While I still do not understand the rationale behind worshipping dead people, building dogmatic ideas around them, unaliving people for them, giving our money to other people who claim they have easier access to these dead people;
I will say Fela Anikulapo Kuti deserves to be worshipped even in this irrational context.
Jesus was not black. He did not die for you. He died for his people. Yet you insist that somehow jansbsgsysj, he’s not just related to you, he’s your father. You’re his child. We that don’t understand how that makes sense are just stupid.
In Layi’s voice;
That’s okay?
Now Fela was a black man, a Nigerian.
He fought a fierce good fight until the end.
He fought directly for you.
He’s right here under your nose.
He didn’t claim to be magical or perform some miracles, he kept calling out injustice against the masses.
He understood your realities as an African and as a Nigerian because he lived right inside those realities.
He fought tooth and nail.
He went to prison more than 200 times.
He encapsulated freedom. I mean he was freedom personified. When freedom is mentioned, he comes to my mind immediately.
What others would shit on themselves for out of fear, he’d boldly say it.
If you want to claim someone is your daddy, Fela fits the context much more than Jesus.
But nooooooo, it’s that Jesus gangan who doesn’t even know you exist that you’d kpai for and give your money to, and unalive others who don’t believe in him and his magical powers.
And you dance and sing and part away with your money all in the name of some non-black magical person that lived long long time ago and can somehow still save your lazy asses from circumstances you could and should work on yourselves.
That’s so dumb.
There’s the Messiah-helpless complex going on in Africa as a whole.
We’re always waiting for heroes and messiahs, whether black or white.
We convince ourselves we’re not in control of our lives and society as a whole.
And so we wait for the occasional messiahs and heroes to pop up. And then we go crazy supporting them, cowering behind them, instead of everyone coming out in droves to save ourselves.
We are still the same ones that will sabotage these messiahs, unalive them even, because that just bruises our egos.
It should have been us being the heroes!
How dare you try to become something I’m not!
But are you doing anything to be the hero in your own story in the first place?
No.
You’re just a pathetic egoistical fool who does nothing at all, who is nothing, as empty as they come and then get mad when someone is actually doing something.
If you’re not mad and in support of the heroism, you’re still putting the burden of saving everyone on them.
Endangering them in the process because all that needs to be done to squash the resistance spirits of millions and billions of Africans is to just take that one person out.
See you see Traore.
And then we cry foul.
Well, the hero wasn’t all that. He did this. She did that. They did this.
Sellout.
Pretender.
Narcissistic!
And we wait for the next messiah again.
You’ll keep waiting for a Messiah until you die.
Ayé ẹ ti bàjẹ́.
Get tf up and fight for yourself.
Nobody is coming to save you you lazy fk!
There is no one coming to save you o ye Africans!
You have to rise up and save yourselves!
There’s no white man or Jewish or Arabic man, there’s no African man coming to save you.
Everybody has to rise up and save themselves!
This foolishness of thinking and believing that someone will come save you must stop!
It has never worked.
It will not!
Africa is in one spot because we believe some leaders somewhere will save the rest of us.
Or some heroes somewhere will save the rest of us.
That’s illogical.
That’s impossible.
That’s pathetic.
Africa rise up!
It’s about time!
Dasola Tewogbade (Sisí Afrika) writes from Paris and can be reached here.
