Self-serving Interpretations of African Culture

(By James Ogunjimi) - Self-serving interpretations of African culture. When you are an African, you do not have the liberty to talk as you like. You are told to challenge injustice and untruths, but there is an unspoken caveat that your African upbringing should have instilled in you: challenge injustice and untruths among members of your generation, not among the elders. African culture is flung in our faces by elders whose words and actions drag African culture and what it represents through the mud every day. When you speak up, they remind you of African culture. A child that says the mouth of elders stinks will not grow old. You don't know? It is not a curse; it is OUR CULTURE.

They are quick to forget that inasmuch as African culture lays emphasis on respect for elders, it also emphasizes, perhaps even more, the protection of young ones and seeing to their upbringing. It is like a social contract: protect the young ones and raise them well and they will respect you and cater for you in old age. The older generation breached that social contract first, the older generation of elders ditched African culture and stole from the younger generation.

They ditched African culture and shared the money meant to build our schools, money meant to give us a safe and comfortable learning environment, money that should be used to stock our libraries and laboratories. They shared everything and allocated allowances after allowances for their own upkeep and comfortabiltity while the children, the young ones are left in the wild to fend off wild animals and to suffer the biting cold of life. That is not African.

African culture pays premium to the wellbeing of the young ones first. African culture says it is wrong to steal from anyone talk less of children. African culture says the elders protect the young ones. You should visit our schools. See our libraries with outdated books. See our laboratories with outdated materials and kitchen stoves. That is not African.

And the elders that are not politicians, they kept quiet. They, with their deafening silence aligned with those who stole from us. They who tell us tales of being paid to go to school. They who tell us about the good old days of being fed fat in schools. They who tell us about finishing school and having to choose from three or four jobs with great pays. How did they get comfortable with stories of us learning in war zones? How did they feel at ease with our stories of empty labs and libraries? How did they feel at ease with our stories of fee hike, lecturers demanding sex to pass students, graduating without job and selling akara. How did they feel comfortable with all these?

And when the young ones decide to fight a fight that the elders refused to fight for them, when students in higher institutions decide to face their school administrations and state governments that refused to fund their schools, the older generation that should wake up and support the students slap a tag on their agitations: "JUVENILE DELIQUENCY" and support their arrest and expulsion. How can you default in your responsibility and still have the moral decency to talk down at those who do your job for you? How?