Chaos made us thirst Orderliness undid the rest Today we ravish with finesse This global concrete forest Immaculately dressed Inwardly lawless Appetite burning in our chest. Che Chidi Chukwumerije
third world
NIGERIA: STILL STRUGGLING FOR INDEPENDENCE
Which will be the first modern, post-colonial Black African country to become independent?
– To stand as a First World country in the midst of global leaders.
– To take the leap from extractive economy to highly productive, manufacturing, innovative and invention-leading economy.
– To develop and run a nation-wide, all-encompassing and unconditional Social Security scheme.
– To become an Export world champion, exporting not just natural resources, but finished products.
– To take its place at the cutting edge of technology and information technology.
– To become a favoured global destination for medical tourism and university education.
– To have a currency that rivals USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CNR.
– To develop and take a leading role in the building of a new economy and new industry around the concept of sustainability. Because that is the future.
– To entrench legally protected civil and human rights.
– To engender independent institutions of democracy.
– To defeat the evil of tribalism.
– To stop begging, taking and being dependent on foreign aid.
– To stop allowing foreign religions to drive it to hate, exploit, oppress or kill its fellow Africans.
– To stop producing economic Refugees in droves.
– To hold regular free and fair elections, free of rigging, where votes count.
– To hold its richest and most powerful accountable.
– To fight corruption impartially, and stand without exemptions under the Law.
– To eradicate extreme poverty, and democratise and ensure education and opportunity for all.
– To work tirelessly for peace and unity on the African continent.
– To push, power and perfect intra-African trade, tourism and transport to the same levels as on other continents and in other world regions.
– To have a modern, disciplined military focused on defense of borders and values, as well as upholding of peace, and not full of megalomaniac dreams of coup d‘etats and executive power all the time.
– To have a depoliticised Police Force that serves the people rather than being used against the people.
– To maintain a hardworking, well-functioning, digitalised, detribalised, highly educated Civil Service.
– To own its own narrative, with its own independent media, on the global stage.
– To become a global lender, instead of a global borrower and beggar.
– To export technology and new technology to the rest of the world.
– To have a power, economic and civil infrastructure that matches every other First World country‘s.
– To become one of the decision makers in the UN, in WEF, in the G8.
– To break the culture of waste, squander and exhibitionism.
– To support and grow small and medium-scale enterprises all over the country.
– To develop a large and economically virile middle class.
– To feed itself independently.
– To power itself independently.
– To ensure electricity 24/7.
– To become a center of future-birthing research and development.
– To become a part of the space community.
– To find its own local solutions to its own local, as well as global, challenges.
– To be a part owner, and controller, of the global market.
– To produce proud citizens who have greater opportunities in their own Black countries than they would in foreign countries where they are never fully accepted.
– To turn around the historical burden of slavery and colonisation, and transform it into global leadership.
– To stand as a First World country in the midst of global leaders.
Which will be the first Black African country to become REALLY INDEPENDENT?
This is the silent question that hangs unanswered in the global imagination of all humankind, and floats inchoate through the heart of everybody of Black African extraction anytime another Black African country celebrates its annual so-called Independence Day.
Today’s it’s Nigeria’s turn. Country of my birth. 1st October.
Happy Independence Day, Nigeria.
Or should I rather say:
Happy Future-Independence Day.
Because only Self-dependence, Self-reliance, is truly Independence.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
DO AFRICANS BELIEVE THAT AFRICANS CAN INVENT?
We have to make our own world, because there is little space for us in the world others have created, out of their own ingenuity, for themselves.
So what we need is to create in Africa an African system that supports research and invention from Dream to Done Deed. What we need is to awaken the strong sense of the need to create our own world, a new world. A desire, the unquenchable thirst and unslackening desire to do this or perish. It becomes our racial focus, and the essence of the DNA we pass on, henceforth, from Generation to Generation. Our black spirits will come ready-made with the natural Urge to do this. We will be born differently from today. Born to invent.
But…: Do Africans believe that Africans can invent? Do Africans who feel the spirit of invention and innovation stirring within them have the guts to sacrifice their whole life to it? Are there financiers and patrons ready to support them to the bitter or sweet end?
If all you do is extract natural resources and minerals from the earth and the waters, and sell them unprocessed to others, then you are just a glorified miner. Now, today, as oil revenues dwindle, the call is sounded. Any mathematician can do the arithmetics and work backwards from the finish line. It is the point in time when our oil becomes worthless and our ability to invent and innovate becomes the only natural resource we have left. Untapped?
Yes I made the the jump from oil to inventions; whereby the popular wisdom proclaims that the alternative to oil bears another name: Diversification. But… Diversification Alone Is Not The Answer! It is only an interim puffer, but not the guarantor of survival. Only the fit survive. The fit are those who have trained the power and ability to create the future.
But…: Are African governments, think tanks, traditional institutions and financial institutes really ready to chart and push this course and pour all their resources into creating a new world, their own future? Do Africans believe that Africans can invent?
If we simply diversify from Oil to Solid Minerals, we will make the same mistakes again because not only are the underlying methodologies unaddressed and unchanged; nor the corruption issues in terms of persons, institutions and systems unammended; but, most importantly, the fundamentally flawed ideology that drives and guides our concept of nation-building, people-building, capacity-building – whatever you want to call it – remains the most entrenched and in-built weakness that we carry with us from generation to generation, from century to century. It is an ideology that supports a taker-mentality as opposed to a giver-mentality; it remains a receiver-mentality as against a creator-mentality; it stays a past-deifying and present-indulging mentality instead of a future-engineering one.
But it is better to produce the future than to reproduce the past. What our so-called education so far has not done for us is trigger the creator-gene. Systemically, deeply and deliberately. En Masse. The discoverer-Complex has yet to be activated within the context of African Culture, Upbringing, Orientation, Foundational Thinking that later guides investors, policy-makers, entrepreneurs and every citizen. We are talking about the Survival of the Species here.
The human being, in the end, respects only intelligence. Not just articulated intelligence, but intelligence that has yielded action and tangible form. The human species‘ only hope for survival and expansion, right from time, and for escaping extinction, has always been innovation and invention, i.e. the practical application of intuitive perception and intelligence. Thus, humans finally only respect those persons and groups whose ingenuity or depth of perception leads to discoveries and inventions that continue to move humankind forward. The urge to move, physically, mentally and spiritually, and to defend gained territories, is a deep evolutionary expression of primal survival instinct.
Therefore: Africans had better start believing that Africans can invent and that Africans SHOULD invent. And start pouring all their resources into making this a reality. Otherwise, the future which is being currently invented and designed by Non-Africans, for Non-Africans, will have no place in it for Africa and Africans. Or the place that will be reserved for us, we will not like it, nor possess the power and ability to change it. It will be worse that the days of Slavery and Colonisation. It will be a depth of systemic powerlessness and denigration not yet seen in the history of humankind. Because, if you don‘t make anything, you‘ll never own a thing.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Thoughts on Africa
THIRD WORLD
There is a select few who
Understand how to unite the two
Warring worlds into a peaceful third –
They are the irregularly winged bird
That closes spaces with one sweep
And with a hundred beats doth barely creep
Forward.
– Che Chidi Chukwumerije
EDUCATION FOR ALL
They can’t read
But they can read
The signs on the wall
They can read between the lines
When the educated are talking
They can read your thoughts
In your eyes
When you’re lying to them
They just don’t have the words
To explain that all they need
Is a seed of true knowledge planted
Into their minds when they were young.
Someone has to walk ahead
When others are looking
For someone to follow.
How many generations will fall like
Autumn leaves, wasted beauty?
– CHE CHIDI CHUKWUMERIJE.
Che Chidi Chukwumerije 