If a monkey should attempt to fight a fish and expect to win, it has to ensure that the location of the fight is anywhere else but inside the water.
For Europeans to defeat Africa, they needed to change the turf. Take us to an unfamiliar plain and then get us to compete with them at their own vantage point.
Our indigenous religious system and indigenous political system are our own vantage points. If we relate with the Western world on the basis of the philosophical frameworks that setup these indigenous institutions, it will be easier for us to identify our strengths, appreciate ourselves and compete better in global affairs compared to now where we have to navigate the tumultuous waters of life with the Western philosophical frameworks while at the same time having to compete with the Western world.
By simple logical reasoning, it is obvious that the Western world is already at an advantage over us. This is so designed by the cunning Western world explorers who came in contact with the vast natural resources spread across the African continent. They took their time to study, they identified our strengths and knew that the only way to conquer us was to uproot us from our place of natural genius. The rest as they say is history. They succeeded.
Today, everything that we do, we attempt to do from the lens of the Western world. This is why we fail so woefully at many things apart from maybe corruption.
We have sold ourselves short for not valuing what is ours and lusting after other's ways.
In Biblical terms, it will be said that we have played the harlot with foreign nations. Little wonder ours is not an enviable state despite the enormous human genius and natural resources that we have.
Think my friends, think.
And if it interests you to know, this is the contemporary commentary that I generated from a verse of Odù Ifá.
It goes thus:
Oun a bí wọn mọ́ kìí wù Wọ́n
Tẹni ẹlẹ́ni níí ń yá wọn lára jọjọ
Àwọn ló dífá fún ìwọ̀dẹ̀rẹ̀ níjọ́ tó fẹ́ lọ ṣ'alabarin ẹja ní'sàlẹ̀ odò
Ó gbọ́ rírú ẹbọ, ó ru.
Translation:
Their indegenous inheritance isn't valued by them,
They lust blindly after other people's endowments;
These cast Ifá for the fishing hook
When he was going to befriend the fishes at the bottom of the river
He was asked to make sacrifice, he complied.
- Ìrẹ̀tẹ̀-Ogbè
The complete story in the Ifá verse above was shared with me by my Oluwo in person of Akomolafe Wande.
I recollect the very first meeting I had with him in person at the beginning of my search for meaning of all the things going on around us. I wanted answers to life's question from the Yoruba philosophical perspective. Some of the first questions I asked him was Ifa's message concerning the plight of the Yoruba people (and the African race in general). He then shared with me what Ifá said. According to Ifá, the reason for our present predicament is that ungrateful nature in us that makes us neglect our own heritage to lust after the heritage of others.
It is my prayer that Olódùmarè will send his light into our hearts and cause us to come alive again, so that we can begin to develop ourselves as we ought to and go ahead to take our rightful place in the comity of nations.
Àṣẹ!
Ìbà Oluwo Wande Akọmolafe, Awo rere for giving me this Ifá.
I have the full audio of the Ifa with me and I will be sharing the full message in my forthcoming book whose title the Irunmoles have not yet revealed.
Copyrights: © 2021
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