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LET'S FACE IT - SQUARELY!

“The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.”
― Desmond Tutu
A lot has been written about the balkanization of the Nigerian state by “the white man” in the quest to conquer Africa for his own selfish interests. The role the white man’s Christianity played to catalyse this process is also well documented.
Just to cite a few cases, the Church (missionaries and preachers) watched with glee as their white brothers engaged in slave trade, sometimes presenting the Christian God as a supporter of slave trade. The economic advantage of cheap labour meant a lot more to them than the wailing of mothers whose able and promising sons got captured and sold, and the forceful disintegration of Nigerian families – the same people they urge to fill their churches and attend their schools. Slaves are captured and moved straight to Gberefu Peninsular in Badagry, Lagos – the small, small buildings built to keep them while awaiting shipment. The big ship would arrive and they would be packed like sardines for the journey to their point of no-return.
Do we talk about the education the whites bequeathed to us? The kind of education they gave us was such that prepared us to work for them. Succinctly put, while the slaves they capture did the dirty and unskilled jobs, those who were “lucky” to pass through their educational institutions did the skilled and semi-skilled jobs. Up till today, we have not recovered fully from that effect. Until very recently, the typical student in a Nigerian higher institution thinks only of who to work for, and where to work after graduation.
In our culture, men were not trained to work for people. As soon as boys come of age, they were given a piece of land and left to fend for themselves and, later, their families.
Entrepreneurship was our life, ingrained deeply in our culture; but sadly, the whites, with their “education”, promoted largely by Christian missionaries, successfully smothered our entrepreneurial spirit. I remember reading a discussion on Nairaland on the best IT professional certifications to boost one’s employability. After many suggestions and arguments, one commenter quipped, “all these plenty wahala to make us Professional Employees!” Professional EMPLOYEES: that’s what the white man’s form of education has turned us into.
Further, the white missionaries and church workers saw nothing wrong in disintegrating Nigerian families. With a complete distortion of the Abraham-Sarah-Hagar story in Genesis 21, they charged our men to send away their other wives and children, leaving only the first. The stigma and emotional trauma of those sent away, they couldn't be bothered. Their “God” does not give a damn about your life before you come to Him! (That doesn't sound like the Jesus I've come to know!)
Anyway, enough of the bitterness. The “white man’s religion” is here with us. Christianity has come to stay, with the number of converts growing on a daily basis. However, for us to make the most sense out of Christianity, we will have to embark on the arduous task of rediscovery. We will have to begin to look at the God of the Bible in ways other than the ways the white man taught us to. (Fela’s TDTMN: Teacher, Don’t Teach Me Nonsense comes to mind now). See, even the white man has since moved on from much of his earlier positions!
The good thing is that they bequeathed to us the Written Word of God and taught us to read. Even if you think the one they gave us was adulterated, it won’t matter now because we can now access the one they have too. We know the problem isn’t with God, but with the way He’s being presented. Our earnest cry now should be to see Him more clearly, so that we can love Him more dearly and follow Him more nearly day by day.
And from there, we should move on gallantly to tear everything and every mindset received (or copied) from the whites that have held us down. We must realize that our destiny lies within us, not the whites. We must begin to look a lot more inward for solutions to our problems. With these in mind, our contact with the whites will be a lot more strategic, hence beneficial to us. We will get Western education – here at home or there in their land, we will read their books and surf their sites for all kinds of information; but our intent will be different: not so much to reproduce exactly but to leverage.
May the good Lord help us.
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