AFRICA, By Sylvester Emmanuel

NEWSDAILYNIGERIA: I was doing a book last year titled, “Where Was He”, the book dealt extensively with Africa civilization with the great Benin Kingdom and Britain as reference point.

Historically, the Benin Kingdom is as old as the European civilization. Egypt on the other hand had the first and the oldest university in the world. Scientific history also revealed that, Archimedes of Syriacus, one of the greatest and formost scientist/mathematician of antiquity, had a scholarly relationship with Egyptian scholars over 280 years before Christ came to earth.

The Ancient Benin Kingdom had civilization that dates back to that period before the Europeans discovered the kingdom in the 17th century when they saw street lights powered by palm oil signaling the presence of an important city to be explored.

Egypt
Ethiopia
Benin

Are grandsons to Noah who settled down in the land called Africa. There brothers were:

Spain
Britania
Arlemagne
and others

Some of the names were captured in Genesis of the Bible. Now what happened that, European countries who hailed from thesame Noah have gone far in development yet Africa is still far away from development despite being the land of all natural resources?

I asked a question in that book thus:

Benin Kingdom and Britain had civilization at thesame time, why is it that the University of Oxford which is one of the oldest in Britain is about 430 years older than the first university in Benin Kingdom established in 1973? Was it the European powers that caused it? How could the kingdom have transferred knowledge of how it was able to power its street lights with palm oil without formal institutions of learning? All the development you see in the world today are born from great individuals who were used to establish strong institutions of learning that solidified the European civilization

Now this will bring us to the main issue. Where was Africa’s Benin Kingdom, Ethiopia and Egypt when European civilization were been strengthened especially by the Church?

It’s prebosterous when some people who are destitute to history just burst out from nowhere to say that Europe impoverished Africa. How did Europe impoverish Africa when you were the first that had a university in Egypt? How did Britain stop the Obas of the Benin Kingdom from establishing academic institutions as Britain did? How did Britain develop a machine gun to invade the Benin Kingdom and set the palace ablaze sending the Oba on transfer?

It is annoying to sit down and accuse success of being a success. Europe opened their eyes to the teachings of the church such that the greatest scientist that brought inventions were taught in their institutions by monks, priests and teachers of the church. Galileo Galilei is a very good example.

Africa, please stop the mentality of believing that Europe is the problem you have or that they are responsible for the predicament the continent is facing. You are the problem of yourself, not Europe.

Now tell me, in 1950s China was in serious farmine such that a lot of their citizens died of hunger. Today thesame China is 1.4 billion while Africa is 1.39 billion in population.

Africa’s GDP —- $ 2.29trn (Area: 30.3m km²)

China’s GDP —- $19.7trn (Area: 9.6m km²)

75% of Chinese don’t belong to any religion.

Africa has 49% Christians; 43% Muslms yet we’re backward and saturated with poverty, corruption and negative indices….

How did China, a country in Asia without the endowment you have in Africa, become 8 times more richer than a 54-giant nation and 7 territories? Was China present in the Berlin conference? How were you under-developed when in 1960 Britain handed independence, the Nigerian naira was higher than the pounds? Who devalued the naira? Was it Britain that led Nigeria when the currency fell?

You had everything in the world to build a strong nation and solidify your economy and sovereignty but you chose to be greedy thesame way your ancestors sold their kindreds for peanuts into slavery to farm Sugar plantations in the Americas and Europe, now you turned back to blame Europeans for your predicament.

Even the coup you are embarking on, is it the solution? Gen. Sanni Abacha in early 90s took power as a military head of state by coup and disconnected Nigeria from Western diplomatic relations, what happened later? Thesame Europe he blamed for every problem of Nigeria are thesame people returning his stolen wealth which they can trace. The untraceable ones have gone into extinction. Why was he using Europe as safe haven for his loot?

So tell me how coup is the solution to our African problem? The army and other security institutions have been seen to be part and parcel of the leadership problem. If the navy and the army are sincere, Nigeria oil won’t be stolen to a staggering 400kbpd.

It’s a human being that’s inside the kaki. Coup doesn’t gurantee Africa any good leadership. We’ve seen real leadership taken place in:

Egypt
Malawi
Rwanda
Morocco

These countries aren’t under military regimes. If the army doesn’t support corrupt Politicians, they won’t rig election to take power.

We should be concerned with behavioral change in Africa and institutional development rather than uniform. Uniform isn’t the solution. Our countries must emulate western power who started development from educational institutions. Putin isn’t the solution neither is it Joe Biden or EU chiefs.

China raised 700 million people out of poverty in less than 30 years. How did they do it? Go and find out! Last two weeks, they executed an officer who gave bribe that was proven guilty by the court. They execute corruption because it’s a dangerous enemy to them. But in Africa, a president bribes judiciary and rig election in the open. Yet you sit and accuse Europe of impoverishing you.

West is not your problem! It wasn’t the West that stopped Nigeria from having refineries. Nobody is the problem of Africa but Africans. How many European leaders buy properties in Nigeria/Africa? Former president Buhari is chilling in London because Daura is not conducive for him in all ramifications due to harsh economic realities and insecurity. He was a Kaki man that became civilian.

The solution to Africa’s problem is strong institutions and inclusive democratic leadership with a sincere military back up as the strong arm of democracy.