Marcus Tullius Cicero was a statesman of the ancient Rome, a lawyer, scholar, philosopher and academic skeptic who, being an aristocrat, a noble and a member of the patrician ruling class in republican ancient Rome upheld optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire in 31B.C with Augustus Caesar as the first emperor.
He was born in a wealthy landowning family in Arpino, Italy, on 3rd January 106 B.C. A high ranking consul, Cicero was a renowned writer and orator famous for his “Orations on politics and society” written during the time of political corruption and violence in ancient Rome. Cicero articulated this document as his conception of the ideal form of government for Rome.
Cicero was a supporter of Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey) against Julius Caesar. His eloquent speech and attack against Mark Antony in the Philippics in 43 B.C brought him death by assassination on the orders of Mark Antony on 7th December 43 B.C in Formia, Italy.
The speeches, letters and dialogues of Cicero marked the accentuation of Greek philosophy and rhetoric into the language of Latin. It was through his writings that the political philosophical thinkers of the Renaissance period discovered the beauty of classical rhetoric and philosophy which was the major medium for the conveyance of the essential intellectual works which became the foundation of the Renaissance period.
As a social luminary par excellence, a model speech writer, and for his intellectual erudition, the name Cicero has become synonymous with finesse in speech writing and oration after the life and times of Marcus Tullius Cicero.
The story of the Emerging Roman Empire from the ancient Rome characterizes the nature of the emergence of nations, even in modern times. While politicians like Julius Caesar, Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey) and Mark Antony all caused ruination of Rome, contributing only as negative agents of transformation, statesmen like Marcus Tullius Cicero, through their works not only promoted the republican foundation of Rome, but also prepared the ground, through shaping the thoughts of future revolutionaries and thinkers on political philosophies, for the European Renaissance that eventually metamorphosed into the new world order of industrial revolution with its consequent leaps and bounds on the evolution of man on earth.
While Africa is presently on the verge of its own peculiar Renaissance, it has become necessary to have ‘Ciceros’ in the African continent. As this happens, it is important to get certain things right, putting them in proper perspective so that the minds of Africans may be exorcised and purged of wrong notions, impressions and understanding of their past. More than ever before in Africa, reason must defeat sentiments and emotions so that a proper diagnosis of African’s problems shall apply and eventuate the right solutions for African Renaissance.
Like Cicero’s ideas and thoughts reconditioned the minds of scholars laying the foundation of the reformation works of subsequent generations of Western European intelligentsias whose combined works gave birth to the European Renaissance, native Africans must begin to form and firm up its ideas for the transformation of Africa through African Renaissance.
Such ideas must be free of all doubts to the realization of the social, economic and political emancipation of Africa and Africans. As a contribution to the intellectual resource materials for African Renaissance, I am today completing the series in my work with differently titled captions on poverty in Nigeria specifically and Africa generally. In today’s work, I am looking at one of the psychological consequences of poverty in Africa and other African countries; the hushed misconception in the minds of people as a result of wrong analysis of the events during the period of colonization of African countries which coincided with the early Christian Religious Missionary works in the continent.
In consideration too, will be the apathy, the confusion, misinformation and misrepresentation of facts about mass poverty in Africa – a desperate condition that has so dehumanized Africans that many of the affected poor Africans have been mentally brainwashed so much so that they have become unable to think properly.
This week’s work is specifically aimed at lending some sanity, re-informing and reconditioning, within the ambience of verifiable facts and unquestionable truth, to the minds and thought patterns of the mentally tortured Africans who wrongly believe that early Christian religious missionaries under whose canopies the colonialist Western Europe and America hid to plunder and perpetuate evil against Africa and Africans, are responsible for the woes of Africans.
This set of people have recently resorted to lay seige on the Christian religion by mounting series of campaign of calumny to claim that Christianity came to Africa solely for the reason of colonization and not to pass on the gospel of Jesus Christ to Africans.
I will try to the best of my knowledge and ability to differentiate between the two parallel intentions of the Christian religious missionaries on one side and the colonial masters on the other side, two groups of people whose only area of unity arose from the coincidence of deriving their common origin from a monarchical arrangement in a country under the administrative control of the British parliamentary government overseen by Her Imperial Majesty, The Queen of England.
Let me start by saying that it is in the nature of man to compete and conquer, using whatever instruments or tools available to him, including religion. For this reason, it is not right to say that Christianity as a religion is incriminated in the colonization of African countries, more so where the colonial masters worked in concert with traditional rulers and native African authorities in these African countries to subjugate their own people.
Tactics of conquest have not changed from what they used to be in the ancient times to what they are presently. In his book, “The Art of War” Tsun Tzu, a Military General of the ancient Chinese times observed that the greatest art of war is the ability to conquer the enemy without putting up a fight. In not putting up a fight, the instrument of decoy comes up as an inevitable necessity to conquer the enemy.
In two of his books titled “48 Laws of Power” and “The Art of Seduction”, Robert Greene, a modern writer on the strategies of war also observed what he calls “Seduction” or “Dissimulation” as primary and essential tools of conquest in modern warfare.
Nicole Machiavelli, another ancient Italian writer on the strategies of war observed in his book, “The Prince” that it is much, much easier and cheaper to levy a war employing the instrument of seduction and dissimulation than throw up an open confrontation.
The nature of the instrument used in seduction in any planned conquest becomes unimportant when the end must justify the means; when the conqueror coasts home with victory. My understanding is that in colonizing Africa, the British used subtle means of conquest to levy war against Africa. For the above reasons, I think that it is not really bad to allow cultural or even religious syncretism, which is, by the way, one of the positive benefits of socialization in the manner Christianity was brought to African countries.
Secondly, colonization of Africa was neither initiated by the British government nor the Christian religious missionaries. Colonization of Africa was originally initiated with the economic expeditions of some errant Portuguese busybodies, ‘lofters’ and ‘looters’ who I prefer to call economic pirates. The British government came into the scene when the need arose to regularize the offshore activities of their corporate citizens as the Royal Niger Company which had either bought over the operations of the Portuguese economic pirates, or sponsored their operations.
The second British formal involvement in the colonization of Africa came as a result of the collective decision of Western Europe and America to balkanize Africa in the 1884/85 conference in Berlin, Germany for the future colonial masters.
In contrast to the widely-held opinion, the original intention of the early British and Irish missionaries who came into Africa was truly to salvage a continent they had referred to as the “Dark” continent, where human sacrifices, intertribal skirmishes and the throwing of twins into what the natives referred to as the “Evil” forests, were rife. Let it be known that the formal entry of the British government into Africa came as a result of the need to co-ordinate the foreign operations of their corporate citizens overseas in order to bring those corporate citizens under the British watch and control. It is like showing interest and acquiring shares in the business investments owned by British nationals overseas.
This is actually what happened as shown by the British government’s forceful buyout of Nigeria from the Royal Niger Company when the company flouted the British laid down rules and regulations for the operations of her nationals in foreign lands. The British government did the purchase of Nigeria through the Home Office – a regulatory body of government (like the Ministry of Internal Affairs) whose functions were not limited alone at the time, to the coordination of business interests of British citizens overseas.
Thirdly, driven by altruism and the need to save lives in the so-called “Dark” continent of Africa, such missionaries like Mary Selassie were to work miracles in true Christian style, to save the lives of many twins in Nigeria who were already destined for the so-called “Evil” forests. One of such lives saved was the life of Sir (Dr.) Francis Akanu Ibiam in the eastern part of Nigeria. Dr. Akanu Ibiam was to become a distinguished professional, a prominent political administrator, a devoted Christian missionary, a committed philanthropist and a traditional ruler in his life time.
An offshoot of the campaign of calumny against Christianity is the unfortunate aspersion being cast on the personality of Jesus Christ because of the scam perpetuated with the name of Jesus Christ by mercantilist and dubious men in the Christian religious altars spread across Nigeria and other countries of Africa.
There is practically nothing to be gained professing and shouting the name of Jesus Christ if one fails to live the type of holy life which Jesus Christ lived and taught while he was on earth. With a holy life and communion with God as recommended by Jesus Christ, anybody can access all the benefits of being a Christian as recorded in the Bible.
Though they are not fanatical like Africans about Jesus Christ, so many ‘White’ people, including those who colonized Africa, live in accordance with what Jesus Christ taught. The most important thing about a religion is the practice of the virtues embedded in the religion and not the noise made in practicing the religion. There is no doubt about the superiority of what Jesus Christ taught over the native practice of Africa including the killing of twins before Christianity hit our lands.
In order not to throw away the baby with the dirty water, I dare say that Nigeria, and indeed African pastors who use the teachings of Jesus Christ to deceive and cheat people are equally guilty like the ‘White’ people who hid under the cloak of Christianity to colonize Africa. They could have given Africans Christianity, without colonizing Africans if they had wanted to do so. My opinion is that it was not wrong that they gave Africa Christianity. What was wrong is that they used Christianity to colonize Africa. Nigerians and indeed Africans must be able to separate the original intentions from the actions that manifested later.
In ending this work, I must admonish Africans to observe the need not to throw away the baby with the dirty water but to concentrate on the necessity to see the events of colonization and imperialism in Africa as a result of the insatiable appetite for man to compete with all the forces around him and conquer his environment.
Through the perspective of seeing life and the events that make up life as competition, Africans must learn to compete with the inhabitants of other continents in the world and stop accepting the defeatist, beggarly position of Oliver Twist (courtesy of the book, ‘Oliver Twist’ by Charles Dickens; First published in 1838), who does not stop asking for more.
Nigeria and indeed Africans must accept the necessity of the presence of the gospel of Jesus Christ through the early Christian missionary works as the most potent stimulus for the evolution of the minds and consciousness of native Africans who were not as yet evolved like the British people who colonized Africa.
Finally, it is also important to warn here that like the Bible-carrying early Christian religious missionaries who deceived Africans with the Christian religion, modern imperialist masters are not coming barefaced. The imperialists are coming fully masked with their new ‘Bible’ which comes in the toga of external borrowings, multi-lateral and unilateral assistances, technical aids etc. The sad thing is that Africans are falling again for the same trick the second time.
The Kaleidoscope wishes all its readers a happy, prosperous, and God-filled new year 2022.
ABUCHI OBIORA
abuchiobiora@gmail.com
For: Global Upfront Newspapers
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