Wasn't Colonialism A Good Thing In A Way?

@ Layi
Couldn't have put it better myself

Thanks Old Glory for stating this for the umpteenth time.
I'll like to make my own final submissions on this topic;'Did anything good come out of colonialism in Africa?'
1.Colonialism on its own was not a desirable thing,but it was a phase in our political evolution that we cannot wish away.
2.Colonialism was not just politics,there were a lot of Europeans who were motivated not by the glory of the Empire but by sharing the Gospel with the 'natives',and this also almost invariably involved education and social development.You cannot fault the achievement of the missionaries in the educational developement of Nigeria even if you are uneducated atheist.(Remember a statement credited to Awolowo,'they gave us education with which we used to fight them')This was in contrast to the days of slavery in America,when to teach a slave to read was actively discouraged.
3.Just like it happens in other things in life even on a personal note,some 'good' does come out of unpleasant experiences and it behooves us to make use of this and let it propel us positively.The Holocaust for instance,was an 'evil' historical fact,but the Jews would very probably not have founded the state of their own were it not for that horrible experience.
4.It's an acknowledged fact even by politicians that fought for independence that the quality of life today in Nigeria,the working of the system generally, is worse than the colonial times(I can still remember vividly Balarabe Musa comparing the various indices in an interview 1 or 2 years ago)
5.By so doing,they and us (Pearl2,T4 Cash,Old Glory) are not advocating for the Brits to come back,but asking ourselves if the 'racists' can make the system fair to the 'natives',why can't we make it fairer to ourselves now?
6.The Europeans left  us years ago,why do we now struggle tooth and nail to get their visa to come and meet them  in their own countries(instead of being governed by own leaders) and put ourselves under their rule again in their own land, despite the fact that they were so wicked that they left only evil behind in Nigeria.
7.It's high time we go beyond blaming the Brits for what we can hold IBB,Abacha,Alami,Balogun, ( and others too numerous to mention) accountable for.(At a time in the 70's and 80's, the classic book,'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa' by Walter Rodney, was the bible of the progressives,while acknowledging this fact,it's time we point out, 'How Africans are underdeveloping Africa' or to put a positive spin on it,'How Africans can develop Africa')
8.The Brits were also in Asia and other parts of Africa but some of these countries have now gone ahead of Nigeria despite similar political experiences,we can take a cue from them.(Remember the palm seed anecdote from Malaysia?)
9.Finally, I hope a day would come that Nigeria would be able to take its rightful place in the comity of nations,when we will be able to carry our passports round the world  as patriotic ambassadors of our fatherland, not economic vagabonds,refugees of state failure;putting up with humiliations at airports,but a people infused with pride and self assuredness borne of genuine achievements recognizable all over the world as the acknowledged leader of the Black race.

@demmy

You do not need to show me "that the problem plaguing us today has deeper root that run back all the way to the colonial period which you think was better." I know that.

You are arguing by yourself not with me.

I am saying something and you are disagreeing with me over something else I never said.

Demmy, are you counting?

Hope you can appreciate now what I was trying to say.

Demmy

I have since apologized for extending the original topic. ideally I ought to have started my own thread.

Explaining my point further here, will be continuing what I apologized for doing. Lets just leave it mata at that.

Wrong. The missionaries had been coming to Africa and making impact long before Africa was officially colonised. And I'am refering to the administrative colonisation here. The Berlin Conference that partitioned Africa was from 1884-85. Before this time there were various European governments' military and economic control in Africa but mostly for prospective and expeditional purposes, or after slave trade was abolished to intercept slave ships, but this controls were not direct and never in any administrative sense. They were not collecting taxes nor making laws. The missionaries on the other hand had been making useful impacts long before then.

It is instructive for you to know that Samuel Ajayi Crowther had translated the Bible into Yoruba since 1843 and codified the yoruba alphabet. he was also ordained bishop in 1864. That is almost 40 and 20 years before administrative colonialism began. Also and importantly Robert Townsend, a missionary had established Iwe Iroyin Yoruba since 1859 and founded the C.M.S Grammer School, Lagos also the same year.

These were some of the modernisation processes already going on from contact with Europeans (missionaries, traders etc). There was no need for the administrative colonisation that the Berlin conference imposed (at least for us) except of course for better exploitations (for the colonisers).       

Actually, they found oil in 1956. 

http://www.nnpcgroup.com/history.htm

The exit of colonialists from Africa is a very complex story.

Maybe they exited because they realised that they could still exploit us from outside through our "neo-colonialists".

Methinks they left because it became more trouble than it was worth. After fighting two World Wars in succession, the Europeans governments owed so much money that they could nt afford any more luxuries. Britain owed Americans over 2 billion pounds (this is pre -IMF, when a pound meant an actual weight of pure gold). I mean the Americans  leant them money by actually shipping gold to them. They could not pay this back. Furthermore, their subjects who now had lived with them in the tranches realised did not see them as "gods" unlike before.

This is not to belittle the nationalists like Nkrumah and Zik. However, they were aided by the internal dynamics of the colonialist governments as well.

Any way the oil that was found in 1956 was not that much.

I in my honest opinion we should be focused on how to deal with our present reality. Are we counting our blessings from reigns of colonialism or losses? Yesterday's remedy lies in our ability to adapt to today's sweeping tides of globalisation. Though we all in a way or the other have our varying misgivings on Colonialism but if you critically analyse what our forebears faced you will agree with other discussants that this same evil metted upon our fathers has succeeded in bringing us as a people or country to the doorsteps of the world map and whether we like it or not we have to hang in there by drastically reducing the problems we face as a people from poor leadership to false followership causing us to receed instead of succeeding developmentally.

that is assuming we are even intelligent at all. From the look of things, that is a highly debatable assumption.