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Mental Slavery

Author  Ayoooodeji.
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If a white man told a Nigerian an object was blue, and a black man or a Nigerian told a Nigerian that the same object was red, the average Nigerian would rather believe the white man and say the object is blue, even if the object were to be truly red. That, my friends, is mental slavery.

Mental slavery is one of the worst kind of slavery to ever exist, and beyond keeping one in bonds, it destroys creativity, eradicates innovation, and murders imagination. In this article, I won’t be writing about the mental slavery of the black race, as I’m not enlightened enough to write about it, but I have, to some extent, a bit of knowledge about the mental slavery of the ‘nigerian’ race, hence the reason for this article. Nigeria, together with the citizens, is mentally enslaved.

Please take note, I am neither writing facts nor generally accepted truths, I am writing my thoughts, and what I know. What I know may be wrong or right, but it’s what I know.

Often times, when people talk or write about mental slavery, most especially about the black race, their first port of call is always to attack Christianity, or the ‘white man’s religion’ as it’s fondly called. I’d be starting on that note, too, but I won’t be ‘attacking’ christianity, because for all it’s worth, I’m a human being, then a Christian.

Christianity a.k.a., the white man’s religion, has always been under persecution, even from the days of the apostles. But of recent times, certain free thinkers have intensified such ‘persecutions’. Many of such free thinkers, if not all, are of the opinion that christianity is a tool designed by the white man to keep the black race under perpetual mental slavery.

They insist that there are a lot of irregularities and inconsistencies in the Bible, and that a God that is as great as described by the white man wouldn’t have inspired men to write a book that inconsistent. They are also of the view that if the Bible was truly inspired God, the white man wouldn’t have been able edit the bible, in what is known as the canonization of the Bible. (The removed portions of the Bible are known as the apocrypha). It’s really not surprising that most of such free thinkers are atheists.

Many of us must have watched the Passion of Christ movie at a point in time, or the Nativity. Most of all the Bible characters depicted in these movies, if not all, were white people. This is another issue often raised. The rest of the free thinkers who believe in God and the entire concept of Christianity are against the general notion that all the biblical characters are white, as is often depicted in most Bible based movies.

Some of these free thinkers have even gone as far as saying that Jesus in the Bible was black. There really is no way for us to prove what the true colour of Jesus, but till we can find a way to do so, I think it’s totally wrong to generalize that all the Bible characters and Christians of old were white. It makes the black people feel under privileged.

Before Christianity came to Nigeria, our forefathers were traditionalists, but with the advent of Christianity, our traditional religions (worship of sango, ogun, osun and the rest) are now tagged as sinful practices according to the standard of the Bible; and the same Bible says all sinners who die in their sins are going to hell. Does it mean that all our forefathers who lived before Christianity came to Nigeria are in hell at the moment? I need answers please.

This is looking to be a religious discourse, and I said I was going to write about Nigeria alone. I guess I got carried away.

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Let’s take a look at it from the health aspect.
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Our forefathers diet consisted mostly of herbs, and fruits, and wildlife they caught during their hunting expeditions, and oh boy, did they live long and healthy lives? When they fell sick, they relied heavily on traditional medicine i.e., herbs and roots to restore their health, but with the introduction of orthodox medicine (modern white man medicine), our own traditional medicine has now been deemed unfit for human consumption, and our local medicine pratictioners are slowly going into extinction.

We’ve come to rely heavily on these artificially produced medicines that we don’t even realize that the damage the side effects of these drugs cause to our bodies is worse than what the side effects of any herbs or roots would cause. (I’m probably so concerned about this cause I hate drugs a lot). We no longer eat fruits or vegetables or things that are beneficial to us. Everybody now wants to eat pizza or shawarma and what have you. It’s really not surprising that the average life expectancy rate back then is way higher than it is now.

I’m not saying that the white man medicine isn’t good for us. I will be lying if I said so. What I’m trying to say is that our own local vegetables, fruits and herbs provide us with much more than these medicines ever can, so there’s really no need to rely heavily on orthodox medicine. The funny thing about all of this is that the elites of the Nigerian society don’t even trust Nigerians to administer these medicines to them. They’d rather prefer to fly out to the white man’s country to get treated than place their lives in the hands of a Nigerian medical practitioner. So much for Independence.

This article wouldn’t be complete if I don’t talk about fashion and culture.

Talking about culture, it’s quite evident that the western culture is eroding our culture as Nigerians, and as Africans. We all wanna be like the white man, we wanna do like the white man, we even want to talk like the white man. That’s why somebody will come on social media and be saying ‘imma finna’, and then say that ‘finna’ is an abbreviation for finally. Pathetic! We begin to compare ourselves to the white man and begin to set our standards according to theirs.

Yes, I know that it’s necessary to know how to speak good English in order to be able to compete with the rest of the world, but should it be at the expense of our indigenous languages? Most millennial children i.e., children born in the 2000s have little or no knowledge about their indigenous languages, and how to speak it. This is leading to the gradual extinction of most of our indigenous languages. Funny that I’m even writing this article in English language.

Talking about our fashion sense, our forefathers would probably be rolling in their graves if they saw what people considered as fashion. Everybody want to trend. Everybody want to be considered fashionable. Everybody want to wear bling bling, but at what cost? We are even starting to overdo it already. You begin to wonder why people bleach their skins to look white. Mental slavery!

Time, and laziness perhaps wouldn’t let me talk about the mental slavery in terms of the economy, in terms of business relations and conduct, in terms of politics and a whole lot. If I were to include all that now, it would only make this article lengthy and uninteresting (this is just me making excuses for my laziness). I’d probably write a sequel to this article very soon.

In conclusion, I would be lying if I say we haven’t benefitted a lot from the white man. The phone I used in writing this article, the laptop I use in writing my stories, the fan that was blowing my head as I was writing this and so many more are all available, thanks to the white man. I should just probably add at this point that the reason why Nigeria isn’t so technologically advanced is because we rely so heavily on the white man’s technology. We do not want to stretch our minds to it’s limit. We let the white man do our thinking for us, and those Nigerians that are determined enough to test the limits of their minds do so in the white man’s land.

Black is bold!
Black is beautiful!



Footnotes;
The white man is not really white, he’s just light brown.
The black man isn’t really black, he’s just dark brown.
Fact is that we are all just truly brown.


Mental Slavery

© 2021 Ayoooodeji. All Rights Reserved

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