As A Man Thinketh In His Heart

AMBASSADOR EZEWELE ABIONANOJIE CYRIL

 

 Once you can control a man’s belief system, you have gained the power to also control his actions and visions. Our thoughts breed our actions which, in turn midwife our future. Our limitation is a product of our belief system. When a man is made to believe that he is subhuman and unfit to decide his future, he will only struggle within the confines of mediocrity. Even if he finds himself at the dinner table of equality in the ring of human relations, his very nature of inferiority complex will search for a second rate position. He will remain a mannequin that happens to breathe and needs to be told what to do.

The control of one’s thought has been the most effective weapon since the emanation of human history. It is the power that wheels the vehicle of colonialism. When colonial con stars entered Africa, their first mission was to change our ways of thought concerning our lives, ways of leadership, history and our ways of communicating with the believed maker of the universe. We were told that we are children of a lesser God and that our system of worshipping God is idolatry and a sin, while their systems, which they do not really believe in the true sense of their religious claims, are of a greater God. While they were preaching their so called good news, they were still forcing us away as slaves. We were told that we have done nothing substantial in human development. We were told that we cannot function well without their guardians and that our survival depends on their contributions to us.

We were also made to believe that God is white while devil is black as they use black to represent anything illegal; such as black market, black money etc. We believed them and began to act like what we were told we were by them. And none of us could look at his or her colour of skin intensively to discover that we are not black but brown. We were not told of our lives before the age of slavery. We were not told of the great ancient city of Kemet that brought about civilization to the world, and that in her thirteenth dynasty, Africans were already making positive waves in the field of medicine, engineering, agriculture and science before Arab reprisal invasions that ignited the slave trade in question. And between 1870s and 1900 the westerners aggressively rushed into Africa and turned our lands to their farmlands and our people became their crops. Till date, everybody is in the business of sucking the blood of Africans, From Arab to Europe, from Europe to China and so on. It was around the same era of the thirteenth dynasty of Kemet that lasted between 1803 BC until around 1649 BC that Moses book claimed that the first man Adam was made. I wonder how a first man was made in the midst of already existing civilized people. As Africa was shaken to her root by invasions upon invasions, the regions conquered by Arabs became Muslims why the regions conquered by the West became Christians and that formed the starting point of disunity among Africans. Our bond of camaraderie was broken by diversity of faiths.

No matter how glorious the vision of an individual people may seem, as far as they remain suspicious of themselves they cannot make a head way as a people. There would be ulterior motives among them. Be it religious, ethnic, tribal, zonal, gender or individual person’s interests will become the order of the day. Disunity among a people can only provoke the destructive rain of corruption and the thunder of injustice to fall and destroy the fertile soil of the people’s might. And there is a way the neocolonial drivers till date injects the spirit of hatred among us by telling an individual group or tribe that their problems were caused by the actions of another tribe. The result of this hate belief system will give rise to ethnic immunity. In Nigeria for instance, the same Britain that told the Northerners not to leave power for the Southerners told the Southerners not to educate the Northerners that they will grow wild and subject them to slavery. It is just like the playing of the game called DRAUGHTS. No unity, no one voice! We should create our means internally to solve our problems by focusing chiefly on the unification of our people. There is a dire need to create a special MINISTRY FOR UNIFICATION. It is either we unite to ignite the fire to conquer higher positions in the open air of human struggles above mediocrity or we shall remain pencils in the hands of our diabolical foreign oppressors.

There is no way our problems can be solved by those who are in the business of sucking our blood. Our solutions can only be generated by ourselves as demonstrated and proven by Thomas Sankara. Not by foreigners! His African solution reduced mortality rate in Burkina Faso, improved locally made products, guaranteed food security and their GDP took off with eagle speed until he was killed by his second in command via the help and encouragement from France. Every man is said to be the architect of his own fate.  Any foreign body you demand help from will only view your request through the monocle of sowing and reaping. Anything you get from them they shall take back in many folds. They will give you few to eat and collect much more from you. It is like the given of crayfish to catch a whale. Today, China is indirectly ruling over larger part of Africa through the giving of loans. A borrower remains a servant to the lender. We are borrowing to invest and keep wasting the proceeds of our resources on elections (buying votes, loyalties and manipulating electoral results) , and sponsoring conflicts that had denied people access to agriculture, peaceful homes, personal rights, visions and many other developmental commitments. Disunity is like a flat tire, you cannot go anywhere with it.  We must discard our narrow confines of individualistic concerns and chase after the broader concerns of our dear Country, and in extension, of our Continent. We must be dressed in the uniform of less me and more of we. Individually, we are just a tree. But together, we are the little shots that form the big shot. We must invest in unifying our people! Unity is the starting line of the race of our collective destiny. It makes common people to achieve uncommon height. It is what makes a society and civilization work. It is the master key to open the gate that leads to the exciting unknown. It is the hammer that we need to break the fowler’s snare and be freed from all foreign country’s torments. ”How good and how pleasant it could be to see the unification of all Africans” says Robert Nesta Marley. And I will put it to you that when a people lacks the bond of camaraderie, things fall apart.

 

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