Of Africa and second slavery

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I have observed that in the ongoing African Cup of Nations 2017, the majority of the nations participating or that have participated in the competition came with foreign coaches. I asked myself that how many European nations have Africans as their national team coaches and I could not remember any for now. Then, I asked the second question, why are we all opting for foreign coaches at the same time? Is it because we don’t have competent indigenous coaches?

I was able to arrive at three reasons. First, we go for foreign coaches, foreign help, foreign management, foreign products, etc, because we only gained independence from Europe physically but not mentally. We are like the Israelites that left Egypt but kept referring back to Egypt throughout their journey to the promised land because it was their bodies that left Egypt, their minds never left. Freedom of the body without freedom of the mind is no freedom. It is an indirect slavery. That is why we hardly do without white people almost in everything we do.

Second, we go for everything foreign not because we cannot do some of these things by ourselves but because we lack confidence in our own abilities. Nothing on earth can make you do what you believe you that you cannot do. Lack of confidence in yourself has the capacity to kill the potentials in you and make you look as if you are empty. A black man once said he wanted to rule America and because he believed he could, he ruled the most powerful nation in the world for eight years. ‘Yes We Can’ was his slogan and it has become history today.

Another black preacher from Nigeria visited Oral Roberts University many years ago and after going round the school, he said to himself ‘it can happen anywhere’. Today, he has succeeded in building a world class university in Nigeria. God said in the Holy Book that He is not a respecter of persons but He loves all those who do the right thing. God is the God of all. We are where we are today as a continent because we don’t believe in our own abilities.

Third, we still go for everything foreign because we have not worked enough on ourselves. The difference between a black person and a white person is the level at which we engage our brains. God gave the same brain to the whites and the blacks but some engage their brains more than others. There is no black brain. Being black does not mean you have less of a brain than a white person. It is the level at which we engage the brain that makes the difference.

While a white person will engage his brain in productive and creative thinking, a black person will be thinking of what to consume. While a white person is thinking of what to give to the world, a black person is thinking of what to get from the world. Having a black skin does not make you inferior to any white person anywhere in the world. Blacks and whites have sat together in the classroom and some blacks performed far better than the whites.

Until we begin to engage in creative and productive thinking, we will always be at the receiving end. Until we begin to think independently, we will continue to depend on the former colonial masters. It is not that we cannot hire foreigners at all, but it should not be as if we are robots and we can achieve nothing without them. It’s time to think African, produce African and make use of Africans. God bless my beloved Africa!