Africa My Motherland VII
A. Abeku Haywood-Dadzie
L&D Expert |Quality Assurance Specialist|Capacity Building Expert | Customer Experience Strategist| Student Of Leadership| Digital Enthusiast|Author|
By A. Abeku Haywood-Dadzie
Why won’t they ask if we live on trees? Why won’t they call us shithole countries? Why won’t they ask if there are book shops [in Nigeria] on the continent?
It was Euripides who once said that “Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad” but I believe that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make proud and then mad” Peruse the continent of Africa and you will come to the realizations that truly wonders never ends. What else can explain the folly that keeps incubating in the wombs of insanity on the continent?
How else can one explain how a political party will contest and lose an election? Proceed to court for the annulment of the election result, wins the case in court, refuse to partake in the re-run of new elections ordered by the same court, yet swears in its presidential candidate as “peoples president”
The mind is truly a terrible thing to waste. Our enemy on the continent is the slave mindset that infects us generations after generations. We are a continent of wealth and poverty, a paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty. Though the continent abounds with almost all the natural resources, we lack almost everything. In the abundance of all our resources our leaders globetrot with calabash in hand, begging for handout.
The tragedy of Africa can be summed-up in the famous book "Acres of Diamonds" by Rev. Russell H. Conwell. In this book, a man who wanted to find diamonds so badly sold his property and went off in futile search for diamonds ; Ali Hafed a wealthy man by all standards after he had heard all about diamonds, “how much they were worth, went to bed that night a poor man. He had not lost anything, but he was poor because he was discontented, and discontented because he feared he was poor.” Ali Hafed sold all his property in search for diamonds
In a twist of fate the new owner of Ali's property discovered diamonds on the land he bought from Ali and established a rich diamond mine right on the property . Ali returned and realized his property was a diamond reserve.
In the midst of everything we have nothing.