Daily Independent Online.
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Wednesday, July 21, 2004.
The West and the rest of us
By Sam Kargbo
I will for sometime dedicate this column to an old
but yet undecided topic. The title as you will notice is not original. The idea
itself is not. Perhaps, what is new is my little contribution.
Africa has always been at the receiving end of global
intercourse, especially with the West. Beside colonialism and neocolonialism,
the West has perpetrated uncountable evil on the people of Africa. The West has
not only wasted Africa’s philosophy of life but has also assaulted and
ruined its several traditions and cultures. The immediate effect is that the
average African now lives and faces the challenges of life and living without
the support of African ethical and moral principles. The African is now practically
driven by western ways of life. To worsen matters, the African youth so lusts
after Western ways of life that anything seen or imagined to be done by the
westerner is regarded as an absolute standard. They take to western ways
unconditionally. This unreserved reverence for western life is more than
anything fundamentally inimical to the cause of Africa and her strive for
global respect. Copying or imitating western ways of life without the necessary
sixth-sense for moderation or adaptation is like taking antibiotics without
medical advice.
The average African today sees beauty in the eye of
the westerner. The elite are worse. They speak, dress and think like the
westerner. This westernization epidemic has in effect killed everything African
in us. Unfortunately, there is no social or political institution to fight for
the resurrection of our cultures. Not even the political institutions that are
empowered by us to manage and champion our collective aspirations. The urban
family that is supposed to be metropolitan buffer against western intrusion is
unfortunately the first to spread the red carpet for western values. Children
are forced to speak in borrowed accents; they are meant to believe that African
traditions and ways of life are of the devil. No effort is made to make them
understand the teachings and lessons of these traditions. Some parents go as
far as preventing their children from speaking their African language or any
African language for that matter. In the mind of such unfortunate parents, the
African language or what is spitefully called vernacular is capable of
hindering children’s understanding and fluency in the English language.
What a pity! The universities that are supposed to be the supermarkets of our
cultures and traditions and the vanguard of cultural redemption are themselves
the tools of our cultural destruction. They are in reality the most fertile
grounds for imperialism.
How many of us know or bother to know the burden that
our western tastes put on our naira? How many of us care to know what
contributions we make to the ascendancy that the dollar or the pound has over
our naira because of our love for the ways of the west? How many of us know how
much ground we cut from under our feet with our unbridled lust for western values?
Of all the evils that the west has inflicted on us,
the one that I consider most gruesome is its sexual perversions. The sexuality
of the African that obeys the laws of nature and missionary prescriptions has
been rudely supplanted by the westerner’s perversity and sordid
sexuality. Sexual standards and values are now set by market forces of demand
and supply. Sex itself is now packaged and sold like any article of commerce.
Young girls advertise their sexual capabilities and expertise like newspaper
vendors. Nudity or vulgar
expositions are added to promises and assurances of cooperation and amenability
to sexual perversions. The sex market has become the strongest night economy in
African cities today. Governments and social institutions look the other way
and at times even encourage it because of the pressures of ignored duty and
responsibility that it soaks or diverts. Things have gone so bad and markedly
weird that homosexuality is even fast gaining acceptance in some parts of
Africa.
This brings me to the night life of our
‘expatriates’ and tourists in Nigeria. Most of them are here
without their spouses. Others do not even contemplate marriage. Some of them
are too old and unsightly to attract decent persons for steady relationships.
But they have dollars and pounds to buy sex. After the decent and moral
postures of the day, the night provides them with the opportunity to express
their true persons. There are several places that serve as rendezvous for them
and their sex tools. But I will talk about one for a practical illustration of
what I am talking about.
Wale Ojo and I accompanied a mutual friend in the
entertainment industry to a neighbourhood that houses the visa offices of the
American, British and other big embassies in Lagos. The friend was to meet some
of his Oyibo friends. He had equally wanted to show us to his big Oyibo
friends. With the exception of Wale and I and the male waiters, we were the
only black males in the vicinity. The place was jam-packed with Oyibos. I saw
uncountable varieties of colours and skins. Some of them looked like rotten
fish. Others were like over-ripe bananas. I also saw all kinds of girls that
night. Some of their faces were so horrible that they do not need make-up for
roles in horror movies. Some were so bony that I was afraid they could drop
dead any moment. The irony however was that it was those bony ones that were
the hottest in demand by the Oyibos. In no time the whole environment looked
like a sex theatre. The dress pattern of the girls was near uniform. They all
wore miniskirts that could hide the undies for the few that cared to wear
undies. There was none with a bra. The romance sessions got wilder as the night
wore on. Some of them walk to some dark places and returned with reduced steam
to be refueled with more liquor.
My friend Wale Ojo was so embarrassed that he could
not drink his Fanta. By the time I noticed his sullen mood it was too late to
encourage him to drink. His worst nightmare was confirmed when we were told
that the Oyibos pay as little as N500 for quick sex with our sisters. According
to Wale, similar quick sex costs between N15, 000 and N20, 000 in UK.He
wondered why the government could not do something about such exploitation. But
how many of us are getting a fair deal with these Oyibos?
