Have you ever wondered how colonial rule started in Africa? I have been pondering on what could have made a man leave his region all in the name of a voyage into an unknown area and an answer was given to me last night as I was watching a documentary on Nat Geo Wild where a man was seen trying to climb the Mount Everest. The programme was a documentary that was pieced together to showcase those legends of the old who did something spectacular or whose action threw more light on something or a place.
As I was watching this programme, one word just echoed in my head and the word was; “Inquisitive”. Immediately it all started falling into place how Africa was found and the stories of how a man found this or that. The only thing that could make a man leave his environment to go to a land he knows nothing about is his inquisitive nature which is one of the strongest characteristics of the westerners and that is why you find a lot of them making the Guinness book of record in the world stage.
While Africans were busy enjoying themselves and never cared to know if their existed others like them in the olden days, the westerners were busy trying to understand the universe and everything therein and this made them set out on a voyage in a bid to either find the end of the earth or where the ocean stopped. It was during one of this many voyages under Henry the Navigator in the 15th century that the Cape of Good Hope was first reached by Bartolomeu Dias on March 1488 and this opened the sea route to India and Far East (source). The rest became history because it was that very first voyage that made the westerns to know that there lived others whom they perceived to be different from them probably because of their skin colour.
The pertinent question one must ask in this whole fuss of finding a people is; was Africa lost? The study of English language has made it clear for me to understand that you can only search for what has been in existence but lost which is why you hear statements like; “the man went in search of His missing rib, the police have searched day and night through the forest and yet no trace of her was found”. This and many other statements have proven that you only search for something you have either lost or you wish to find and when you find such a thing your heart will find peace.
Does this mean that the westerns found peace in their hearts when they found out that there were others like them or were they happy because they found people to lord over? This is an issue to discuss next time. This article is about the word inquisitive and how it has helped nations and countries to find solutions to the numerous problems bedevilling them. It is a fact that it is this same word that creates the difference between a successful man or country and an unsuccessful man or country.
Just in the case of Africa and their inability to go out of their comfort zone in search of either the end of the sea or to know where the sun comes out from before rising, Nigeria one of the countries of Africa has remained in the same circle of mistake since the colonial rule and the supposed independence. A country that has copied every single thing that comes from the western world even when it does not favour them because their leaders believe so much in what the western world has to offer without trying to know how well the once they have been copying has favoured them. This has made them remain where they are or should I say that they have gone even below.
When Africa was supposedly found, the colonial master came with lots of things and among those was Christianity. The question Africans must ask themselves is; how has the adoption of Christianity helped the development of Africa? Or was Christianity another means of colonialism by the western world?
If after adopting Christianity and the growth of so many churches in Africa and yet Africa remains underdeveloped after so many years then what it means is that someone or some group of people has been deceiving Africa with Christianity as a religion. Don’t forget that just as Asia have their numerous religions Africa had theirs but the colonial masters made them abandon their religious beliefs which have been their age-long principles and norms before the colonial era. In Nigeria, almost every street has a church which means that one can say that Nigeria is predominantly a Christian country and yet nothing seems to be working.
Christianity comes with the principle of loving your neighbour more than yourself and this leaves me wondering; how well does the western world love Africa? Or are we just being used? If Christianity is truly what they have brought to us and that it meant what they told us, how come we have remained underdeveloped while they flourish? When they came to us during the colonial era, they came with both guns and the bible. This singular act of coming with the so-called word of redemption while they had guns hidden under their clothes has so many things to say but Africa in their lack of asking pertinent questions as to why someone who says that he comes with the word of God will also have the gun with them will never ask any question because they have chosen to be controlled by their colonial masters even after the whole colonial era.
Africa has become like that baby that never bothered to know why he had two hands and how to use them. We cannot but tell ourselves the painful truth that the western world brought Christianity not because they wanted us to know God but because they saw it as a means to get through to us. In this age and era where countries are busy investing in the education and research sectors of their economy, Nigeria and its religious leaders are busy competing on who will build the biggest church edifice instead of using the money to develop the country even when it is glaring that church has become more like a business venture where one can join today and become a billionaire tomorrow.
Check the list of private jet owners in the world and you will be marvelled to see the names of most Nigerian pastors and this keeps me wondering; if the cost of acquiring a private jet is over $2 million and above, why can’t all these religious not contribute the money in a bid to help Nigeria out of poverty but it is obvious that to then Christianity is purely a business venture and not anywhere close to a religion that loves one another as they preach every day in their churches.
Another side to this is that even with all the churches and religions sprouting here and there in Nigeria, Nigeria is still among the first 10 countries with a high rate of terrorism and corruption and all our leaders worship in one religious body or the other. Why is Nigeria and Africa in general still underdeveloped even when the Christianity that was brought to us tells us to love our neighbours as we love ourselves? This is a question that must be answered especially by our colonial masters because we deserve to know what and why they brought Christianity to us.
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