advancing with grace and strength – exercising our right to thought, reason, identity, belief, survival and propagation right here on this material earth that we share with other human species.
We have resolved to advance into fields of Knowledge, Reason, Logic, Spirituality and Humanism that have hitherto been so convoluted and corrupted in essence and manifestation that only disorder, corruption, ignorance, fear and immorality could result hitherto and hence in turn unleashed unto the African consciousness.
Every African will have true freedom of thought…and therefore of independent belief.
We will remove the pollution of dependant religious life and subjective morality and thought from our public spaces – from our schools and other institutions of culture, education, governance and enlightenment.
Our laws will be laws infused with our independent intellectualism and shared cultural values. Organised religion will flourish in peace in its natural areas of influence – Church; Mosque; Shrine; Coven; Temple; Lodge; Home and relevant private communities as organized along common religious heritage and tributaries.
It is our aim to be Humans & Africans once more. No force can stop Pan-Afrikanism.
FIAT LUX
As far as I know ideas do not really die, good or bad.
If Nazism is not dead, why would Pan-Africanism deserve to die? If the US for instance can yet negotiate terms of engagement and survival with its Aryan Nation elements & their spin-off ideologies, why would a Nigerian like me want me to trample Pan-Africanism under foot and subscribe to his own philosophy of round-about motion-as-movement?
Truth is, Pan-Africanism threatens the status-quo. Pan-Africanism calls for a level of courage that we fear we are incapable of accessing. We have been laid back and unquestioning as our default definition of life abundant.
We have become vaunting ‘House Negroes’ as of old, who want to straddle the fence between our pathetic desire to lick the boots of those we erroneously view as our betters, while yet desiring to reap the fruits of the rewards from the labour of the ‘Field Negro’ whom we yet hold in disdain because his unabashed ‘blackness’, which is our shared identity shames and discomfits us.
The real truth laid bare is that we wish Pan-Africanism dead just and only just because it threatens imported religions like Christianity & Islam - the last bond with our colonial masters.
The ideals of Pan-Africanism threaten foreign religious thought by demanding rigorous reassessment and overhaul of such cultures, philosophies and the attendant lifestyles such philosophies birth and sustain.
We do not want to admit, like victims of abuse who yet live in denial that these religions and religious cultures are a yoke around our neck and that as long as we cling fast to them we cannot re-negotiate the terms of our shared humanity - slave to master.
These religions have become one of the biggest impediments to development in Africa today. Inasmuch as every single African does not share a common religious belief, then the only decent thing to do is to tear religion & its myriad influences away from the shared public space of every African nation state. This ripping out should be decisive & unequivocal.
Religions come with their accompanying Philosophies, Cultures & Ideologies - these are the concepts that make for a life in worthwhile...a healthy, self-conscious life. Now the cacophony between competing ideologies makes nonsense of every foreign religion's pretensions to the universal creed of peace without which no man can live with dignity and grace amongst all men.
The Muslims want peace on their own terms, likewise the Christians. The weak & marginalised sections of society have become the ‘grass that suffers’ as a fall-out of the war of attrition between these competing elephantine blocs of ideologies & their adherent ideologues.
Women's bodies, apparel & lives have become battle grounds for war & propagation of draconian ideals that are becoming increasingly stifling to the real development of this specie of humans.
The more endangered bloc is the children - the life blood of races & civilisations.
While other civilisations have made projections into a future in which their children will ascend to world dominance & subjugation of all forces - temporal, spiritual & elemental - so as to keep their racial pre-eminence, we Africans & of course Nigerians are expending our ever dwindling energy & other needful resources to raise slaves & cannon-fodder for the furtherance of the aspirations of these coming generations of masters. This is an outrage.
While we raise Christian boys & girls to become Christian men & women who will in turn push Christian ideals that are nothing in essence but European & Jewish ideals & cultures; while we raise Muslim boys & girls to become Muslim men & women who will in turn push Islamic ideals that are nothing in essence but Arabic & Asiatic ideals & cultures – other races are reinventing themselves, waking up to the one over-riding identity of what they are first and foremost – Human.
They realize that as human beings they have one obligation to themselves & to their universe – to live; to advance; to evolve…and by so doing ensure the propagation of their unique civilization into any foreseeable or even yet unimagined perpetuity.
It is patently evil that as Africans, adults from their teens to their centenary years have to start from scratch to assert their inalienable right to above all exist – before they can even begin to contemplate racial survival & other accompanying ideals. It is evil…we inherited this evil from generations past who had one & only one legacy to their progeny – Slavery.
This slavery has been pushed on by the shackling of the minds of Africans through the decades & centuries even after physical slavery had been abolished. This slavery was propagated using models of identity which marked the slave children as properties of their respective masters first, before identifying them as the humans that they were supposed to be – a humanity that is a natural right of even just existing. The skins of these slaves could not be branded anymore & so their very minds & even their ‘’souls’’ their basic essence had to be branded.
Now we have ‘’Christian man/woman/youth/child; we have Muslim man/woman/youth/child…what we do not have are human beings…who happen to be Africans by birth.
This usurpation of the true hierarchy of creation & existence has led to deeply ingrained disconnect in basic reasoning & imaginings that the very world vision of these African humans are altered irredeemably from the very moment they can string a complete line of thought…their very consciousness is affected by imported thought patterns. They therefore cannot have belief systems that can sustain life in its very essence.
How can a creation which does not have right to free thought ever have true right to life and real freedom?...How can such ever be assured of true development & growth? Every pretension to advancement that this continent can ever lay claim to is a sham as long as organised religion remains in the public space and dominates even the private lives of Africans.
We have become ‘’church-states’’ where governments pay increasing patronage to religion to ensure the retardation of the citizenry. Now the citizens who are ‘’Christians’’ & Muslims’’ first before they are race, gender or any other individuation cannot take up arms psychologically against rapacious governments because they are called upon by virtue of their religious alliances to obey without wrangling those in authority over them…these of course being existent governments & authorities – religious as well as political.
Being so shackled & left with limited room for expression they turn their internal wars and agitations inwards and begin to oppress the weaker elements for sport. They cannot then agitate for better public governance, but would turn to celestial forces to plead their cases and shuffle around aimlessly, hoping that as they have been indoctrinated to believe, these forces would come to their aid and liquidate the oppressive elements remotely, so that they would have kept their religious moral consciences unsullied throughout. How pathetic! How so blind…and how so patently immoral!
How can responsible parents cage their children’s futures so?
How can a civilisation hold its evolution in abeyance this way?
How can a race to who even the very cosmic forces of creation have bestowed just about every benefit imaginable to creation make a travesty of its own existence so strenuously?
We the Africans, few as we are right now – to whom our basic identity as Humans is the foremost identity to which we hold any allegiance over any other – have decided to wake up and reclaim our right to be just what we should be…Human beings living with dignity and courage; Human beings advancing with grace and strength – exercising our right to thought, reason, identity, belief, survival and propagation right here on this material earth that we share with other human species.
We have resolved to advance into fields of Knowledge, Reason, Logic, Spirituality and Humanism that have hitherto been so convoluted and corrupted in essence and manifestation that only disorder, corruption, ignorance, fear and immorality could result hitherto and hence in turn unleashed unto the African consciousness.
Every African will have true freedom of thought…and therefore of independent belief.
We will remove the pollution of dependant religious life and subjective morality and thought from our public spaces – from our schools and other institutions of culture, education, governance and enlightenment.
Our laws will be laws infused with our independent intellectualism and shared cultural values. Organised religion will flourish in peace in its natural areas of influence – Church; Mosque; Shrine; Coven; Temple; Lodge; Home and relevant private communities as organized along common religious heritage and tributaries.
It is our aim to be Humans & Africans once more. No force can stop Pan-Afrikanism.
FIAT LUX
About Temidayo Ahanmisi
Temidayo Ahanmisi is a young, dynamic and passionate Nigerian. A liberated mind, she is an inspiration to the young generation who clamour for change within the black man's homeland. She lives in Nigeria
Temidayo Ahanmisi is a young, dynamic and passionate Nigerian. A liberated mind, she is an inspiration to the young generation who clamour for change within the black man's homeland. She lives in Nigeria
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