NEW NAIJA

OBASANJO SPEAKS TO THE MINDSET OF YORUBAS OBASANJO: Taking your culture seriously, if anybody says your identity, does not matter, then he wants to enslave you. why is it important? Because our culture, our tradition, they all embrace the totality of our way of life. They include our language, our food, our dress, our greetings, our all that. And therefore, they actually determine who we are. It is what differentiates us from other people. It is what determines who we are. Once who we are is extinguished or destroyed, then we are nobody. And you know, that’s the way to enslave any group of people, just obliterate their identity. That’s why you have people who originally came from Nigeria, from Yorubaland, now they are Mr. Stone in America. Their identity have been destroyed through slavery.”

Other Nigerian media won’t see this. See damning evidence.

You see what Pan africanism does, to peoples brain. The irony is that some of these self-proclaimed Pan Africanists have never bothered to read the foundational literature of the very movement they claim to represent. If they actually studied its history, they would discover that early Pan African thinkers were far from ideologically uniform. Some adopted Eurocentric assumptions about African societies, occasionally portraying indigenous African traditions as backward or in need of Western style civilization. They would also discover that certain Pan African organizations and initiatives received financial or institutional support from white philanthropists and other Western sponsors. Yet these same people have the audacity to dismiss established African ethnic identities as European inventions while treating Pan Africanism as some ancient, indigenous African identity. The primary objective of European colonialism was not to create new African ethnic identities. It was to conquer existing African societies, dismantle independent political institutions, and establish colonial systems that served European economic and strategic interests. And one of the most consequential methods was the partitioning and political reorganization of Africa. During the Scramble for Africa, European colonial powers drew boundaries that divided historically connected ethnic populations while forcing other communities, sometimes with competing political interests and little shared history, into the same colonial territories. The result was the fragmentation of existing peoples and the creation of colonial states designed primarily around European interests rather than African self-determination. Consider Nigeria. The British amalgamated the Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914, bringing numerous distinct peoples and political traditions under one colonial administration. These communities did not suddenly acquire a common ancestry, history, or political identity simply because the British placed them inside the same territorial boundaries. Colonial authorities also weakened existing African political institutions, imposed new administrative structures, and redirected economic activity toward supplying European industries with agricultural commodities, minerals, and other resources. The long-term consequences were significant. Colonial boundaries sometimes intensified political competition, disrupted older relationships between communities, and created conditions for ethnic tensions and struggles over political power after independence. Such divisions could obstruct national development and make it more difficult for newly independent states to establish stable institutions. And economic dependency created another problem. Even after formal independence, many African economies remained heavily dependent on exporting raw materials while importing manufactured products, preserving unequal economic relationships inherited from colonial rule. European powers and businesses could continue benefiting from those relationships without directly administering the territories. This is why I reject the simplistic argument that Europeans invented African ethnic identities to unite Africans. Colonialism did precisely the opposite: it disrupted existing political structures, divided historically connected populations, and incorporated diverse communities into colonial states. teapawt.org/CryptoMuse01/status/21…