If one looks at the world’s ecosystem and the background of creation, one cannot but wonder in amazement at the perfection created by God. As far as I am concerned, the only imperfection in the world today is ironically the creation put in place to rule the earth. I am irrevocably convinced that the source of most of man’s suffering in the world today is man himself (his self centeredness) and his Godlessness. The inability to care about anything but himself alone. For the Black man, the situation is worse; it is very painful for anyone to suffer in a world of outstanding resources freely provided by the Almighty. There is nothing that man needs, that has not been provided; for the Black man it is an absurdity of “water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink”.
I want therefore to share with you a topic I consider important and hopefully life changing. As long as a man keeps limiting his thoughts to himself, as long as he keeps thinking only within himself, he cannot do better than himself, no matter how rich or wealthy he is; he cannot do better than himself and therefore he cannot make giant strides or make outstanding progress in life.
When we limit our lives to ourselves and our thinking doesn’t go beyond self, we literally destroy the lives of other people. No wonder our country Nigeria is going through very critical periods because we are surrounded by people on a daily basis who limit their thinking to themselves and therefore they destroy the lives of others.
About six or seven years ago, in the church, I suddenly got a phone call that one of our sisters was critically ill; so I left everything I was doing and ran to the hospital in Anthony where she was and she was already in a coma. At that time she was a senior member of our Teenage Church about 16 or 17 years old. We took her from that hospital around 8 or 9 pm and rushed her to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH). We got there around 10 pm in the emergency ward only to find that there was only one doctor on duty. Initially they refused to accept this girl because of a certain process. However on my contacting a young man I know in LUTH; she was subsequently admitted. She was then dumped on a small table because there was no bed. There was this small doctor on duty running among the 8 – 10 accident cases, sweating profusely. He will run to one patient, fix something, run to the other one fix another thing. I had to call and draw his attention that this girl needed his attention as he did not pay her any attention since our arrival.
This is supposed to be the primary teaching hospital of this nation. This is the hospital we should call the pride of Nigeria and yet there is only one doctor on duty on emergency with no facilities whatsoever. I was wondering to myself about what happened to Nigeria that things went so bad.
When I was growing up in Ibadan, the University College Hospital, (UCH) Ibadan, was a leading hospital in West Africa, it was the 8th best hospital in the entire world and here we are in LUTH with no facilities and no doctors. The nurses were slow and indifferent. They couldn’t be bothered, and couldn’t care less if somebody was alive or sick. Then suddenly, the doctor announced that we needed blood. So we began looking for blood, and went all over Surulere. We eventually found 2 pints which she used up immediately. Then there was no more blood from the blood bank, so they said: “who will donate blood? We got those who will donate but there was no blood bag. By now, the time was 2 am; we went looking for blood bags. Then one girl said she knows where we can get blood bags. We then drove that night crossing from one barrier in Mushin to another barrier in Mushin, because all the gates were locked for security purposes; we have become prisoners in our own homes. Finally we found the blood bags under one nurse’s bed in her home. We asked her: ‘what are you doing with the blood bags underneath your bed?’ She answered that that is how she makes her own money. We finally got the blood bags and then at 4:30 am the girl died. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life. Then I looked at myself; looked at Nigeria and asked how a nation that can be so blessed yet be so poor.
What is the problem with the Black man? It is the limits of his thinking. Hear what someone called Lord Fredrick Luggard said about the Black man when he became governor general of Nigeria around 1907 or thereabout.
“In character and temperament the typical African of all his race types is a happy, shiftless excitable person lacking in self control, lacking in discipline, lacking in foresight, full of personal vanity, with a little sense of veracity, fond of music, his thoughts are concentrated on the events of the moment and he suffers little of the apprehension of the future or grief of the past.”
A hundred years later and the African is still living in the same way and everybody is wondering: ‘what is happening to us? What is happening to Nigeria? What is happening to the average African person?’ If a man is poor in intellect, it would eventually reflect in his wellbeing and that’s why a lot of formerly rich Africans die extremely poor. The world is always predictable, there will always be good times and there will always be bad times. There would always be times of plenty and times of famine. But if you are in the right place, you discover that famine or not you will prosper.
How are you still thinking and what are you thinking about? What is the total summation and collection of your thoughts? Are you lacking in self control? Are you lacking in discipline? Are you lacking in foresight? Are you full of personal vanity? Do you have little sense for veracity? Are you fond of excessive music? Are your thoughts concentrated on the events and the feelings of the moment? Are you suffering from little apprehension of the future or grief of the past? Are you lacking in organization, deficient in management, deficient in the control of man and resources. Welcome to the world of the African.
I still cannot get over the way that Colonel Moummar Gaddafi died. It was typically African. Typically and traditionally a limited thought to himself, for 42 years he ruled in Libya and within six months everything had collapsed because the man really had neither depth nor substance. What surprises me is the capacity of the African to allow another African to dominate him for 42 years and that’s what frightens me about a lot of us; we have no thoughts, no depth, no thinking and we are willing to be led by the mouth by men not capable to polish our shoes. And we run to these places, run to these men, prostrate before them and allow them to dominate our lives because we are fearful, anxious, ignorant, limited, lazy, incompetent and unable to decide where our future is going. The Black man needs to change his thinking and character.
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