Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: Lottery of Life

Thank you Professor Iweriebor,
It is not about a search for approval but the larger political and governance issues that are within our own control. The first reaction to the news came from younger Nigerians living in Africa and I do not disagree with your position about collective self confidence. I am in many parts of Africa regularly and collective self confidence comes from the provision of cultural, social and economic infrastructures that give the next generations a hope that their societies and countries matter. This should be the point of attention not the questioning of any one's authentic African or progressive credentials. Those often speak for themselves and will be judged by posterity in terms of where we have been, our conduct and unceasing engagements with our continent.
Millions of ordinary young people are demoralized in Lagos, Enugu, Kaduna and other cities daily.
They do not need The Economist to tell them that we live in tough times, tough places and that we can solve our own problems if we care to.
That is my point and I rest my case.
-taa.

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 16, 2013, at 6:39 PM, <eiwerieb@hunter.cuny.edu> wrote:

> Thank you Professor Oyekanmi for reaffirmation of unbending faith in Nigeria.
>
> You are with the majority of Nigerians who have no complexes about their homeland and need no external agency to tell them how to feel about it.
>
> It is not clear to me my why any African at this stage of African history and encounter with the West should be "demoralized" by what the Western media and intelligentsia have been saying about Nigeria, Africa and Africans since colonial times. These colonialist views are not new.
>
> Are we so in need of the approval of our conquerors that we cannot live or be happy unless they say something nice about us?.
> It seems that the colonizers' application software of self-doubt, uncertainty, self-hatred, self-abuse and the need for the masters approval that was programmed into colonized and dominated Africans is so deeply entrenched and successful that decades after independence some African intelligentisa are run by what the master says about them and not what they or their society is actually doing.
>
> I think it should just be reiterated that from colonial times to the present virtually all representations of Nigeria, Africa and African has been part of a cultural-psychological warfare against Africa and Africans.
>
> The Economist is merely one in long line traducers of Africa and her fellow travelers including Africans who are incapable of complex self-assessment.
>
> Fortunately majority of Africans continue to press ahead with making their history while the Economist and other naysayers continue their established and disreputable tradition of putting down Nigeria and Nigerians.
>
> Ehiedu Iweriebor
>
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