Culture Inspires and Secures the mind of the Child for the Future

There is beauty and power in being who you are. There is respect in indigenous creativity and innovation. 

It is only when we teach our children about their cultures and the greatness of their ancestral past which they must draw inspiration from to rebuild their heritage before we can secure the future. The effect of the hatred of our cultural patterns and ideologies is what we are experiencing today. We have lost everything that defines us willfully ignorantly. The most disturbing is that, despite our knack for foreign beliefs and ideologies, we are still backward. If we believe our cultural values were barbaric, hence our passion for foreign cultures, why then are we still backward and stagnant?

We said our traditions were 'evil' and replaced them with 'pure' ones from Arabia and Europe, how come we are more brutal and destructive now with the 'pure' foreign beliefs and cultures? How come the world now study us to understand poverty and pestilence but continues to study our ancestors to understand greatness and mysterious organisation of ideas like the Nubian and Kemetic pyramids, the Great Benin Kingdom and its Queen Idia mask, the Amazon of Dahomey, Great wall of Nwanemutapa Kingdom, Ife bronze, Dogon of Mali and others? Those ancestral 'evil' days were surely better than the modern 'pure' era.

We were not backward in our ancestral days. That is a fact. We were only peacefully gullible. Our ancestors accepted foreigners with open minds and arms, partly due to their limited exposure and partly due to nature's over-convenience, so much so that their hospitality was used and turned against them. They dealt with a better prepared and well armed Arabian and European contemporaries. That a thief stole from you or a rapist was able to rape your daughter at gunpoint proves that the thief or rapist was better prepared and well armed for the heinous crime while you were innocently ignorant. That was the fate of our ancestors. 

After the robbery and rape, rather than sit, put our brains to task and map out plans to get out of our quagmire and secure our lands despite our modern education, we accepted and over-subscribed to the robber and rapist's definition of us. We accepted the robber and rapist's beliefs and ideologies wholeheartedly. While the robber went back to his land, modified his belief, never allowed dogmatism to reign in his mind, embraced science and technology, we continue to passionately defend his belief in our land and refuse to think out of the box. We continue to breed children in that line of mental incarceration so much so that we prefer to run and escape to the land of those who robbed and raped us, even if the sea will consume us, than build our own land.

African migrants trying to cross into Italy. They are youthful, vibrant and energetic but they prefer to risk their lives on the sea than use their youthful energy to make revolutionary changes in their countries. That is a sign of a conquered people.

By our mode of thinking and actions, we have accepted that we are a conquered people and we are helpless and maybe, hopeless to do anything. When solutions stare us in the face, we turn our eyes away. As long as it is not foreigners who are proffering the solution, we will block our ears. Whatever foreigners in Europe or Asia say is all we love to hear. What does it cost to think, map out sustainable plans and be resolute to build our land so that our descendants will not suffer like us again? Currently, we are already creating a future in which the innocent children of today will have to live in slavery tomorrow. What does it cost to embrace our heritage and creatively innovate our way out?