SABOTAGING AFRICANS SINCE 1506
Barely a week since President Buhari came into power, electricity supply has greatly improved. The new President hasn’t even chosen a cabinet, not to talk of building a power plant, but Nigerians are already enjoying the exit of Goodluck.
It is obvious that the power plants had been sabotaged to frustrate the government out of power. The government commissioned 10 new powerplants but the gas pipelines were constantly sabotaged to prevent the government from enjoying its success. One minister said tongue in cheek that it was being sabotaged by witches and wizards.
This has been the way populist governments had been frustrated out of power as far back as 1806 in Haiti, the first European styled nation. Power will fail, interest rates rise and economies will be crashed by the powers that be. A rag tag army or terrorists will be armed to defeat the national army, who will miraculously run out of bullets. We saw it happen in Cuba and many others and now in Nigeria.
This is why it is practically impossible to have a revolution in Africa. Any leader that tries to change the economic status quo will either be disgraced out of power through character assassinations on corruption claims like with Nkrumah, Obote and many other African philosopher kings, or they will be captured like Laurent Gbagbo and sent to the Hague, or deported like the Oba of Benin or Jaja of Opobo.
In 1505, the Benin Empire banned Europeans from setting foot on their empire after realizing that the Europeans wanted only slaves after discovering the Americas. The Europeans then set out to arm the Deltans, bringing constant war and anarchy at its borders. They mined cowries off the Kenyan Coast which they dumped on the coast to sabotage the economy. Benin survived the political and economic sabotage for a 100years but eventually had to succumb under Akensua, who allowed slavery and is remembered as the good king that brought peace and prosperity. What an irony.
Yet, for 500 years, my people have failed to understand what they can not see and are fixated on the short term. Maybe if we ever reciprocated by sabotaging their chosen government, it would stop, but Africans are not genetically wired like that. We want peace and to go back to our normal life. We don’t want trouble with Massa. So, most African leaders now play safe and dance to Massa’s tune, knowing they will lose all, including their families, and their people will forget them as they get on with life on the plantation.
Our oppressors appear to be more focused and complex than us. They build up sellouts and saboteurs among us that they politically and economically empower to gather followership.
Hmmmn, Yoruba Ronu e
