Racism – Nigeria needs to take the lead again in Africa

[Next]

Racism – Nigeria needs to take the lead again in Africa

https://guardian.ng/sport/racism-nigeri ... in-africa/

Several years ago, my team, IICC Shooting Stars FC, went to play a continental club match in Malawi.

On the day we arrived, a few of us decided to watch a movie in a cinema down the road from our hotel downtown Blantyre, the capital city.

We arrived at the cinema a few minutes after the movie had started.

We bought our tickets and were allocated seats. We were ushered into the dark cinema hall by a steward with a torch who led us to the row allocated to us. We went in, sat down and settled to watch our film.

Everything went well until the interval, halfway through the movie. The lights came back on. We looked around us. We were sitting with a few other Black patrons in a small section of the hall close to the entrance toilet, near the rear. There was a ‘gentle’ stench around us. The rest of the big hall, mostly empty, had better seats and were taken up by White persons. A separation line was clearly visible in that hall.

One of us suggested that we moved from the stench of our side of the hall to the empty seats a few rows away. We got up and moved in a group to the vacant seats.

The murmuring in the hall was loud. We sensed a stirring of discomfort in the hall. We had hardly sat down before security men, led by a White manager, came in a rage and ordered us to get up and return to our seats.

The Nigerian spirit in all of us immediately came to the fore.

Our very loud and resounding ‘No way’ caught the angry men completely by surprise. ‘What is wrong with sitting here instead of near the entrance to the toilet? No way’. We were not going anywhere. The hall had so many vacant seats.

Obviously, from our accents, they knew we were strangers. They also immediately knew we were Nigerians. Only Nigerians behaved that way in Africa. We had that reputation for rejecting any form of oppression. In doing so we raised hell! There was an immediate standoff that could easily turn into a major scuffle. Everything came to a temporary halt in the cinema as our voices rose in defiance, to the total consternation of the uncomfortable few Blacks in the hall.

The manager, half-heartedly, insisted we moved. We vehemently rejected his poisoned offer. We raised the decibel of our voices a little higher. The earth could have opened up for the White man to enter, in his confusion on how to deal with the matter.

Surely, I had never experienced such segregation. Definitely, not in Nigeria. I had thought that such belonged to Western countries and to the dark ages of African history, but surely not in today’s Africa. Yet, there we were experiencing it first hand in Malawi under the leadership of a Black African President, Kamuzu Banda.

No Malawian dared do what we did. They would have been hauled into jail for a long time. But Nigerians are a different breed of the Black race. He is not the type you tampered with ‘anyhow’ and got away with it.

The White manager quietly called his staff aside. They left, quickly darkened the hall again and resumed the movie. Some White folks left their seats and walked out of the cinema at that point.

We later learnt that in Malawi, women were not allowed to wear trousers, Blacks were not allowed into some hotels and restaurants except if they are workers, Blacks could not visit or live in some parts of Blantyre, and so on and so forth, all of this in Africa!

Mandela was right. The Black race needs Nigeria. His words: ‘‘the world will not respect Africa until Nigeria earns that respect. The Black people of the world need Nigeria to be a great source of pride and confidence. Nigerians love freedom and hate oppression”.

Nigerians do not appreciate the impact of racism enough as do other Blacks around the world.

Last week, I watched an interview granted by Jay Jay Okocha about his personal experience of racism in Europe as a professional footballer. I was shocked when he confessed he never even knew the word Black before he got to Europe. His reaction to the experience was to ‘dribble the hell’ out of the Germans on the football field, and humiliated them.

Okocha was right. By the time he was in school in Nigeria, History had been removed as a subject from the schools’ syllabus. Can you believe it? History, the story of our past, where we were coming from that should provide a compass into our future, about the Slave trade that forcefully sold our most able-bodied brothers and sisters, and shipped them in chains across the Atlantic to the land-of-no-return, and used them on White plantations and on the roads, rail tracks and factories to build Western Civilization in Europe and North America some 400 years ago, is removed from our learning.

My generation studied History in school, particularly African history, and we were taught not just about the slave trade, but also about the scramble for Africa by Europeans. We read about founding African political leaders that fought for their countries’ Independence. The words and works of Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Haile Selassie, Obafemi Awolowo, Tafawa Balewa, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and other revolutionary leaders in Africa tickled our fancies, fired our imagination and created small revolutionaries out of many of us in higher institutions all over Nigeria.

In our time, only a few decades ago, Africa was the centre-piece of Nigeria’s foreign policy. Nigeria led the African boycott of the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Canada. That action shook the whole world.

Nigeria supported Black political struggles and even fought in wars in the African continent from the Congo to Mozambique and to South Africa, fighting oppression, segregation and discrimination against the Black race.

Nigeria funded and hosted the greatest and, potentially, the most powerful gathering of Blacks and Africans in human history during FESTAC, the Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, an innocuous cultural event that could have become the movement that the Black man needed to come together as one race, an uncommon gathering of its best intellectuals from the different countries to seat at colloquiums and come up with designs and strategies to tackle their greatest enemy – racism and its by-products.

That opportunity was lost when the West described and condemned the festival as a waste of resources, a celebration of barbaric fetish cultures, and a ‘sin’ against the popular religions.

Meanwhile, think about it, that was what Nelson Mandela was referring to as the leadership Nigeria needs to offer the rest of the Black race and Africa.

Festac was killed cleverly by the West, never to raise its powerful head again.

It has been over 40 years since then, and the Black race has not united behind any common cause or movement to entangle itself from the bondage of Slavery and its by-products manifesting till now in the ill-treatment and disrespect meted on the Black race everywhere on the planet.

That’s why the world is marching with Black people in several Western capitals in protest against racism, and Nigeria is detached from it all.

Instead, it is Ghana that has taken the lead in providing essential leadership in Africa. Last week, there was a large protest march in Accra organized by the government to support the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. Last year was Ghana’s ‘Year of Return’, an invitation to interested descendants of those sold into slavery to return home gloriously and to join in creating and building new settlements that will reflect a new and respected Black civilization. The government provided attractive incentives and created events to welcome back these returnee Africans to their roots. In the process, Ghana’s economy got a massive boost through the ensuing tourism and resettlement projects by several Blacks that chose to do so.

This new global movement that is sprouting from the tragedy of George Floyd’s murder in the United States has ignited a new fire in the war against racism in the world.

Nigeria needs to join the rest of the world in that war. Nigeria should provide leadership in Africa.

The only problem l have with this write up ist that the source was not given. So not sure if the story is a made up one or not.

[Damunk]

The only problem l have with this write up ist that the source was not given. So not sure if the story is a made up one or not.

The article was written by Segun Odegbami.
He is credited at the top left corner of the article's page.

[Dammy]

Racism – Nigeria needs to take the lead again in Africa

https://guardian.ng/sport/racism-nigeri ... in-africa/

Several years ago, my team, IICC Shooting Stars FC, went to play a continental club match in Malawi.

On the day we arrived, a few of us decided to watch a movie in a cinema down the road from our hotel downtown Blantyre, the capital city.

We arrived at the cinema a few minutes after the movie had started.

We bought our tickets and were allocated seats. We were ushered into the dark cinema hall by a steward with a torch who led us to the row allocated to us. We went in, sat down and settled to watch our film.

Everything went well until the interval, halfway through the movie. The lights came back on. We looked around us. We were sitting with a few other Black patrons in a small section of the hall close to the entrance toilet, near the rear. There was a ‘gentle’ stench around us. The rest of the big hall, mostly empty, had better seats and were taken up by White persons. A separation line was clearly visible in that hall.

One of us suggested that we moved from the stench of our side of the hall to the empty seats a few rows away. We got up and moved in a group to the vacant seats.

The murmuring in the hall was loud. We sensed a stirring of discomfort in the hall. We had hardly sat down before security men, led by a White manager, came in a rage and ordered us to get up and return to our seats.

The Nigerian spirit in all of us immediately came to the fore.

Our very loud and resounding ‘No way’ caught the angry men completely by surprise. ‘What is wrong with sitting here instead of near the entrance to the toilet? No way’. We were not going anywhere. The hall had so many vacant seats.

Obviously, from our accents, they knew we were strangers. They also immediately knew we were Nigerians. Only Nigerians behaved that way in Africa. We had that reputation for rejecting any form of oppression. In doing so we raised hell! There was an immediate standoff that could easily turn into a major scuffle. Everything came to a temporary halt in the cinema as our voices rose in defiance, to the total consternation of the uncomfortable few Blacks in the hall.

The manager, half-heartedly, insisted we moved. We vehemently rejected his poisoned offer. We raised the decibel of our voices a little higher. The earth could have opened up for the White man to enter, in his confusion on how to deal with the matter.

Surely, I had never experienced such segregation. Definitely, not in Nigeria. I had thought that such belonged to Western countries and to the dark ages of African history, but surely not in today’s Africa. Yet, there we were experiencing it first hand in Malawi under the leadership of a Black African President, Kamuzu Banda.

No Malawian dared do what we did. They would have been hauled into jail for a long time. But Nigerians are a different breed of the Black race. He is not the type you tampered with ‘anyhow’ and got away with it.

The White manager quietly called his staff aside. They left, quickly darkened the hall again and resumed the movie. Some White folks left their seats and walked out of the cinema at that point.

We later learnt that in Malawi, women were not allowed to wear trousers, Blacks were not allowed into some hotels and restaurants except if they are workers, Blacks could not visit or live in some parts of Blantyre, and so on and so forth, all of this in Africa!

Mandela was right. The Black race needs Nigeria. His words: ‘‘the world will not respect Africa until Nigeria earns that respect. The Black people of the world need Nigeria to be a great source of pride and confidence. Nigerians love freedom and hate oppression”.

Nigerians do not appreciate the impact of racism enough as do other Blacks around the world.

Last week, I watched an interview granted by Jay Jay Okocha about his personal experience of racism in Europe as a professional footballer. I was shocked when he confessed he never even knew the word Black before he got to Europe. His reaction to the experience was to ‘dribble the hell’ out of the Germans on the football field, and humiliated them.

Okocha was right. By the time he was in school in Nigeria, History had been removed as a subject from the schools’ syllabus. Can you believe it? History, the story of our past, where we were coming from that should provide a compass into our future, about the Slave trade that forcefully sold our most able-bodied brothers and sisters, and shipped them in chains across the Atlantic to the land-of-no-return, and used them on White plantations and on the roads, rail tracks and factories to build Western Civilization in Europe and North America some 400 years ago, is removed from our learning.

My generation studied History in school, particularly African history, and we were taught not just about the slave trade, but also about the scramble for Africa by Europeans. We read about founding African political leaders that fought for their countries’ Independence. The words and works of Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Haile Selassie, Obafemi Awolowo, Tafawa Balewa, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and other revolutionary leaders in Africa tickled our fancies, fired our imagination and created small revolutionaries out of many of us in higher institutions all over Nigeria.

In our time, only a few decades ago, Africa was the centre-piece of Nigeria’s foreign policy. Nigeria led the African boycott of the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Canada. That action shook the whole world.

Nigeria supported Black political struggles and even fought in wars in the African continent from the Congo to Mozambique and to South Africa, fighting oppression, segregation and discrimination against the Black race.

Nigeria funded and hosted the greatest and, potentially, the most powerful gathering of Blacks and Africans in human history during FESTAC, the Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, an innocuous cultural event that could have become the movement that the Black man needed to come together as one race, an uncommon gathering of its best intellectuals from the different countries to seat at colloquiums and come up with designs and strategies to tackle their greatest enemy – racism and its by-products.

That opportunity was lost when the West described and condemned the festival as a waste of resources, a celebration of barbaric fetish cultures, and a ‘sin’ against the popular religions.

Meanwhile, think about it, that was what Nelson Mandela was referring to as the leadership Nigeria needs to offer the rest of the Black race and Africa.

Festac was killed cleverly by the West, never to raise its powerful head again.

It has been over 40 years since then, and the Black race has not united behind any common cause or movement to entangle itself from the bondage of Slavery and its by-products manifesting till now in the ill-treatment and disrespect meted on the Black race everywhere on the planet.

That’s why the world is marching with Black people in several Western capitals in protest against racism, and Nigeria is detached from it all.

Instead, it is Ghana that has taken the lead in providing essential leadership in Africa. Last week, there was a large protest march in Accra organized by the government to support the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. Last year was Ghana’s ‘Year of Return’, an invitation to interested descendants of those sold into slavery to return home gloriously and to join in creating and building new settlements that will reflect a new and respected Black civilization. The government provided attractive incentives and created events to welcome back these returnee Africans to their roots. In the process, Ghana’s economy got a massive boost through the ensuing tourism and resettlement projects by several Blacks that chose to do so.

This new global movement that is sprouting from the tragedy of George Floyd’s murder in the United States has ignited a new fire in the war against racism in the world.

Nigeria needs to join the rest of the world in that war. Nigeria should provide leadership in Africa.

The only problem l have with this write up ist that the source was not given. So not sure if the story is a made up one or not.

That is a Nigeria of the past, when we were the pride of the African continent. The only country that could look the Western powers like USA, UK and EEC in the eye and they blinked.!
Are there not Chinese restaurants in Nigeria that don't serve Nigerians today? Don't we have our politicians reporting themselves to this same Western powers today and boasting about it?
The West saw the potentials in Nigeria in the 70s and early 80s and will never allow that Nigeria to rise again. That's why they refuse to sell weapons to us to fight BH but will sell to Saudi Arabia.

[ohenhen1]

Ghana president is leading.

[Eaglezbeak]

I wasn’t aware history was wasn’t taught in Nigerian schools.

[truetalk]

I wasn’t aware history was wasn’t taught in Nigerian schools.

It has been reintroduced, thankfully. You can even buy the curriculum on the NERDC website. Information is getting out anyway, so this was inevitable. I guess it is now a case of having some control over what you can't stop.

https://guardian.ng/features/re-introdu ... s-arising/
http://nerdc.org.ng/eCurriculum/CurriculumView.aspx

The truth is extremely uncomfortable for a lot of people, so some power brokers and beneficiaries of evil and injustice will happily keep people ignorant, or worse misinform them with propaganda.

They have succeeding in some ways in this regard, going by some of the shocking things people confidently post on R&R on this site for example. Shocking and confident displays of ignorance and propaganda.

[Next]

But I don't understand why history was taken out of the curriculum in the first place. That was trajectory and callous of the people that instigated it. How can you refused to teach you youths where you are coming from? Were they trying to hide something from the naijarian generations?

[bret- hart]

How can Nigeria the most tribalistic country in Africa fight racism?

[Damunk]

How can Nigeria the most tribalistic country in Africa fight racism?

Is this a question based on a factual premise?

[Damunk]

But I don't understand why history was taken out of the curriculum in the first place. That was trajectory and callous of the people that instigated it. How can you refused to teach you youths where you are coming from? Were they trying to hide something from the naijarian generations?

One of the most stupid things of the numerous stupid things the Nigerian govt has ever done.
I'd love to know what dotards decided it and how they got it approved across the board.

[Eaglezbeak]

I wasn’t aware history was wasn’t taught in Nigerian schools.

It has been reintroduced, thankfully. You can even buy the curriculum on the NERDC website. Information is getting out anyway, so this was inevitable. I guess it is now a case of having some control over what you can't stop.

https://guardian.ng/features/re-introdu ... s-arising/
http://nerdc.org.ng/eCurriculum/CurriculumView.aspx

The truth is extremely uncomfortable for a lot of people, so some power brokers and beneficiaries of evil and injustice will happily keep people ignorant, or worse misinform them with propaganda.

They have succeeding in some ways in this regard, going by some of the shocking things people confidently post on R&R on this site for example. Shocking and confident displays of ignorance and propaganda.

I’ve noticed that a lot of Nigerians coming from Nigeria knew less about the history of Nigeria compared to those born in diaspora, I used to ask them why and they would say history isn’t important or nobody in Nigeria wants to be a historian (the few I did ask).

[marko]

when you have economic power, you gain respect in the world, you can fight racism much easier like the Asians do!

[Dammy]

when you have economic power, you gain respect in the world, you can fight racism much easier like the Asians do!

Which Asìans? The same ones that are benefiting from the fight against racism by black people?

[jette1]

But I don't understand why history was taken out of the curriculum in the first place. That was trajectory and callous of the people that instigated it. How can you refused to teach you youths where you are coming from? Were they trying to hide something from the naijarian generations?

One of the most stupid things of the numerous stupid things the Nigerian govt has ever done.
I'd love to know what dotards decided it and how they got it approved across the board.

But the decision was made by your so called military supreme council hence needed no debate or approval.
what I got was that it had to do with pre-empting the difficulties, sentiments that teachers/students would have to deal with on Biafra, the coups and counter coups and associated regional politics of first republic, the pogrom etc
can you imagine they call themselves deleting Biafra from the world map, really ??? who decides what gets to be on the map.

[Damunk]

But I don't understand why history was taken out of the curriculum in the first place. That was trajectory and callous of the people that instigated it. How can you refused to teach you youths where you are coming from? Were they trying to hide something from the naijarian generations?

One of the most stupid things of the numerous stupid things the Nigerian govt has ever done.
I'd love to know what dotards decided it and how they got it approved across the board.

But the decision was made by your so called military supreme council hence needed no debate or approval.
what I got was that it had to do with pre-empting the difficulties, sentiments that teachers/students would have to deal with on Biafra, the coups and counter coups and associated regional politics of first republic, the pogrom etc
can you imagine they call themselves deleting Biafra from the world map, really ??? who decides what gets to be on the map.

Which one is YOUR Supreme Military Council?
As far as I can tell, history was stopped around 2008, 2009.

If dem no teach you history for your school in your time, it wasn't the SMC's fault.
It was probably why dem call your school 'unapproved' - no teacher wan near di place.

[jette1]

But I don't understand why history was taken out of the curriculum in the first place. That was trajectory and callous of the people that instigated it. How can you refused to teach you youths where you are coming from? Were they trying to hide something from the naijarian generations?

One of the most stupid things of the numerous stupid things the Nigerian govt has ever done.
I'd love to know what dotards decided it and how they got it approved across the board.

But the decision was made by your so called military supreme council hence needed no debate or approval.
what I got was that it had to do with pre-empting the difficulties, sentiments that teachers/students would have to deal with on Biafra, the coups and counter coups and associated regional politics of first republic, the pogrom etc
can you imagine they call themselves deleting Biafra from the world map, really ??? who decides what gets to be on the map.

Which one is YOUR Supreme Military Council?
As far as I can tell, history was stopped around 2008, 2009.

If dem no teach you history for your school in your time, it wasn't the SMC's fault.
It was probably why dem call your school 'unapproved' - no teacher wan near di place.

Yea!! I see what you did there. Distract and Skirt around the Real subject and by the way say hello for me to uncle Lateef Jakande

[Rawlings]

Naija people hate history and that's why u are fed these type of half-baked articles

Ghana was the LEAD in breaking from the chains of colonialism

[The real deal]

The only problem l have with this write up ist that the source was not given. So not sure if the story is a made up one or not.

The article was written by Segun Odegbami.
He is credited at the top left corner of the article's page.

HOW ABOUT TAKING THE LEAD AGAINST TRIBALISM FIRST?????

[bret- hart]

How can a nation run by Hausa Fulani Islamic fundamentalist illiterates fight racism on behalf of the black race??? Im so

[jette1]

Unfortunate to say we projected more national character to the world under military rules; so called half-baked democracy ensures we remain divisive, advisaries, fractured and with no cohessive front/philosphy.