Some Pan-African is just nagging...

If your sense of entitlement is beyond common sense, you’ll become a complainer. If you’re overly uncompromising, and always tending to revolt, you’re paving a way to misfortune, and these two according to me have been Africa’s biggest setbacks to date.

From when my granny was a baby, the African intellectual movement was chanting down so-called western imperialism and still no changes. In fact, half our political discourse is against the imperialist; the other half either on endless debates; the definition of independence perhaps, or celebrating some brutal tyrant, just because he said something against the west. Meanwhile, the rest of the world’s planning to leave for Mars. We are so academically flashy that even our ideas are conveyed with big grammar, so enmeshed, high-sounding, and so avoidably deep that we defeat the whole purpose of communication.

I’m in agreement that we have an awful history of being taken advantage of by foreign corporations and colonialists, but if we should speak from the bottom of our hearts, we’ll also agree that the well-educated amongst us haven’t done any better than committing fraud and poorly distributing our continental treasures. And these are the people we expect to help us to take a turn for the better.

Talking about poverty alleviation but helping just a few to game the system: create nicely titled imperialist-funded projects and lucrative-charities, rent big office spaces (usually from a friend or a friend of a friend), huge cars, unwarranted committees, regular seminars and workshops, endless study tours to the land of the imperialist (what an irony) - you read some financial statements and see what was actually paid towards intended purposes, you’ll want to box somebody's ears.

We talk about encouraging and strengthening bonds of solidarity between all people of African descent but it’s still easier and hassle free to travel to Brussels from The Gambia than to Burkina Faso. We talk about encouraging a common destiny when some of us here are offended and calling this ECOMIG transitory intervention of ours an invasion. We talk about unity when from AU Summits to our local community meetings, the concerns are so divisive that we cannot even agree to disagree.

Like Tupac, I agree that "it's time to fight back," if not overdue. But like he said, the misplaced hate will only cause disgrace to all races. So, if the old way isn’t working like he advised, and like I think it isn’t, it’s about time we change our line of attack - you know, build our own rather than wishing that the imperialist’s tears to pieces - that’ll be so envious. If the western media’s narrative is bias against us for instance, let’s be like Iran and create our own - that’s what clever people do when they feel badly treated. I thought I should say this today.