Page 54 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 10

COMMUNITY

development. A democracy with
rulers without leaders. For so
long, we were made to believe
that power lies in the hands
of those with guns and ma-
chine-guns, and they ruled over
us with their guns. They terror-
ized us, intimidated us, stole our
money, and sold our God-given
natural resources at give-away
prices, and we watched them
helplessly because they had
guns. They told us to vote, only
to steal our votes and impose
unknown candidates on us, and
we watched them helplessly be-
cause they had guns. They told
us to make sacrifices for the sake
of national growth, while they
reveled in obscene opulence and
showered us with clouds of dust
as they drove noisily in long
convoys of armed jeeps along
our untarred market roads, and
we watched them helplessly
because they had guns. While handle fire-outbreaks before Edo State, of Nigeria, of Afri-
the most educated and hard- we quench the fire. If a flood is ca, struggling to earn our daily
working of us earn peanuts as wiping out our towns and villag- bread; we shall rise and liberate
wages, they, the ‘powers that be’, es, we summon a stakeholders’ ourselves. We will no longer
approved for themselves outra- summit to discuss it even while wait for any savior or depend on
geous allowances and privileges, our children are drowning. the goodwill and benevolence
and we watched them helplessly As we were getting tired of their of the rich. We will be the ones
because they had guns. tactics, they employed religious to set ourselves free. And to set
For so long, they raised our and tribal sentiments to weaken our continent free. It may be
hopes with sweet promises and our resolve, our focus, and our challenging, but one day, we will
organized lavished conferences will to resist. And to their relief, liberate our communities, our
and symposia to get us talking. we willingly swallowed the bait, society, our country. We will
The more we talked, the happier and began to fight with one frustrate them with our resil-
they became. Before we knew another, insult one another, and ience. And humiliate them by
it, we had become a nation of kill one another. our determination. No amount
committees. In Africa, there of gunpowder and bomb power
are thousands of seminars and One day, rather sooner than can match our will, our deter-
conferences on every topic later, the dead bones shall rise, mination, our dreams. Real
under the earth. If our roofs are and we: the commercial motor- power does not lie in the hands
leaking, we organize confer- cycle riders, the wheelbarrow of those who hold the gun. The
ences before we mend them. If pushers, the palm-wine tappers, real power lies in the hands of
our houses are on fire, we first the shoemakers, the bricklayers, men and women of ideas, of vi-
organize seminars on how to the banana sellers, the simple sion, of imagination and of will.
ordinary men and women of

54 | Heal . Restore . Rebirth . Afrika