dnex:

As long as you agree that they are white and you are black, they are good and you are bad. They are right and you are wrong. They are rich and you are poor. They are kings and you are pawns.

sage:

This thread has deviated

Only wirinet discussed the actual merits and demerits of the assertions Lugard made.

sage:

This thread has deviated

Only wirinet discussed the actual merits and demerits of the assertions Lugard made.

AjanleKoko:

You know the problem with this type of thinking, RichyBlack? It's negative stereotyping.  Let me tell you some of the remarks average Yorubas make about Ibo people:

- Ibo people like money too much, in fact they are heavily into money rituals.
-Ibo people are troublemakers, which is why no self-respecting Lagos landlord would rent out an apartment to them
-Ibo people don't go to school, they rather sell pare parts or do some sort of funny biz.
-Ibo people don't have the competence to rule over Nigeria, look what they are doing to themselves in the east!
-A Yoruba man can never allow his daughter to marry an Ibo guy, cos they are corpse-water drinking savages, and the in laws will be all over the matrimonial home . . .

The list goes on like that. Imagine, if I was Yoruba (which I am anyways) and you're Ibo. I express these sentiments publicly to you, repeatedly, all the while telling you that I'm just trying to help you change. How would it go down well with you, especially if you were a well-educated, gainfully engaged, happily settled, and peaceful Ibo chap (I am close friends with many of such people), and I was a Yoruba uneducated area boy, a masquerade follower (I also know many of these fellows). Would you not think that I am deliberately trying to attack your self-esteem, and run you down, so that you would have a persistent sense of being inferior to me? As a Yoruba person, sometimes that is how I feel about the very many comments made about Ibo and and Hausa people by my fellow Yorubas.

For me, I'm an African resident in the heart of Africa, but has worked and been around a lot of nationalities, African, European, American, Asian, you name it. Many of them I have found to be far less intelligent and educated than I am, even though I don't have any certificate from outside Nigeria (except maybe training atttendance certificates). In fact, the stupidity and innate profligiacy of these 'white men', the trickery of the Indians and the stubbornness of the Chinese baffles me at times.

The real truth of the matter is that our people are not empowered enough, with education, with opportunities, with information, and to a large extent, this is made so by these imperialists and their local collaborators. You see it in government, you see it in every parastatal and even in multi-national corporations. Imagine a telco in Nigeria that launched recently, and only the expatriates were paid a stupendous 'launch bonus' in secret, while the Nigerians who worked their butt off to make it happen were totally ignored! Some of you guys may be victims of gratitude since you probably live in the diaspora, and you enjoy a degree of comfort and perceived security and a better standard of living than your African brethren, but I tell you, you need to look within and see if you're not living the life of the proverbial 'house negro', enjoying all the comforts but owning nothing in reality. No offence intended, guys. Self-hatred is definitely not the way out of our problems.

Peace.

sage:
http://www.leadershipnigeria.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=28:the-vague-future-of-nigeria&catid=28:friday-column&Itemid=56


Lord Lugard, the former governor-general of Nigeria, in 1926, wrote his unfiltered thought about Nigerians. From his book, The Dual Mandates, come these excerpts: "In character and temperament, the typical African of this race-type is a happy, thriftless, excitable person, lacking in self-control, discipline, and foresight. Naturally courageous, and naturally courteous and polite, full of personal vanity, with little sense of veracity, fond of music and loving weapons as an oriental loves jewellery. His thoughts are concentrated on the events and feelings of the moment, and he suffers little from the apprehension for the future or grief for the past. His mind is far nearer to the animal world than that of the European or Asiatic, and exhibits something of the animals' placidity and want of desire to rise beyond the state he has reached.

"Through the ages, the African appears to have evolved no organised religious creed, and though some tribes appear to believe in a deity, the religious sense seldom rises above pantheistic animalism and seems more often to take the form of a vague dread of the supernatural. He lacks the power of organisation, and is conspicuously deficient in the management and control alike of men or business. He loves the display of power, but fails to realize its responsibility - he will work hard with a less incentive than most races. He has the courage of the fighting animal, an instinct rather than a moral virtue. In brief, the virtues and defects of his race -type are those of attractive children, whose confidence when it is won is given ungrudgingly as to an older and wiser superior and without envy. Perhaps, the two traits which have impressed me as those most characteristic of the African native are his lack of apprehension and his lack of ability to visualize the future"


Guys lets discuss the thoughts of Lord Lugard. he had  a supremacist view obviously. But is he right in the way he describes Nigerians and Africans in general? How many of the issues that he raises are valid?

Letz get some responses

Kobojunkie:

Roflmao!!! Can anyone really deny this portion of the whole? roflmao!! I have never read the book myself but this does sound interesting!!



Given what we know today, would it be supremacist for someone today to think the same of Nigerians?

Do u realise that we as a people seem incapable of self examination? We always get defensive, personalize the issue and qattack whoever makes any observation without addressing the validity of the observation. We seem 2 look for somebody else 2 blame for everything.
We conviniently blame everything on something but never look inwards. We justify the observations made about us launching into tantrums everytime w have no valid answers