I have observed Africans in every which way it is possible to observe a group of people. One trait that stands out in them is their inability to love one another and love human beings in general. The Africans that I see and know are totally self-centered and have very little interest in social interest; they work for their personal egos and may be for their immediate family interests but seldom for the general society's good. I believe that this inability to expand their ego identification and work for the general human ego, for the nation state and for humanity in general is the root cause of Africa's inability to govern itself and do what she needs to do to become economically developed.
Most African politicians are in office to take as much money from the public treasury as they could get away with but not to do something for their people's welfare. The African big man, the African politician, is motivated by his immediate self-interests and his desire to seem a very important, prestigious and famous person but could care less for his people's welfare. As long as he has money in his pocket and feels like he is admired by his people as a very important person, a big man, he is satisfied; he is not motivated to work for public good. In fact, the idea of sacrificing for public good is alien to him and if he were to see a person doing so he would think such a person foolish. To him reason inheres in stealing from the public, supporting his immediate children, building a house in his village and that is pretty much his construction of what life should mean to him. It never occurs to him to do something that serves all people and posterity.
In my view, the African is an emotionally retarded creature; he is unable to love and work for his fellow human beings. I believe that this inability to love is at the root of his present economic shiftlessness and inability to govern his self well. While the rest of the world surges ahead economically Africans are going backwards.
Africans mismanage their countries and to the extent that they are compelled to come up with reasons why they are backward all they seem able to do is provide the infantile excuse that it is others that made them backward; they always blame white folks for their obvious shiftlessness.
They blame white folks for their selling their people to Arabs and Europeans, for preventing them from economic development, from restructuring their countries that they inherited from European colonial masters in such a manner that they become realistic to Africa's tribal and ethnic realities hence enable them able to govern effectively. They blame Europeans for putting many African tribes into given nation states thus causing their problems, but refuse to restructure those countries as they would like them to become. For instance, they could make each tribe a state within a nation and then have a confederation or federation of states. If each African tribe is made a state it would be able to progress according to its own pace; those who are achievement orientated and on a fast track to modernization, such as Igbos, would then fly ahead whereas the more conservative groups that would like to live in the past, such as Hausas, are left to do so without dragging the fast paced ones down..
All that Africans seem to know how to do is complain about what other people did to hold them down but seem unable to see what they are doing to hold themselves down: their inability to love themselves hence does what needs to be done to develop their pre-industrial economies.
If you have ever related to Africans the first thing you notice is that they do not love one another; in fact, many of them may not even know what the term love means! You seldom see them touching each other, hugging their children and generally doing things that serve each other's interests.
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