“...Colonial state generates a colonial posture. This automates a series of complexes which remain with the African long after the colonial stimulus has ceased to have direct contact. The continuation of these complexes is seen in a state of mind which permits colonialism as a reflex. During this period the remoteness of the stimulus is often misinterpreted as nonexistent, thus generating a false sense of security in the minds of Africans lately out of bondage. The stimulus exists, its virulence undiminished. In fact, what happens is that the imperial power at this time, finding itself undisturbed, conserves energy, spreads its contagion, prepares the ground, and concentrates all its efforts toward the achievement of its main objective--that of economic exploitation.
These were my views as a student, discovered in a pile of my student-days essays. Today, after fifteen years, my views remain sunstantially unchanged. The future of Africa depends entirely on the ability of the African to overcome his own colonial mentality, which permits his erstwhile colonial masters to manage him by impulses generated from a remote control station, usually some European capital.
For the African, therefore, to measure up as a man in the full sense of the word, for him to be truly free, it becomes imperative that he must first understand himself, his psychological disability, then recognize his enemy--still his erstwhile colonial master--recognize the fact of neocolonialism, its destructive potential, and then take urgent and drastic steps to rid himself of this malignant blight which, if left unchecked, will surely destroy him. This is why I believe that the Black man will not emerge until he is able to build modern states based on a compelling African ideology.
The need for an African ideology arises from the fact that the withdrawal of the colonial masters and the effect of a long period under tutelage left most emergent African countries with an ideological vacuum. In order to fill this vacuum, the battle for men’s minds continues in Africa today. The African leaders is often left with very little to choose between one ideology or the other, each designed to serve needs other than his own. It is this that creates in Africa a state of instability, and this instability is bound to continue until Africa generates from within an ideology of equal dynamism that can fill the vacuum and act as a bulwark against foreign imposition. Our struggle, therefore, is African nationalism conscious of itself and fully aware of the powers with which it is contending...”
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Biafra Lodge, Owerri, May 30, 1969
Comments