Ayi Kwei Armah is the Ghanaian literary guru who burst into the literary azure with his first novel,
The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born.
This masterpiece published in 1968 by the London based Heinemann
Educational Publishers, was a watershed in the history of African
literature and has remained a bestseller since then having been read by
generations of Africanliterature students. Armah is generically
considered by critics as one of the most brilliant, versatile and
provocativeAnglophone writers.
While the
Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born has found millions of readers and admirers, the story is not quite palatable with Armah’s fourth novel,
Two thousand Seasons (first
published by East African Publishing House, 1973). However, this novel
which has been described as the ‘theory of African history’ focused on
the life of an African community in pursuit of their collective
aspirations across the centuries. In my view, it is a must-read for
every black person.
Although weighed down byinitial long and boring poetic monologues, it was effectively redeemed by its message.
Two Thousand Seasons
x-rayed the centuries of atrocitiesperpetratedagainst black Africa by
both the West and Arabs alike. Any reader patient enough to go through
will be shocked to realize that neither Christianity nor Islam has been
friend of Africa through the centuries. Neither of these religions and
their bringers and adherents could stop the enslavement and
dehumanization of the black race. On the contrary the two religions
merely served as a tool in the decimation of black population as well as
the destruction of their cultural heritage, values, civilization and
collective will.
Today, an ex-ray of the murderous and ‘genocidal’ campaigns of the
demonic Boko Haram sect and indeed countless religious-motivated mass
killings and conflictsparticularly in northern Nigeria appears to be a
repeat reading of Armah’s
Two Thousand Seasons. In
Two Thousand Seasons,
Armah describes the Arabs as ‘predators from across the desert’ who
forced their way into Africa and enslaved its people and destroyed their
collective will. As for the West, Armah called them ‘destroyers from
across the seas’ because their weapons of mass destruction were more
sophisticated than those used by Arabs I their dreadful campaigns.
Beyond the religion which was used for pacification, they had guns and
other instruments of death. In fact, they were worse than Arabs from
across the desert.
Today, this colonization and its destructive tendencies Armah wrote
about are far from over. What is playing out today in the north-east of
Nigeria that goes in the name of insurgency and terrorism is nothing
short of Arab imperialism at work. There is a mortal struggle going on
between the West and Arab for the soul of Africa. Nowhere is this
satanic struggle more visible than in Nigeria where the two evolutions
are engaged in a mortal combat.
Arabs are bent on controlling the soul of Africa at whatever cost to
its citizens. They pump millions of dollars annually to Africa in the
name of promoting their faith. In Mali, CAR, Sudan, and Somalia and so
they are fingered. This is in spite of the fact that they consider the
black race as second class just like the West.
In the monumentalmasterwork,
Things Fall Apart, Achebe made
us realize that Africa was not ‘a one long night of savagery’ in which
the black man was mercifully delivered from by Christianity and western
Colonization. Africa, like other races had their own traditional
institutions and civilization that worked for them long before the
arrivals of the marauders and destructive force as represented by the
Arabs and West respectively. If the south of Nigeria is not religiously
volatile as north, it is because they did not throw away their
traditional norms entirely and these effectively helped to ‘balance’ if
not ‘check’ the excesses from the imposed foreign faiths.
In the northern Nigerian particularly the north east and north west
the story is different. The total transplantation of a ‘new’
civilization from Arabia in the garb of religion effectively destroyed
the indigenous values, norms, institutions and heritage of the people.
The new alien values which negates the indigenous remains the bedrock of
endless ethno-religious violence that has continue to make peace a
phantom in those regions.
Neither the west nor the Arabs can therefore be absolved from the
endless carnages in Nigeria and indeed all over Africa. Sometimes both
would conspire as was the case in CAR, Ivory Coast and so on. The
current near genocide campaign in the Central African Republic today
where Christians are killing Muslims is the direct result of western and
Arab imperialism in a marriage of convenience. The French had tried to
replace a Christian leader for a Muslim in a predominantly Christian
country. While this worked in Ivory Coast where Alasan Outara was the
beneficiary, it failed in the CAR.
The north and indeed Nigeria must look inward for a long time
solution to perpetual circle of violence in the name of imported
cultures masquerading as religion. Our salvation lies in reviving our
own values and cultures. Imported cultures are making us turn against
one another hence things are daily falling apart. While we have been
told again and that both Christianity and Islam are religions that
preaches peace, tolerance and universal brotherhood, neither the West
nor the Arab have accept the blacks as brothers and sistershence the
unending slavery in its various dimensions. Besides, the two
religionscarry with them the cultural heritage of the Arabs and the West
respectively. To practice Islam or Christianity in the ‘raw’ form they
were imported without diluting them will lead to cultural alienation and
cultural colonization. The result will be endless conflicts. Our
salvation lies with ourselves.
No religion comes from heaven one hundred par cent. Parts of it are
creations of men and are rooted in the culture, myths and values of the
people from where such faith originates from. Thus, Islam is inherently
imbedded with the culture, values, norms, myths, traditions and the
civilization of the Arab race since the religion has its origin in
Arabia. The story is the same with Christianity which though originated
in Palestine but was nurtured by the West hence it acquired western
values.
Both opposing civilizations have today turned Africa into a battle
front as they fight for dominance and control of the soul of Africa.
Winning the fight against so-called terrorism is no easy task becauseour
own kinsmen are already drunk from the opium ofreligion and are today
being used against us by those who want us to remain their slaves till
eternity. The invitation for assistance of UK, America and other
European powers by the Nigerian government to help combat the genocides
of the Boko Haram sect will definitely heighten the fight of these two
civilizations.
There is no doubt that the Boko Haram campaigns of terror are
evidence of Arab imperialism. The introduction of the Sharia legal
system in parts of northern Nigeria are part of these grand schemes and
unwillingly played its role in the emergence of these demons called Boko
Haram that have no respect for the sanctity of life.
For me, religion, God, Satan, demons and so on are all concepts and
everyone and every people have their own version. The Chinese have
theirs, the Japanese have theirs, and the IndiansAfrica and other races
also have theirs. The world is not all about Islam and Christianity.
Although tworeligions have their own good sides, they have held the
black man hostages for too long. We must break free. To import and
impose foreign faiths on people who already have their own is nothing
short of imperialism. For brother to turn against brother in the name of
religion is self-imposed colonization. I am sure that the members of
the notorious Al-Shabaab of Somalia, Ansar-Islam,and Boko Haram militant
sect along with their financiers, sympathisers and supporters are
hardly aware of what they are doing to themselves or whom they are:
agents of slave dealers and colonizers.
The Boko Haram killings and forceful conversion of innocent school
girls is religiously motivated. In order to end this continuous circle
of violence, we must go for a permanent solution. Religion must be
pushed to the private domain. Government must encourage indigenous
faiths which are far more tolerant than imported ones as is evident over
these decades. Except we do this, peace will remain elusive.
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