The Economic & Political Emancipation... Part II

As part of my education, I read various books but found no information especially in books written by Nigerians about Nigeria. I then left the history books to see what the popular media said about us. In every TV show, the ‘Calabar’ man was depicted as the houseboy or the gateman. He was subservient, without imagination, ridiculed and dominated. This was the picture the media fed us in ‘The New Masquerade’ and ‘Village Headmaster’. Images form pictures in people’s minds and some people live out these pictures in their lives. I therefore stopped blaming my Calabar brothers for not standing up for our people in that January 1991 Sociology class.

It was now time to find out what we said about ourselves. It was worse than what the history books and popular media said about us. Here goes:

Our parents are suspected witches, our parents-in-laws are confirmed wizards: As a people we are mired down by superstitions. The fear of witchcraft – Ifot- is so strong that our sons and daughters do not even visit home. In a country where per capita income is below one thousand dollars, and unemployment rate is over 30%, it is known and accepted that ‘Ifot’ is the cause of job loss or the lack thereof and not the prevalent economic situation. Ifot is the reason why young men and women die young; no credence is given to the WHO statistics that has pegged the Nigerian’s life expectancy at less than 50 years.

A woman who does not give birth to a baby within the first year of marriage is a victim of her mother in law’s witchcraft practise. You see, our witches have perfected the art of eating our babies in the spiritual before they are even conceived. Never mind that most of us are sexually active in our late teens and there are a myriad of sexually transmitted diseases which many young people contract and these when not properly treated (as in most cases they are not), due to ignorance, poor health care facilities and sheer stigmatisation, these infections do lead to infertility in adult life. We do not confront these issues, neither do we study their effects, we feed our mental laziness by throwing up our hands in the air and blaming it all on the unknown and unseen ‘Ifot’.

Persecution Delusions and Prayer Houses: At every point in time, we are always persecuted by someone or some force. Someone is always after us, someone is always working overtime to do us in and most times the prayer houses are ready to point out this ‘someone’ to be a family member, close friend or associate. These prayer houses never offer solutions beyond expensive ‘assignments’ and advise to steer clear of the persecuting ‘someone’.

There is a story about a pastor that started a church in our state. During counselling sessions, his parishioners came with complaints of various uncles, aunties, parents, co-workers and even neighbours who were against them and were about to do them in. The poor pastor was overwhelmed with all the reports of hatred and fear as some of the people, whom the ‘victims’ were complaining about, were also his parishioners and some of these parishioners also felt themselves to be victims also.

He then held general prayer meeting to ‘exorcise’ the tormenting spirits, which planted these thoughts of persecution in his parishioners’ minds. The poor church folks were not satisfied. They demanded ‘Spiritual Assignments’. The pastor was confused and asked what assignments meant. Well the definition of assignment will be a subject in my next post.