Thursday 29 May 2014
Thursday 15 May 2014
Oh, AFRICA!
I have been reading up on groups like Boko Haram and i find it very interesting that to "make a point" to the world they tend to kill innocent people. I wonder how a nation justifies sacrificing its brothers and sisters for a war, a personal jihad, a genocide that i am sure they do not even understand.
Nigeria and its people have been historically divided into the North and South for centuries due to colonialism and the varied manifestations of British rule and western influence, these wars have been going on for decades just in different shades. Atane Ofiaja in his article "To Understand Boko Haram, the West Must look more closely at itself than at Nigeria" portrays this divide and puts a context to the situation that i did not understand before. It has made me re-look the positions that people are placed in during times of crisis.
For instance most of those soldiers in Boko Haram are not there because they will die for the cause as obscured as it may seem; granted some are driven by pure hatred while others are there because of fear, because they may not know better. Some are there waving a gun and carrying a label of Islamist radicals because of poverty and the promise of payment and food for loyalty, some of them may even have other mouths to feed or keep alive.
The corrupt systems and leaders of Nigeria like that of many other African countries trample on the poor and the destitute fueling a war that kills its own, drives its own into modern day slavery and displaces men, women and children from their homes. As Africans we allow these systems and caliber of leaders to continue, we allow our languages to be diluted and our cultures to be modernized by the West. We allow ourselves, our children and their children to be global citizens forgetting that we are African citizens too.
I do not condone Boko Haram, i believe they should be stopped and those girls should be returned to their families however the reality is that when they are another groups will rise and so the cycle will continue until the head and not the tail is severed. I believe that we need to acknowledge that this situation is not in isolation, as Africans we have in many ways failed ourselves.
Maybe we should not just be trending #bringbackourgirls but #givebackAfrica, just a thought!
Nigeria and its people have been historically divided into the North and South for centuries due to colonialism and the varied manifestations of British rule and western influence, these wars have been going on for decades just in different shades. Atane Ofiaja in his article "To Understand Boko Haram, the West Must look more closely at itself than at Nigeria" portrays this divide and puts a context to the situation that i did not understand before. It has made me re-look the positions that people are placed in during times of crisis.
For instance most of those soldiers in Boko Haram are not there because they will die for the cause as obscured as it may seem; granted some are driven by pure hatred while others are there because of fear, because they may not know better. Some are there waving a gun and carrying a label of Islamist radicals because of poverty and the promise of payment and food for loyalty, some of them may even have other mouths to feed or keep alive.
The corrupt systems and leaders of Nigeria like that of many other African countries trample on the poor and the destitute fueling a war that kills its own, drives its own into modern day slavery and displaces men, women and children from their homes. As Africans we allow these systems and caliber of leaders to continue, we allow our languages to be diluted and our cultures to be modernized by the West. We allow ourselves, our children and their children to be global citizens forgetting that we are African citizens too.
I do not condone Boko Haram, i believe they should be stopped and those girls should be returned to their families however the reality is that when they are another groups will rise and so the cycle will continue until the head and not the tail is severed. I believe that we need to acknowledge that this situation is not in isolation, as Africans we have in many ways failed ourselves.
Maybe we should not just be trending #bringbackourgirls but #givebackAfrica, just a thought!
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