STRIKER: An Unhealthy Phase
AFRICA and African people are going through an unhealthy transition phase: understandably starting out from the Francophone countries; they are waking up to the realities of a truth stridently long told – Neo-colonialism.
France is the most out-and-out and unrepentant neo-colonialist force in Africa. It granted no independence to its former colonies, stipulating conditions for “independence” that are clearly new terms for fresh bondage. It is no wonder that the spate of coup sweeping Africa should begin from there.
Puppet regimes are fostered on the “former” colonies to allow France brutally exploit the resources of those countries only to the benefit of France and the elite families and cliques they impose on those countries in the name of “constitutional” government and “democracy.” Whenever any of the governments does not do its selfish bids, it orchestrates coups and a change of government “by any means necessary” to “correct” the situation like the overthrow of Thomas Sankara; replaced by a puppet Blaise Compaore that was sustained until unsustainable.
The people are now tired. Disempowered and impoverished, nakedly exploited and oppressed but now looking everywhere for Messiahs. Being helpless, the military brass are cashing in on their messianic longings.
The Anglophone countries are simply going through the same traumatic tribulation and misery, with a more subtle, anti-people, pro-foreign powers, Neo-colonialist template – packaged more remotely to make it seem that England and their American cousins have no hand in it; as if it is simply a self inflicted, internal affairs woes. However, the facts lend themselves clear to the discerning. The turn of the Anglophone countries is only a little ahead around the corners as far as ends to exploitative, oppressive “democratic” governments are concerned.
Nigeria is the glaring example of hopeless and despotic power elite that are patently anti-people over the years: with all the God-given resources it is endowed with, especially the people.
For God’s sake, how can a head of family have a land where yams grow everywhere without effort, and he cannot even organise his children to harvest but call outsiders to do so, then sell all the yams, as per being one of the largest producers in the whole wide world, then collect money, and be looking for where to go buy pounded yam to feed his family from those he sold the yams? It is the height of insanity! And all kinds of excuses that sicken the senses are adduced for why it is impossible to make our pounded yams from our yams here to feed us fully, and then sell only the excess yams to purchase whatever is needful.
The worrisome thing is the people’s helplessness in their patent frustration, bitterness and bottled angers; with their division, lack of concerted, organised actions for their own redemption. The constituency that takes advantage to send the parasitic power elites packing is now the armed forces of the various African countries, who are in every material particular only comrade-in-arms of the civilian despotic, carefree, careless and insane wings of the same Neo-colonialist Agency of Foreign powers – only that the civilians hide and operate under “democracy” that Fela Anikulapo Kuti has since exposed as “demo- crazy.”
READ: OBSERVATION: State Of The Nation
The plain truth is that the system of foreign domination, exploitation and oppression leaves the people no other messiah than themselves. Impoverished, divided and manipulated along ethnic and religious fault lines as they are, they can count on any other force to free them only at great risk. Democracy remains the only solution to “demo-crazy.” If democracy is the government of the people by the people and for the people, it is the fault of the people that they allow it not to be so. Individuals have limit to intervening to make democracy equals to democracy. However, when they come together, one by one over time, patiently and painstakingly, and then into thousands and eventually millions in a determined organisation, their redemption into egalitarian governance is inevitably assured, and no power on earth, imperialistic or neo-colonialist can stop them! Of course, they need the process spearheaded by a small organisation of righteous and self-sacrificial men and women, but it is their disposition in daily life that will make that organisation come quick or late. Hoping on coups by a military that is ill-trained, ill-orientated and ill-equipped by the same vampire neo-colonial power to deliver them from bondage is simply a fantasy that will deliver them from frying pan to fire; and an endless motion without movemen
