AFRICA, WAKE UP FROM SLUMBER

AFRICA, WAKE UP FROM SLUMBER

For over one week now, I have been going through over 842 Anioma Proverbs in Ubulu Okiti dialect written by my father. It opened my eyes to see and appreciate the debt of wisdom of our forefathers. I saw brilliance, knowledge and insight in that work. The thought that has been in my mind in the past week is, if only these wise sayings were documented.

Suffice to say that our forefathers were not timid, ignorant or illiterate in our own standard. It is the Western world that made us to see it so because they brought their own education. The problem our forefathers had was inability to document the wisdom God impacted on them.

Unfortunately, we in the present generation in Africa have not learnt from the mistakes of our forefathers. Presently, our people are not willing to write and document words of wisdom God has graciously given to them for the good of the masses and  posterity. For example, I have always challenged my fellow priests on this. Many of them preach good messages which end only in the four walls of the church they pastor. They are many of them God has used mightily more than what we see in the Western world but not a greater number of people heard about it because they were not documented.

Presently, we are fortunate to live in a time where documentation is easy with computers and internet. We should maximise this singular opportunity to write on our rich cultures, proverbs, wise sayings of our elders, etc and bring them online in a bid to present true picture of Africa and not what the Western world told us about ourselves. It is one great way to show the world that Africa is not a dark continent. We should act now that we have the opportunity.