If I can manipulate or lure you to abandon your religious beliefs and language for mine then I have become your master and you my slave. With this, the enslavement of Africans continues! One would have imagined that after slavery the African communities would be allowed to reflect, rebuild, heal, and evolve but the slave masters knowing they had removed the chain quickly bullied us with colonialism and imperialism.
Africa is not backward because of her religion or language Africa is backward because of a lack of exposure and scientific knowledge. There is nothing peculiar about this, China, India, and elsewhere were not developed countries before now just like Africa they were lagging behind in development.
The old ways are not to be abandoned for the new way rather the old should absorb the new and breed something wise and forward-looking just as it is happening in China and India.
How can you abandon your religion and lingua franca? How can you reject or subdue a way of life that has served your community for hundreds of thousands of years for a religion that is less than 5,000 years old, even the Jews who gave birth to Jesus never abandoned theirs.
No religion however great or powerful should be the end of reason and this is inclusive of Christianity and Islam, here in Africa Christianity was never a gift it was and has always been a weapon of slavery and colonization, why didn’t the Europeans learn our languages and custom before teaching us a new path why teach them in their own language and custom. If identity is not important why insist on their language, religion, and custom to colonize us. In the attempt to put us on our knees the African culture, language, and religion have been treated like the inferior, and of course, we live our lives on this fallacious thinking.
Yes, I might have been born a Christian or Muslim but I must grow up to decide intellectually and spiritually on which path I must continue, it is the same consciousness and self-discovery that led both Jesus and Mohammed to abandon their native religion for something new! Of all things, the worst is to inherit religion and hold on to it for the sake of inheritance alone!
The search for identity and an authentic state of being is at the heart of the crisis beguiling Nigeria and other parts of Africa, of all the instruments of slavery the least potent is the chain, the chain can be cut and the ropes can be loosened but in the case of religion and language, it is too potent that a 100 generation will struggle against it and still not find answers.
There is a deep connection between language and religion, religion is discovered in language and it is languages that sustain it. Languages define religion, bring it to life, and at the same time validate its practice.
Language is the singular most powerful driving force of humans when it comes to spirituality and knowledge, our language is our existence it is part of our DNA and it exists to communicate not only with people and institutions but to communicate with ourselves biologically, intellectually, spiritually, sociologically, psychologically and physically.
It is not just about speaking your language, it’s the people who use their native languages to govern and conduct their affairs that will be able to bend ideas easily, as long as Africans continue to use foreign languages to conduct their affairs they will keep short-changing themselves. There is a huge gap between knowledge and ideas even though they always seem interdependent and there is a huge difference between light and illumination even though the scenario looks the same. We will never get the best as a community if we do not confront the world with our indigenous languages and spiritualism.
Why is it that China, India, and some other countries that have continued to use their language and spiritual identity are at the forefront of economic development among the upcoming states?
Europeans can never determine the permanent idea of Africa and they should not define it! Slavery and Colonialism are not evolution but blood exploitation, we need to seek our own path now!
Hon Adeyemi Abidemi Adebola