The Formation Of Information

AMBASSADOR EZEWELE CYRIL ABIONANOJIE

Information is an acquired knowledge that could either be a carrier of facts, fictions, hyperbole, sugar coated stories, fabricated lies or a mixture of any of the stated above. They could be cultivated through verbal communication, schooling, books, media, dream, mind’s eyes, religious teachers, etc.

It builds the structure of your belief system and affects your point of view about life, which in turn determines your approach to life situations. It forms the shape of your mental picture which begets your actual future. It is the amount of positive information available in the hands of the populace of an individual people or nation that builds the formation of their economic position. Ignorance has always and will always be the retrogressive force that keeps a people or a nation from attaining great height in the world of success.

Before the year 1956 when crude oil was discovered in Nigeria at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta part of the country, the people of Oloibiri lived in abject poverty upon living on a soil that worth billions of dollars. And as the soil could not resist the heat of the crude oil underneath, it bursts into flame that burns continually day after day. As a result of lack of information and that of the power of researching, the people of Oloibiri, upon seeing the unquenchable flame concluded that the spirit of the land has revealed his nature to them. They swung into action and built a bamboo fence round the fire and nominated a chief priest to keep worshipping and pacifying the anger of their assumed gods in the fire. All manners of sacrifices were thrown into the fire. They organized periodic fiestas and kept dancing to please the assumed gods in the fire from crude oil. The fire spot became a place of prayer and favour- seeking for the people of Oloibiri and their neighboring villages until the arrival of Shell-BP that stopped their negative conviction. Till date, many Africans are still wallowing in the same circle of thoughts. They hope in inanimate objects and things that only exist in the imagination for survival instead of engaging a physical approach in solving life situations.

The African mentality was not as weak as demonstrated by the native people of Oloibiri from the beginning. In fact, they brought civilization to the world and thought the world how to read and write with signs. In the year 1600 BC, when Moses claimed in his book of Genesis to be the year the first man Adam was created was the 13^th Dynasty of our people in the city of Kemet. I wonder how a first man would be created in the midst of already civilized people who had grown in the fields of Engineering, Medicine, Psychology, Commerce and Industry etc. Africans built ships and magnificent inventions before the era of slave trade. Leo Weiner of Harvard University, in his book, ‘Africa And The Discovery Of America’ explained how Christopher Columbus noted that Native Americans had confirmed that black skinned people had come from the south east in boats, trading in gold tipped spear. The Pyramid of Egypt was built by black Africans. Not this present day Egyptians! That is why it remains a wonder to the world and to this present day Egyptians because they knew nothing about the building of it. It was the Arab conquest of Egypt and incessant wars that scattered Africans to other parts of Africa. Decades of slavery, chasing and oppression erode Africans mental focus on advancement and relegate them to the region of fear and timidity where knowledge became an elusive commodity. Africans are still drowning in stagnation because of the negative and frustrating information concerning their history and past achievement made available to them by colonial masters. Nothing good is spoken of them before slavery! Anything that does not carry the emblem of shame is not communicated to them by the colonial masters who cunningly rewrote Africans history to be a badge of shame in the arena of ‘a never do well’

It is the genuineness of the information you accept and digest that determines the brightness of your transformation. It is not all information received that guarantee success. The contents of information could either be edifying or deceptive in nature. In fact, some are intentionally projected to relegate you to the worktable of failure where you shall be caged in a retrogressive circle of thoughts. After the abolishment of slave trade, the use of chains became obsolete while the use of misinformation and brainwashing became the living weapon of neocolonialism and that of our afro politically thoughtless and short sighted leaders. Though, it was planned from the onset by colonial masters, as they foresaw the possible end of slave trade, they had to introduce a new method of controlling and enslaving their victims that had nothing to do with the physical ion slave chain.

FIRSTLY, they introduced a new culture of worshipping the believed extra terrestrial being that controls the universe. The Arab violently forced in Islam into our mental picture while the West stylishly lured in Christianity and make us to see our culture of worship as evil. It will interest you to know that the same ship that brought Bibles and their so called religious missionaries to Africa took back Africans as slaves to the Western world. The church was projected to calm and change your way of thoughts to facilitate the penetration of slave traders to capture and export more of you in chains. The Arabs came into Africa to enslave Africans before the West came in. They did not engage many tricks in converting us to Islam. They came with swords and arrows. It was a matter of step in or you go down for life.

SECONDLY, they worked on your times gone by and disgustingly and terribly shape it to make you mortified by your history. According to Dr. John Henry Clark, “To control a people you must first control what they think about themselves and how they regard their history and culture. Once they have been made ashamed of themselves and culture you no longer need chains to hold them”.  While Marcus Mosiah Garvey asserts, “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots”. And I will corroborate the assertions of Garvey and Dr. John that, the true knowledge of the past historical great achievement of a people serves as an inspiration that provokes the aspiration of the individual people to pursue greatness against every opposition.

All information received and accepted by you must form a structure in your belief system that will regulate your actions and inactions. Your actions and in actions form your nature while your nature midwife your future.

It is a pity that most African leaders do not pay much attention to our educational curricula. Rather, they believe in the teaching of indoctrinated ideologies that have nothing in common with reality, pushing for a tribe up and pulling other tribes down, forgetting the fact that if we keep on busy fighting ourselves we are creating more loopholes for neocolonialism to fester.

Note: As the right information leads to transformation, the wrong information is the broad way to deformation.

Ambassador Ezewele Cyril Abionanojie is the author of the book “The Enemy Called Corruption” and writes from Lagos.