I surely don’t have a topic for this but I guess suggestions are welcomed. I have always been interested in history and governance but not without its frustrations and I am coming to terms with the fact that, you only get frustrated about what you are passionate about. I have often wondered why anyone shouldn’t be interested in History as I am of the opinion that we can’t chart a new path if we never know where we are coming from. More so, History is that mystic that gives us our identity as you will often hear the men of old saying though in religious terminologies: the God of our fathers. Such phrases is connected to antecedents in the past which serves as spring board for future exploits.

History has it that the Europeans’ first exploration to Africa was in the 15th Century. While that sounds like a known fact however my curious mind can’t stop probing into why the exploration? Why risk your life through the unchartered waters of the Atlantic Ocean? Maybe they had more reason to go on this expedition. Maybe the forces that drove them out of their continents were stronger than the forces that could keep them satisfied considering the lack of natural resources, the need for survival and many other factors. Everyone knows how blessed Africa is in terms of Natural Resources and Climatic condition as compared to most Western countries so maybe that was also a factor for the Europeans and for the sake of this write-up, I will use Caucasians to describe Europeans as it includes the Americans too. If nothing at all, living in the West for a few months and watching Game of Thrones has told me the weather is pretty harsh and I can imagine what it was like in the 15th century without the needed technology so I will like to suggest that Africa offered a more sophisticated environment and civilization for these Caucasians. And for those that have been told that the Caucasians came to develop Africa, maybe we have not done our own research properly and we have believed everything we have been handed.

It was the Dutch Explorer- Olfert Dapper that describe the Ancient Benin Kingdom as more advanced than the European kingdom. In his diary, he wrote that the roads of Ancient Benin Kingdom were eight times wider than what they had in Amsterdam. Another explorer: Graham Corner, a British historian described the walls of the Ancient Benin Kingdom extending to about 16000km long in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They covered 6,500 sq Km and were all dug by the Edo people… which would have taken about 150million hours of digging to construct and perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet. 

Hence my contemplation, with all of these luxuries, why did the Caucasians not pitch their tents in Africa. After all, we are known to be very accommodating folks. I guess one thing seems sure, they were never going to abandon their homeland for some form of luxuries which they can adopt and recreate. Fast forward to the 21st century, the world seem to be more interconnected, the Caucasians explorers in conjunction with bad leadership in Africa have joined forces and depleted the African race psychologically and are still exploiting the African resources (this is not an excuse for our own underdevelopment). The Western countries have become very developed and excellently so that they even require an increase in population to service the magnificent eight wonder of the world which they have created and now the boarders are open to the Africans and many more races. However, preference is for the professionally skilled ones and this sound like a good thing and I think it is. It is a global village. If resources can be moved from one country to another, so should human capital howbeit, legally. However as interesting and noble as this idea of immigration is, I would have expected that we can learn somethings from first the Caucasians and also the Asians. When the Caucasians explored Africa, they had their strategy in mind: we need to develop the West and we would use resources from Africa to do that. When the Asians come to the west, the plan is to return back with the foreign exposure and develop their continent. Maybe only Africans don’t plan to. Maybe only Africans have an escapist mindset. 24hrs electricity is so much of a luxury to us, our mind is never big enough to comprehend that we can actually find a solution to our power generating problem. Good roads are so much luxurious that the idea of going back to Africa seems more like a diabolic concussion been stirred by our extended relatives who we think are envious of our new western achievement – BS!

The conundrum is that many of us think we have escaped the rot in Africa by moving to Canada or the US and I think that is shallow. We have left extended family and peradventure,  we are able to eventually move our extended family out of Africa too which is possible but I once read about a Nigerian family that relocated to the United States some years back and I am sure they also breath a sigh of relief: away from the madness in Nigeria which is very understandable and on one of the few or only trip they made to Nigeria to attend a function, the entire family died in a plane crash travelling inter-state in the country. Yes I get that look plane crashes everywhere but we also know the story of the Nigerian Aviation Industry and just maybe when we think we have escaped what we running from, it catches up with us. So why not take up this golden exposure you have in the Western Countries, why not take our dual citizenship, why not take our experience and give back to the countries of our roots? I guess that’s is the mindset that developed the west which we all now want to make our home.

#justmymidnightrantings. **unedited** To be continued….