Business Post Contributor
By Nneka Okumazie
It is often puzzling to watch two weak people engage in a fight of mostly rare necessity. There are often reasons. Different sides deploy different tools, but they contend over what should possibly be avoided. They most certainly become weaker subsequently.
For some, the objective is that when something else is added, they become stronger. However, conquest alone does not guarantee a change in strength, so weakness remains, even when they don’t think so.
In Africa, there have been intertribal conflicts for decades across different locations, but there is hardly any conflict between the peoples of Africa that is about the future. There is always something immediate or some form of possession as the purpose, but it is never about the future.
Tribe, race or ethnicity is not what is important for a people that desire true progress. The origin may be a useful community but that origin, religion or whatever else weak people take pride in as the first thing leaves them below progress, at a time of excellent progress from other places around the world.
For all the resources that countries in Africa list, what is absolutely irreplaceable or which ones do the existence of the world depend on, that are excluded from there? How did they also find out that these are resources, or have they always been needed?
There are tribes, places and resources in Africa that are not as exciting as some new technology in the world, because of the promise, yet the people fight and lengthen hate.
The governments in Africa are powerful because the people are mostly beneath their government. Many structures of power in Africa in modern times are mostly from other places. The people within have been unable to drive alternative structures that would be powerful enough to earn the respect or boundaries of government.
Governments in Africa are as powerful as their people are weak. Protest, election, advocacy, politics, tribe, religion, complaint, press, education, business, law, criticism, and whatever else are unable to match the crazy behaviour of their governments. There are tools that governments in Africa cannot live without at present that did not come from Africa. African governments are not more powerful than those external tools, yet their people seek change from weakness.
There are tribes in Africa in power more than others, but it is of no use to the development of their people. There are tribes that are considerably wealthier than others but worthless to their people. There are others with good locations and education but are useless to their people.
The interest of someone in some place trying to have a nice time can hardly be advanced as a group. The determination to make the future different from the past does not exist in the people. The shame they should have as a people for where they are, to organize with superior methods to emerge into an advantage is not there. Tribes in Africa want to stay weak, so their fights are never about the future.
[Judges 20:16, Among all these people, there were seven hundred chosen men lefthanded; every one could sling stones at a hair breadth, and not miss.]
