Of religion, slavery, colonialism and debauchery of the black by whites, By Abayomi Adisa

Abayomi Adisa

Malcolm X was a Christian. His father was one of the disciples of Marcus Garvey. His real name was Malcolm Little (after converting to Islam, he became Alh. Malik El-Shabazz). He converted to Islam after asking questions about Christianity, God and colour. He soon realised that the faith was a strong racial tool in the hands of oppressive white. 
Truth be told, religion helped racists to demonize the black and shredded their self esteem. I understand semantics and the place of language, but the English language is rich and explicit enough to define common terms as colour and their characteristics. 
Shamefully so, colonial imperialists altered the stories of the holy books to establish their race as the true reflection of God’s colour when in actual fact, the first man was black. The first people who took the Bible to Russia were black and archeological evidence today prove that the first man was an African. Yet, we had people use the holy books to perpetrate a race over the other. 
Black couples can produce a white child, call it albino or whatever you like but no white couple can produce a black child. Black has not mutated unlike the Caucasian people you will find in the west.
Africa must realise that they need to see themselves as their own solution and accept the wisdom contained in their rich history and tradition. They must break loose of the shackles of fictions portraying them as evil and demons. Centuries of perpetrating these false doctrines have battered their self worth and have rendered them powerless in the face of their own challenges.Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo once about is the black skin cursed? 
Well, we are not a cursed people!
As of 1600s when London as described as a city of “prostitution and thievery”, the great Benin Empire had the best architectural layout in the world. It was interlaced and the whole city was fenced. When English explorers visited in the 1700s, they marvelled at what they saw…the city already had street lights (powered by palm oil), viable artistic industry (arts and crafts) and people didn’t lock their doors for there were no thieves; they prospered! The fence of the great Benin Empire was twice the length of the Great wall of China. 
Later in the 1700s, Britain got Benin neighbors to agree to war against the empire, with the power of the barrel, they conquered it and stole more than 800,000 artifacts from there. Some of these artifacts are still in British Museum till date. 
Long after the conquest, they saw a fertile land here and decided to ferry the people into slavery. Boom! We became articles auctioned at markets. Thank God for the abolition of the inhuman trade, they decided to further hold on to the people’s jugular; hence, the introduction of colonisation.
 To drive home their plan, they decided to change the identity of the people, distort their history and disconnect them from their civilisation, so, they introduced missionary education. It’s not by accident that the oldest schools in Nigeria today are missionary schools. 
The education was excellent at teaching Christianity and helping Africans jettison their old ways of life (culture). So, whoever has their skin colour is evil and didn’t reflect God’s image, whatever they had believed in was evil. 
The people of God, the good people came to preach a new religion but stole the people’s commonwealth perpetually. How can we all be in God’s image when our skin colour, you compared to satan/devil and demons? 
Our psyche was chained, we agreed with them that our indigenous ways were evil and took a turn. We even broke away from our families. 
Today, we now see how much win they had; we are more Christian than the Pope yet, we are underdeveloped and only occupy a backseat in global affairs. 
Our gospel movie makers still suffer from the same mental slavery; they portray God and angels as white and depict their lookalike as demons and satan. isn’t it amazing! How much they made us suspect traditionalists among us and treat them as evil.
Little wonder the first President of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta once said,  “They taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened our eyes, they had the land and we had the Bible,”
For Africa to rise, we must believe in Africa. Enough copy copy and follow follow.
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, whilst the body can be freed by others, only you can free your mind”  – Marcus Garvey”
 Adisa, is a Lagos-based Journalist and Writer