Freedom is not as free as it sounds. The Renaissance is a celebrated patch of history. It is remembered as the time when ordinary people realized that they were powerful and could determine what to believe and how to live their lives. They got to know that the emperors existed only because the people existed. They realized that there would be no pope or bishop without the people. It was a mind revolution that took a long time in coming but when it did, everything changed. The people found their voices and began to ask relevant questions. Oppressive institutions began to lose their powers. Before this time, no one could speak openly about his belief system if it did not tally with what the powers-that-be had dictated. Some people who dared to differ lost their lives to the tyranny that reigned supreme.
The Renaissance opened the floodgates of progress and prosperity mainly because a liberated mind is a mine of inestimable treasures. The moment tyranny was given a backseat, great things began to happen.
That was in Europe. Unfortunately, we are yet to see such a mind revolution in Africa. The typical African is still afraid to think his own thoughts and arrive at his own conclusions independently. There is still that subconscious fear of the slave master who remains, in the parlance of sociology, a significant other. The language of the slave master remains sacrosanct. After many decades of purported independence, knowledge of a foreign language is still the major yardstick for measuring one’s level of education. Subconsciously, we show great respect for anyone who speaks the language of our slavery and look down on anyone who does not. The truth is that we are free in principle. The slave master has left us to live like free entities but we cannot really accept this freedom until our minds are liberated from the strong cords that impaired them for years.
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Yes, you are free from observing table manners that do not make any sense to you. Nobody should insult you for eating your native food in the native style. By the way, how many families in Africa really use the dining table like the whites do? Very few. However, in order not to appear odd, we provide dining rooms and dining tables. Most times, they are there for fancy and to impress visitors. When we want to enjoy our food, we go local.
Yes, we are free to dress comfortably in our own native attires but we just can’t free our minds from the desire to impress our slave masters. We must dress like them even when it goes against the grain of common sense.
Yes, we are free to determine how our society should be organized and governed, but we cannot. We must act like the apes they branded us and copy whatever they do, whether it suits us or not. Democracy in the form we practice it now is a very expensive system. In this electioneering period, one cannot fathom how many trillions of naira has been poured into campaigns. The electoral body is also spending huge sums of money just to conduct elections. When one considers that this is happening in a clime where more than 50 percent of the people can barely manage to feed, it is outrageous. When eventually the leaders emerge through this complex process, the sheer number of the legislators and executive officers and their aides who must be paid heavily is mind-blowing.
Recently, some good Nigerians have gone to great lengths to show us that the reason we are not prospering as a nation is that the running cost for governance is unreasonably high. In spite of all this, we stick to this brand of democracy. The culprit again is mind slavery.
The Igbo society practiced a beautiful form of democracy that did not allow anybody to become superrich at the expense of others. Other ethnic groups also had their own systems that are by far better than what we have now. What is wrong in modifying what we borrowed to suit our own special needs?
Yes, we are free to develop our own languages after the serious setback they suffered in the hands of imperialists. We are free to teach our children their mother tongue from the cradle, unlike in the past when they were severely punished for speaking what was criminally termed vernacular. We are free to develop teaching aids, dictionaries, films and games with the language. We are free to label products emanating from our land in our native language, but can we? No! We have to force our children to speak a foreign language and punish them for speaking ours. We have to label our products in foreign languages. In short, we are collectively helping to bury our languages in the graves dug by the slave master.
We must lose this fear that makes it impossible for us to do the right thing. In Igboland, many towns and villages had their names badly distorted by foreigners when they held sway. Common sense dictates that as soon as they left, we would reclaim our names, but no, we are still bearing those bastardized names till today. That is why we have Afikpo instead of Ehugbo, Awka instead of Oka, Awkunawnaw, Awgu, Owerri, Oguta, Obowo and so many more.
We need an African renaissance! It is time to think freedom, speak freedom and act freedom.
NNENNA Ihebom
