I often remember a song I was taught as a child. 

The most memorable line was: “When I point my finger at my neighbour, there are three more fingers pointing back at me”.

I recently chanced upon a video interview featuring Dele Farotimi, the radical lawyer/activist. He was talking about colonialism and Nigeria’s relationships with foreign powers. I totally agreed with his utterances. I am so tired of black folks blaming white folks for everything that has gone wrong with their societies.

Mr Farotimi’s wise comments reminded me of the above song. Whenever we point our collective finger at our superpower “oppressors”, there are three more fingers pointing back at us!!!   

Mr Farotimi’s statement is food for thought and deserves as wide an audience as possible. Here are some slightly edited excerpts:

“Let’s be clear about something.

“There will always be national interest and personal interests. The British interest does not coincide with a Nigeria that is working. “American interest does not necessarily coincide with a Nigeria that is working. That is the truth.

“How much more money do you think they make from exporting petrol to us after they’ve imported our crude? It makes more sense for them. It creates jobs in their country. It gives them forex. So, I don’t blame them.

“Yorubas will say that (speaks Yoruba) that there is nobody who will not take advantage of the foolish.

“That we are foolish enough to be incapable of recognising what is in our own enlightened self-interest as a collective is not the fault of the foreign powers. I don’t blame them. Is it their fault that we are foolish? It is not.

“If we truly have leaders, those leaders should have clarity as to the vision with which they are leading the people. If you are leading a people, you must have a destination to which you are leading them.

“But to have vision, you must have imagination and in the absence of leaders, with the enthronement of rulers, pimpish men without imagination, you cannot envision. Because a vision is never born of what you can see. What you can see might trigger the vision, but you are not going to be aspiring to get something that is in your physical environment.

“If you are looking to build a revolutionary or a visionary train system in Nigeria, you will not be building the kinds of train that takes two hours 40 minutes to get to Ibadan [from Lagos].

“You wouldn’t do that. You’ll be thinking of something that would take 40 minutes from Lagos to Ibadan. So, you are thinking of a bullet train or something better, but you are [instead] building something that had existed since the ’50s.

“Even in the ’50s, they were building trains faster than what we are building now and plunging the country into national debt. Or you want to talk about their rail system in Lagos, where they built seven kilometers or thereabouts in 16 years. What is visionary about that?

“So, it is not the foreign powers [who caused all of our problems]. I don’t blame them. Every country must recognise what is in its own enlightened selfish interest, and sometimes it is not necessarily enlightened.

“But look at the British. Because of the destruction of our own educational system, do you know how much we send to Britain every year in school fees? Do you know how many Nigerians have sold everything they own so that they can japa? The Nigerian middle class has been wiped out because of the stupidity of the Nigerian state and its ruiners.

“The net beneficiaries of specialist, well-trained labour that is draining out of Nigeria every day are Britain, Canada, Japan, now Australia. All over the world, Nigerians are to be found and it is the best and brightest of us that are leaving. And when they leave, they leave with their substance. So, we are losing people, we are losing resources.

“America has never sent its troops to come and conquer us. Britain has stopped sending any soldiers here to do anything. When was the last time they said they’ve given us independence? It’s easier to actually keep us here and let us be the ones who pay for our own passage to slavery, which is what they are doing. So I can’t blame them.

“Of course, they have influence, but why should they spend their influence making our country better? That’s on us. We are the ones who have the duty to recognise the fact that we can be better than we are and then aspire to be better. We can’t wait on anybody to come and do it for us. What’s their business with us?

“If we elect to be foolish, we can’t put that on them. Whether their own society would eventually benefit from this on the long run is their problem.

“Look, go to Britain today. You’ll find multiple enclaves where the Muslim community has overtaken the indigenous community. Sharia law is being demanded. Those are the payments for the evil that they have done. Do you understand?

“There would always be consequences for every action and inaction, but you cannot blame them for our own refusal to identify what’s in our own interest. It is not their fault that our rulers are foolish, that the victims have demonstrated an incapacity to recognise common cause and come together as one. That’s not their business.

“They are exploiting our foolishness for their own gain. Whether that gain will be long term or short term or whether it will implode in their faces eventually is another ballgame entirely.

“But I would not sit down here and focus on blaming some extraneous forces when our own lives are in our own hands and we are the ones who have elected not to do the right thing. That’s not on them. That’s on us. That is completely on us. It’s not on them.”

DONU’S WORLD

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Today, I talk about my intense dislike for Donald Trump, the notorious American politician…and the reasons why I think that nobody sane or intelligent – black people in particular – should vote for him when he makes a second bid for the American presidency.

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