₦airaland Forum

Where is The African God?

Lecture given at the W.E.B. Du Bois Center, Accra Ghana, by African-American historian, 
Professor Molefi Kete Asante of Temple University.


I am pleased that you have come to hear my lecture tonight and I want to thank the organizers of this event for their diligence and generosity. In particular I would like to publicly thank Dr. Kofi Anyidiho, and Executive Director Moore, the staff and the Board of the DuBois Center for making this occasion possible. I give praise to Nyame, Asase Yaa, and the Nananom nsamanfo for whatever clarity I am able to share with you. 

I shall begin my lecture with a conclusion: Until an African leader publicly acknowledges, honors and prays to an African God, we Africans will continue to be viewed as pathetic imitators of others, never having believed in ourselves. 

So powerful is the concept of religion when we discuss it in connection with civilization that to deny the validity of one's religion is to deny the validity of one's civilization. Indeed to deny one's religion as valid is to suggest that the person is a pagan, a heathen, uncivilized, and beyond the sphere of humanity. So to talk about religion is to talk about our views of ourselves, our understanding of our ancestors, and our love of our culture. 

To establish my argument that we have a crisis in civilization because we have a crisis in religion I will make several points dealing with the themes of tradition, history, religion, and human action. 

Traditions
There are no people without traditions and traditions are the lifeblood of a people. A people who refuse to express its love and appreciation for its ancestors will die because in traditions, if you are not expressing your own, you are participating in and expressing faith in someone else's ancestors. No person is devoid of an attachment to some cultural fountain. Whose water are we drinking? 

Our African history has been a recent orgy of forgetfulness. We have often lost our memories and accepted the gods of those who enslaved and colonized us. This is something the Chinese and the Indians have fought hard to keep at bay.

While we have often embraced our enemies gods they have found those gods to be anathema to their interests. Show me the gods we Africans worship and I will show the extent of our moral and ethical decay. 

Those who speak to us of Christian or Islamic morals have often been the very ones who had defiled our ancestors' memories and called out sacred rites paganism. Malcolm X once said that the world pushes the African around because we give the impression that we are chumps, not champs, but chumps, weaklings, falling over ourselves to follow other people rather than our own traditions. 

The distribution of religion represents the distribution of power. African distribution is minimal and exists in a few places in the diaspora like Brazil, Haiti, Jamaica and the American South. The religion that people practice is based on the influences that have captured their imaginations. In the American South and the Caribbean and in South America one will often find the Yoruba religion. It is Africa's most powerful religious export to the Americas, but this is still a minimal influence when one considers the fact that others have imposed their religions on us and we have accepted the imposition often without a fight from our traditional leaders. Indeed our traditional religious leaders have often been hijacked by the material goods offered by the purveyors of these migrating gods. 

History
The great African pharaoh, Menes, united the two lands (TAWY) bringing 42 clans or nomes under one government around 3100 B.C. By this time already Africans had formulated the first human response to the unknown. If anything we knew God before  anyone else, not because we were wiser but because we were first to be civilized. 

If you take any of the scientific reports we know that the first hominids were from Africa. Australopithecus afarensis is 4,200,000 years old and Australopithecus ramidus, 3,800,000. When Richard Johnason discovered Dinqnesh, later called Lucy, by the Europeans, he claimed to have found the earliest example of a hominid in Ethiopia.

Until 75,000 years ago all humans were black. Did they have an appreciation for the Almighty? Did they formulate a response to the unknown? Of course they did; they were human and human before anyone else. 

Our ancestors brought forth the first civilizations and gave the world the oldest organized cosmological explanations. Thus, Ra as Ptah, Atum, Amen, Khepera, Khnum - the many names of the one, the Supreme, created Shu and Tefnut, air and moisture, Geb and Nut, earth and sky. Then came Ausar, Auset, Nebhet, and Set. Ausar was killed by his brother Set and Auset put him back together with the assistance of her sister, Nebhet and her son, Heru, who avenged his father by killing Set. This is the story of good over evil.

The purpose was to create Maat, balance, harmony, justice, righteousness, reciprocity, order. These are the key concepts in any ethical system and the fact that they emerged first in the Nile Valley of Africa suggests that other ideas, related to these ideas, found their way into the very practices and beliefs of our people throughout the continent. The deliberate attempt by the European to separate Africans from the classical civilizations of the Nile is one of the biggest falsifications in history. Only when we reclaim our history will we be able to see that the origins of many religious ideas are African. How is it that the parent has become the child? 

Thus, not only do we have the earliest emergence of God, we have the first ethical principles, reinforced by proverbs, and refined in the oral and artistic traditions of our narratives. 

The ancient name of Egypt was Kemet (Black Nation), and it was the culmination of classical Africa's achievements in science, art, architecture, medicine, astronomy, geometry, and religion.

The Greeks honored the Africans as the originators of the science and art practiced by the Greeks themselves. It would be the Europeans of the 15th through 19th centuries that would try to divorce Europe from its African origin and deny Africa any role in civilizing the world. 

The early Greek historian, Herodotus claims that nearly all of the Greek gods came from Africa. We know that the Greeks worshipped Imhotep as Aesclepius, the God of Medicine, and that the name Athens, Athena, is from Aten. 

When Constantine in 325 A.D. took ideas from African spirituality and created a control mechanism at the Council of Nicea he was trying to organize a system for using African spiritual ideas. The early Christian church had to deal with the fact that Christians had used many African ideas, the son of God, [Horus, from which came Orisha, Alusi, Lisa etc, was the Egyptian Son of God], eternal life, and the resurrection, in their religion. The sad fact is that since we have forgotten so much we do not know that we are the originators of religion. 

The abandonment of our history, indeed the abandonment of our gods, the gods of our ancestors, have brought us deep into the quagmire of misdirection, mis-orientation and self pity. When the missionaries forbade our shrines and punished us in the Americas when we called the names of our gods and sounded our mighty drums they were looking for the Pavlovian reaction they finally got in millions of Africans: African is bad, it is inferior, it is pagan, it is heathen.

We often hear others cursing our ancestors in ways the Chinese, the Lebanese and the British would never allow. Why is this? Are we truly shamed by our military defeat? Can we no longer think about how right our ancestors were in exploring human nature and positing ways to combat the unknown? Cannot we create new forms out of the old mold or must we throw away the mold? 

What would be anymore pagan than the wanton willful destruction of millions of Africans, Jews, Native Americans, and Chinese by Christian Europeans? How could white men pray to a god on the second floor of a slave dungeon while on the first floor they held our ancestors, yours and mine, in horrible bondage? What kind of religion denied our humanity at the same time they were raping our women, brutalizing our children, and demanding our wealth and our souls? 

It is true that the idea of Christian names or Muslim names promotes and advances those cultures. Why must you change your name even if you chose to buy into a foreign religion? What is wrong with your name? Any religion that asks you to do what others do not have to do is asking you to abandon your mother. The question is, why would you abandon your mother? 

Religion in General
What is religion but the deification of ancestors, the making sacred of traditions within the context and history. How can we honor any god who was used against us? The only people who accept alien gods are defeated people; all others honor and accept their own name for the Almighty. We must learn to appreciate ourselves and our traditions. What is wrong with the African God? 

What would we think of a Yoruba who accepted Chinese ancestors as his own? We would find it quite interesting and wonder how it came to be. But what of Africans' acceptance of others' gods? Is there no tradition with these alien gods? Of course there is tradition with these gods! To accept the Jews' god or the Arabs' god or the Hindu's god and so forth is to valorize those histories above your own. Indeed, it is to honor the names in those myths and stories higher than your own stories, it is to love the language, the places in their stories above your own. Why is Mecca, Rome, or Jerusalem more sacred that Bosumtwi? Quite simply, it is imperialism, not by force of arms, but by force of religion which sometimes comes 
armed. 

Joel Kotkin's Tribes - a book about people ready for the 21st Century claims that only Jews, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and British are ready. These groups have some commonalities which include (1) strong sense of identity, (2) international network, and (3) a passion for technology. 

He does not include any African community or ethnic group. In fact, he believes that the African people were best organized under the leadership of Marcus Garvey who believed that Africans were not only capable of achieving without the whites; Africans had to achieve without whites in order to be seen as fully participating in the drama of history. Kwame Nkrumah believed in much the same idea. 

Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations claims that there are six major civilizations: Chinese, Japanese, Orthodox, Hindu, Western, Islamic. He says each one has a nation that is a vanguard, deeply committed to its religion and history. Africa has no such vanguard nation and furthermore Africa has yet to emerge from under the cloaks of its interventionists. Of 53 nations only one nation is more African in religion than either Christian or Muslim. That nation is small Benin Republic. 

Benin is 87% popular traditional African Religion. But it is a small nation with limited influence in a propaganda fashion. As such we do not expect African traditional religion to play a major part in the civilization of Africa for a long time to come, but we can begin to examine the questions, to raise the issues, and to interrogate our practices. 

Let me explore African Religion with you to provide some common understanding. 


African Religion

In the first place it is important that we call popular traditional African Religion everywhere by a common acronym, Ptare. This means that Akan, Yoruba, Igbo, Zulu and Shona are the same religion with different branches. Just as Christians may be Baptists, Methodists, and Catholics, and just as Muslims may be Mourrides, Sunni, or Shiities. There is no difference in speaking of Ptare as one religion and speaking of Christianity or Islam as one religion. 

I believe that Popular Traditional African Religion everywhere (Ptare) is as old as civilization, indeed, it is much older than either Christianity or Islam. The major characteristics of Ptare are found in all of the traditions from East to West and from North to South. The fact that we have often misunderstood the legacy we have inherited is not the fault of those who left it; it is our fault for preferring the oppressors' legacy over that of our own ancestors. 


The characteristics of Ptare include:
 
]Creator God 
]Domicile of Gods - Presence, Shrine 
]Priest/Priestess of God 
]Devotee of God - medium (Noc??) 
]Herbalist - Pharmacist 
]Psychiatrist - mental harmonizer 
]Diviner - scientist, Hunter's/explorers 

All ritual in Ptare seeks a return to Maat. 
Everything is one - we are a part of the whole and nothing is disconnected from the Almighty. That is why we recognize Mother Earth as well as Nyame. 
What Europe sees and teaches as limitations in Ptare are really advantages: 
No vast interpretative literary corpus to say what is and what is not - Ptare's interpretations are often dependent on a multitude of situations that demand attention. 

No concentration on the material manifestations of the God's house. All temples started as shrines and from the shrine place people build other edifices. Buildings should have some historical or religious significance. 

Advantages of Ptare
The ethical principles are more conducive to community, not so geared toward individualism. Some religions demonstrate their power by showing what they can build but this is only a matter of financial not moral wealth. Are you more civilized because you can build a nuclear bomb? 

We must not be impressed by the things which can be created because we are human and have the same capacity and can create the same things out of our own minds. But our African gods do not advance destruction. They have never been gods of death, but of life. 

The material manifestations of religion are not the wisest standard of how good god is unless your god is money. The new religions seem to bring schools and hospitals but we have always had those institutions without calling them by those names. Now it is time that the practitioners of Ptare explain the interrelationship of the traditions of ordinary life in the context of institutions. Our entire existence is religion. Our shrines are sacred places on sacred land given by the ancestors. Our health is interconnected to our spirituality. 

We Africans have always believed in a supreme deity 
whether the name was Nyame, Oludumare, Abasi, Nkulunkulu, Woyengi, Chukwu, Mawu and Lisa. This is true although others have said we did not. They have confused a lot of us. 

When the white missionaries translated the bible in our languages, they asked our ancestors for the name of the Almighty and they used the names our ancestors had always used for the Almighty and then told us that we did not have a belief in the Supreme. 

But we now know that our priests were no less wise in their observations than the Greek sophists, the Hebrew prophets, the Arab ulema, or the Chinese literati. 

Our ancestors believed in pluralism without hierarchy --- many expressions of God without saying mine is right, or the only one, and yours is bad, pagan, and heathen. Perhaps had we done that we would have stopped the alien religions at the shore, but we are the world's first humanists and we allowed others to come with their goods and their gods. 

They came with a political ideology in the name of religion. It was imperialism. Imperialism brings destruction, obliteration. How could we fall for it for so long? The introduction of a book or a gun caused us to lose our  footing, to stumble on our way, to denounce our fathers and mothers. 

There are no other people on the earth who have had to denounce their ancestors in order to become better people. Is it because our ancestors are so strong that we are forced to denounce them before our conquerors? This is one thing you shall never find me doing because I know too much about my African contribution to history. 

Contributions of Ptare
The first naming of the divine, netcher, god, or netcheru divinity from which some say the English word nature is ultimately derived. 

The first trinity: Ausar, Auset, Heru which has been repeated by Amen, Mut, Khonsu and then God, the father, God the son, God the holy spirit.

The Christians took out the mother who represented Auset - and gave Christians a virgin Mary, but she was no god. Asase Yaa is Mother Earth, but no one can have a son without a mother.
 
]The first idea of a son of god or a daughter of God. Sa Ra or Sat Ra. 

]The first black stone altars - long before the Kaaba was revealed at Mecca. 

]The first example of the resurrection from the dead - Ausar. This is also where we find that the Neb Ankh - Lord of Life was not a sarcophagus, that is, not a flesh eater, but something that spoke of life. 

]The name of god Amen now used by others in their prayers. 

]The idea that your good should outweigh your evil, that your soul should be lighter than a feather, that perfection is not what is sought after, but overwhelming goodness.

]The complementarity of males and females, different roles but not subjugation, Mawu and Lisa, male and female - Auset and Ausar, complementarity. 

]The first records of ancestors' wisdom. The books of Ptahhotep, Kagemni, Duauf .

]The idea of heaven and earth, Nut, Geb.  Auset is called, Lady of Heaven.
 
Here in Africa humans have prayed to God longer than on any other continent. When the pyramids were finished, Europe had given the world not one organized civilization, even Asia was just stirring. Just look at a broad chronology: 

2500 B.C. - The African people along the river valleys of the eastern highlands floated stones down the Nile to help build monuments to God. 

2500 Hsia Dynasty rises in China 

2200 BC. Harrapa and Mohenjo Daro were found in India 

800 BC Homer is the first voice of the Greeks 

500 Romans come to power in Europe. 

639 A.D. Arabs are able to cross into Africa with force under General El As from Arabia-Yemen. 

Africans made the idea of the beautiful and the good one word nfr - nefer .

Ptare gave the world its first ethical system: Maat - balance, harmony, justice, righteousness, reciprocity, order - Maat was the only major deity without priesthood since all were priests of Maat. 

The idea of eternal life - Ankh neheh was African 

The first libations, offerings and burning of incense as ritual forms. 

The ten commandments were preceded by the 42 confessions in the Egyptian Book of the Dead or more accurately the Egyptian Book of the Coming Forth By Day. 

Ptare gave the idea of collective and communal salvation rather than a rampant individualism which says save me and the rest of the world go to hell. 
 

The Future
All futures are made by human beings. But they begin with consciousness which precedes Afrocentricity. 

A few days ago I walked into a Kumasi restaurant and found that I could get Ghanaian food only by pre-arranged request. But western food was immediately available. Imported.

Are African Gods only on request? We determine this by how we live. 

The Wolof and Senegal say wood may remain in water for ten years but it will not become a crocodile. We live Africa by living its tried and true values and customs - 
this is a credit to our gods. Almost all of the disarray in Africa can be traced to the disruption of the traditional religion.

In fact, one can go from country to country and find that the cause of the problems can be laid at the feet of alien civilizations. This is not a wild statement; it is based on deep reflection and study. 

I believe in the African gods and believe that just as we have exported our cultural forms in music, art and science, the world needs a more sane and sensible ethic. 

What Must Be Done
We must talk honestly to our elders --- those who have not abandoned the traditions - consult the priests, learn from them, and discover the source of our problems. 

Remove all images of a white Jesus. This is not correct even if one is Christian. The historical Jesus had to be black in color despite the missionaries' attempt to paint him English and Swedish. 

We must believe that our names are as sacred as Arabic or European names. 

We must understand that when others extend their values, religion and institutions they are penetrating our traditions with the poison of alien power that teaches us to hate ourselves and to love our oppressors. Meanwhile, they never follow the prescriptions they leave for us. 

We must enhance the economic, political and military power of African states because a lack of such power creates self doubt, identity crisis, and a search for the material gods of the west who seem to produce these things. But spirit is greater if we use it and we can only use it if we practice. 

We need boldness from our leaders to accomplish this transformation. 

The British called Harry Lee the best Englishman east of the British Isles when he finished Oxford. He changed his name, converted to Confucianism and they wondered what happened to him. 

He learned Mandarin Chinese and became Lee Kuan Yew, a leader who rejected Western values. 

Asians are calling for Confucianism as they emphasize tradition. The Japanese are calling for Nihonjinron, Japanese values. Why must we be stuck with the attitudes and values of the European, so-called Christian values, particularly since they have shown themselves to be bankrupt on many fronts? 

We can achieve our aims not so much by modernizing African traditions as Africanizing modernity itself. We are the modern people. Our ecological values, relationships values, respect for others values are the keys to the future. 

Conclusions
I recognize that humans cannot advance without answering some basic questions like, Who Am I? Why am I here? What is the purpose of existence? Who are we as humans, Africans, Ghanaians, Gas, Ewe, Guans, Akans, African Americans? 

Religion provides compelling answers and often small communities of others who believe like we do. African deities and the Almighty God of Africa do that for us. They give us identity and direction. 

We are the children of the Supreme God sustained by our ancestral connections, formed to glorify the best values of Maat, encouraged to assume responsibility for each other in a community of consciousness. 

Failure to do this is a deviation, an abomination and we can only re-connect through rites of ablution--- making, doing or sacrificing time, money, energy in the name and interest of Africa. The concept of the gift is the idea, not what we give. 
This may change given education, science, sensibility, scarcity, etc., but we need to sacrifice for Africa. 

But our God must not be one of exploitation, egocentrism, conservatism and westernization. If so, we shall go to hell. 

We must create our African personality and identity in art, dance, medicine, education, science, and religion and if we cannot do it here in the land of Okomfo Anokye, Nkrumah and Du Bois, then it cannot be done in Africa. 

If we do not do it here in the land of Yaa Asantewaa, then we can never be the hope of the hopeless. 

If Africa cannot find its way, then I fear the prospects of the world. 

But Africa will rise to throw off the vestiges of mental enslavement and there shall be rejoicing among the Nananom nsamanfo. The ancestors will say: Rejoice! Rejoice! Let the Gods of Africa Rejoice! 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Molefi Kete Asante is the author of 42 books, more than 200 articles, and the creator of the first doctoral program in African American Studies.

That the poster believes this rubbish is testament to the chronic brainwashing done our people by dubious imported religions sold us by slave traders and colonisers and based on numerous lies and blatant deceptions.

Discovery of Timbuktu Manuscripts puts an end to Western "Songs and Dance Theory" of African People. Greatest Find Since Dead-Sea Scrolls.

[img]http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/file_download.php/d741c7bec0aa166f19eb3cbcfecbda35Image5+copy.jpg[/img]

https://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/files/14224/10754568231tombouctou_75dpi_250large.jpg/tombouctou_75dpi_250large.jpg

The Timbuktu manuscripts are a symbolic representation of the impact and influence of the early schools and universities ( XII-XVIth century) that existed in West Africa ( Timbuktu-Gao-Djenné-Kano). However, the manuscripts that remain in Timbuktu are only part of the intellectual heritage of West Africa. Many other manuscripts can be found in other locations in West Africa.

There are 700,000 manuscripts in Timbuktu and surroundings.

These manuscripts represent a turning point in the history of Africa and its people. The translation and publication of the manuscripts of Timbuktu will restore self-respect, pride, honor and dignity to the people of Africa and those descended from Africa; it will also obliterate the stereo-typical images of Tarzan and primitive savages as true representation of Africa and its civilization.

The manuscripts of Timbuktu are a living testimony of the highly advanced and refined civilization in Africa during the Middle Ages.

Before the European Renaissance, Timbuktu flourished as the greatest academic and commercial center in Africa. Great empires such as Ghana, Mali, and Songhai were proofs of the talents, creativity and ingenuity of the African people. The University of Timbuktu produced both Black African scholars and leaders of the highest rank, character and nobility.

Around the 12th century, the University of Timbuktu had an attendance of 25,000 students in a city which had a population of over 100,000 people.

The manuscripts of Timbuktu cover diverse subjects such as mathematics, chemistry, physics, optics, astronomy, medicine, Islamic sciences, history, geography,  government legislation and treaties, jurisprudence and much more.

From the 10th century and onward, Timbuktu became an important port where goods from West Africa and North Africa were traded.

Goods coming from Mediterranean shores and salt were traded in Timbuktu for gold. The prosperity of the city attracted both black scholars, blacks merchants and Arabs traders from North Africa. Salt, books and gold were very much in demand at that time. Salt was came from Tegaza in the north, gold, from the immense gold mines of the Boure and Banbuk and books, were the refined work of the black scholars and scholars of the Sanhaja descent.

In fact, Leo Africanus, a historian of the XVIth century wrote about Timbuktu:

''There are many judges, doctors and clerics here, all receiving good salaries from King Askia Muhammad of the State of Songhay. He pays great respect to men of learning. There is a great demand for books, and more profit is made from the trade in books than from any other line of business.”

The manuscripts provide a written testimony to the skill of African scientists, in astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, medicine and climatology in the Middle Ages.

The manuscripts point to the fact that Africa has a rich legacy of written history, contrary to popular opinion that oral tradition alone has preserved its heritage. This is important, given that written records are believed to be such crucial markers of civilisation.

By the 12th century, Timbuktu became a celebrated center of Islamic learning and a commercial establishment. Timbuktu had three universities and 180 Quranic schools. These universities were the Sankore University, Jingaray Ber University and Sidi Yahya University.

This was the golden age of Africa.

Books were not only written in Timbuktu, but they were also imported and copied there. There was an advanced local book copying industry in the city. The universities and private libraries contained unparalleled scholarly works. The famous scholar of Timbuktu Ahmad Baba who was among those forcibly exiled in Morocco claimed that his library of 1600 books had been plundered, and that his library, according to him, was one of the smaller in the city.

https://www.timbuktufoundation.org/images/sankoremosque.jpg
Sankore University


Restoration of the Manuscripts

South African involvement
South Africa came onto the scene when President Thabo Mbeki offered help to the Malian government to preserve the ancient scripts during a state visit in 2001. The two countries have now launched a trust fund to elicit funds from the public to preserve the continent's heritage.

An estimated R36-million is needed over a five-year period, both to upgrade the Ahmed Baba Centre and to finance the building of a new library equipped with the necessary technology to preserve the manuscripts.

The Timbuktu Manuscripts have been earmarked as the first official cultural project of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), the socio-economic revival plan of the African Union. They have also become a South African Presidential Project, co-ordinated by the Presidency and the Department of Arts and Culture, through the National Archives in Pretoria.

South Africa is now sharing with Mali its own technical expertise on preserving ancient documents. According to project leader Dr Graham Dominy of the National archives, four Malians have just finished part of the  training process.

Big Sis, thanks for that.

May Njoku said:

I agree. But even if they did build pyramids how does that help us at all today?

This question has been asked before on this thread and satisfactorily answered. Go back and read.

It would also be weird that they forgot to pass on that information to their descendants.

There would be people in the host community who would know what it was intended for.

But you must remember that the imposition of Christianity by the colonialists in the early twentieth century and the driving into the ground of pre-colonial Nigerian religions and their practitioners led to an information deficit with regard to what we know today.

But a lot of information is being retrieved, slowly but surely.

kilode said:

The truth is that God did not create black man. black men evolved as a result of hot sun.

I'm sorry but you haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about.

You seem to be suggesting that God initially created white (or at any rate light skinned) people first, some of whom now evolved into blacks owing to the climate.

You couldn't be more wrong. There is widespread evidence of the great antiquity of the black race in comparison to other races - the earliest dated skeletal remains of humans are routinely found in Africa - some as old as 3 million years!

In other words the first peoples on earth were blacks, who occupied the globe for thousands of years before other races developed. Contemporary scientific findings indicate that the white race became such via mutation of albinism. Every other race has substantial quantities of melanin, the natural chemical responsible for producing color - apart from the white race.

Numerically speaking, whites are the racial minority in a world populated primarily by non-whites.

Racism - white racism - has been described by psychologists as a subtle but vicious form of self-preservation practised sub-consciously by white people, who are genetically pitted against a numerically and genetically superior force - non-whites.

Whites are 'genetically inferior' in the sense of lower reproductive capacity of their males, and are genetically recessive as a result of their susceptibility to racial elimination upon filial contact with non-white sperm.

The inevitable presence of Melanin in the off-spring  means: non-white.

Thus racism, and its expressions including the capitalist drive itself, industrialism, military dominance, economic dominance, media dominance etc etc are elements of the largely sub-conscious attempts at racial survival against what is regarded as an enemy - the non white.

There is a deep, ancient, mysterious anger/tension in the heart of most caucasians whenever they encounter a non-white.

Which is surprising considering the millions of whites who go to lengths annually to get a tan, and spend millions on liposuction.

Or is it?

Racism is also flattery in reverse - to ease your tension, you make yourself hate the object of desire because you cannot acquire it.

In the words of African-American author, Neil Fuller:

White people hate black people.
The reason white people hate black people is because white people are not black people.
If you know this about white people, you need know little else.
If you don't know this about white people, everything else you know will only confuse you.

Actually Horus, I get your drift, but I do not believe in the existence of a 'devil'.

That's just another FAIRYTALE that was sold to our ancestors by white slave traders  carrying a 'holy book'.

The idea of a supernatural entity somehow acquiring the powers to challenge his own Creator is something only the warped, twisted minds of European aristocratic control freakery could muster.

By the way, 99.9% of the killings done in the Bible were done by, or on the orders of the Jewish tribal god Yahweh, falsely referred to in the Bible as the God of Creation.

If any deity qualifies for the term 'devil', it's him (Yahweh).


Here are his commands: (And by the way, that people can read all this and yet still identify this creature as a 'God of Love' simply shows the extent to which people can be brainwashed en masse into looking at blue and calling it red).


Kill People Who Don't Listen to Priests

    Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death.  Such evil must be purged from Israel.  (Deuteronomy 17:12 NLT)



Kill Witches

    You should not let a sorceress live.  (Exodus 22:17 NAB)



Kill Homosexuals
    "If a man lies with a male as with a women, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives."  (Leviticus 20:13 NAB)



Kill Fortunetellers

    A man or a woman who acts as a medium or fortuneteller shall be put to death by stoning; they have no one but themselves to blame for their death.  (Leviticus 20:27 NAB)



Death for Hitting Dad

    Whoever strikes his father or mother shall be put to death.  (Exodus 21:15 NAB)



Death for Cursing Parents

    1) If one curses his father or mother, his lamp will go out at the coming of darkness.  (Proverbs 20:20 NAB)

    2) All who curse their father or mother must be put to death.  They are guilty of a capital offense.  (Leviticus 20:9 NLT)



Death for Adultery

    If a man commits adultery with another man's wife, both the man and the woman must be put to death.  (Leviticus 20:10 NLT)



Death for Fornication

    A priest's daughter who loses her honor by committing fornication and thereby dishonors her father also, shall be burned to death.  (Leviticus 21:9 NAB)



Death to Followers of Other Religions

    Whoever sacrifices to any god, except the Lord alone, shall be doomed.  (Exodus 22:19 NAB)



Kill Nonbelievers

    They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul; and everyone who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, was to be put to death, whether small or great, whether man or woman.  (2 Chronicles 15:12-13 NAB)



Kill False Prophets

    If a man still prophesies, his parents, father and mother, shall say to him, "You shall not live, because you have spoken a lie in the name of the Lord."  When he prophesies, his parents, father and mother, shall thrust him through.  (Zechariah 13:3 NAB)



Kill the Entire Town if One Person Worships Another God

    Suppose you hear in one of the towns the LORD your God is giving you that some worthless rabble among you have led their fellow citizens astray by encouraging them to worship foreign gods.  In such cases, you must examine the facts carefully.  If you find it is true and can prove that such a detestable act has occurred among you, you must attack that town and completely destroy all its inhabitants, as well as all the livestock.  Then you must pile all the plunder in the middle of the street and burn it.  Put the entire town to the torch as a burnt offering to the LORD your God.  That town must remain a ruin forever; it may never be rebuilt.  Keep none of the plunder that has been set apart for destruction.  Then the LORD will turn from his fierce anger and be merciful to you.  He will have compassion on you and make you a great nation, just as he solemnly promised your ancestors.  "The LORD your God will be merciful only if you obey him and keep all the commands I am giving you today, doing what is pleasing to him."  (Deuteronomy 13:13-19 NLT)



Kill Women Who Are Not Virgins On Their Wedding Night

    But if this charge is true (that she wasn't a virgin on her wedding night), and evidence of the girls virginity is not found, they shall bring the girl to the entrance of her fathers house and there her townsman shall stone her to death, because she committed a crime against Israel by her unchasteness in her father's house.  Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst.  (Deuteronomy  22:20-21 NAB)



Kill Followers of Other Religions

    1) If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or you intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known, gods of any other nations, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to the other: do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare or shield him, but kill him.  Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him; the rest of the people shall join in with you.  You shall stone him to death, because he sought to lead you astray from the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery.  And all Israel, hearing of this, shall fear and never do such evil as this in your midst.  (Deuteronomy 13:7-12 NAB)



    2) Suppose a man or woman among you, in one of your towns that the LORD your God is giving you, has done evil in the sight of the LORD your God and has violated the covenant by serving other gods or by worshiping the sun, the moon, or any of the forces of heaven, which I have strictly forbidden.  When you hear about it, investigate the matter thoroughly. If it is true that this detestable thing has been done in Israel, then that man or woman must be taken to the gates of the town and stoned to death.  (Deuteronomy 17:2-5 NLT)



Death for Blasphemy

    One day a man who had an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father got into a fight with one of the Israelite men.  During the fight, this son of an Israelite woman blasphemed the LORD's name.  So the man was brought to Moses for judgment.  His mother's name was Shelomith. She was the daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan.  They put the man in custody until the LORD's will in the matter should become clear.  Then the LORD said to Moses, "Take the blasphemer outside the camp, and tell all those who heard him to lay their hands on his head.  Then let the entire community stone him to death.  Say to the people of Israel: Those who blaspheme God will suffer the consequences of their guilt and be punished.  Anyone who blasphemes the LORD's name must be stoned to death by the whole community of Israel.  Any Israelite or foreigner among you who blasphemes the LORD's name will surely die.  (Leviticus 24:10-16 NLT)



Kill False Prophets

    1) Suppose there are prophets among you, or those who have dreams about the future, and they promise you signs or miracles,  and the predicted signs or miracles take place.  If the prophets then say, 'Come, let us worship the gods of foreign nations,' do not listen to them.  The LORD your God is testing you to see if you love him with all your heart and soul.  Serve only the LORD your God and fear him alone.  Obey his commands, listen to his voice, and cling to him.  The false prophets or dreamers who try to lead you astray must be put to death, for they encourage rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of slavery in the land of Egypt.  Since they try to keep you from following the LORD your God, you must execute them to remove the evil from among you.  (Deuteronomy 13:1-5 NLT)



    2) But any prophet who claims to give a message from another god or who falsely claims to speak for me must die.'  You may wonder, 'How will we know whether the prophecy is from the LORD or not?'  If the prophet predicts something in the LORD's name and it does not happen, the LORD did not give the message.  That prophet has spoken on his own and need not be feared.  (Deuteronomy 18:20-22 NLT)



Infidels and Gays Should Die

    So God let them go ahead and do whatever shameful things their hearts desired.  As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other's bodies.  Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God, they deliberately chose to believe lies.  So they worshiped the things God made but not the Creator himself, who is to be praised forever.  Amen.  That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires.  Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other.  And the men, instead of having normal sexual relationships with women, burned with lust for each other.  Men did shameful things with other men and, as a result, suffered within themselves the penalty they so richly deserved.  When they refused to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their evil minds and let them do things that should never be done.  Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, fighting, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip.  They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful.  They are forever inventing new ways of sinning and are disobedient to their parents.  They refuse to understand, break their promises, and are heartless and unforgiving.  They are fully aware of God's death penalty for those who do these things, yet they go right ahead and do them anyway.  And, worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.  (Romans 1:24-32 NLT)



Kill Anyone who Approaches the Tabernacle

    For the LORD had said to Moses, 'Exempt the tribe of Levi from the census; do not include them when you count the rest of the Israelites.  You must put the Levites in charge of the Tabernacle of the Covenant, along with its furnishings and equipment.  They must carry the Tabernacle and its equipment as you travel, and they must care for it and camp around it.  Whenever the Tabernacle is moved, the Levites will take it down and set it up again.  Anyone else who goes too near the Tabernacle will be executed.'  (Numbers 1:48-51 NLT)



Kill People for Working on the Sabbath

    The LORD then gave these further instructions to Moses: 'Tell the people of Israel to keep my Sabbath day, for the Sabbath is a sign of the covenant between me and you forever.  It helps you to remember that I am the LORD, who makes you holy.  Yes, keep the Sabbath day, for it is holy.  Anyone who desecrates it must die; anyone who works on that day will be cut off from the community.  Work six days only, but the seventh day must be a day of total rest.  I repeat: Because the LORD considers it a holy day, anyone who works on the Sabbath must be put to death.'  (Exodus 31:12-15 NLT)


Kill Brats

    From there Elisha went up to Bethel.  While he was on his way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him.  "Go up baldhead," they shouted, "go up baldhead!"  The prophet turned and saw them, and he cursed them in the name of the Lord.  Then two shebears came out of the woods and tore forty two of the children to pieces.  (2 Kings 2:23-24 NAB)



God Kills the Curious

    And he smote of the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of Jehovah, he smote of the people seventy men, `and' fifty thousand men; and the people mourned, because Jehovah had smitten the people with a great slaughter.  And the men of Beth-shemesh said, Who is able to stand before Jehovah, this holy God? and to whom shall he go up from us?   (1Samuel 6:19-20 ASV)



Killed by a Lion

    Meanwhile, the LORD instructed one of the group of prophets to say to another man, "Strike me!"  But the man refused to strike the prophet.  Then the prophet told him, "Because you have not obeyed the voice of the LORD, a lion will kill you as soon as you leave me."  And sure enough, when he had gone, a lion attacked and killed him.  (1 Kings 20:35-36 NLT)



Killing the Good Samaritan

    The ark of God was placed on a new cart and taken away from the house of Abinadab on the hill.  Uzzah and Ahio, sons of Abinadab guided the cart, with Ahio walking before it, while David and all the Israelites made merry before the Lord with all their strength, with singing and with citharas, harps, tambourines, sistrums, and cymbals.

    When they came to the threshing floor of Nodan, Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God to steady it, for the oxen were making it tip.  But the Lord was angry with Uzzah; God struck him on that spot, and he died there before God.  (2 Samuel 6:3-7 NAB)



Kill Sons of Sinners

    Make ready to slaughter his sons for the guilt of their fathers; Lest they rise and posses the earth, and fill the breadth of the world with tyrants.  (Isaiah 14:21 NAB)



''God'' Will Kill Children

    The glory of Israel will fly away like a bird, for your children will die at birth or perish in the womb or never even be conceived.  Even if your children do survive to grow up, I will take them from you.  It will be a terrible day when I turn away and leave you alone.  I have watched Israel become as beautiful and pleasant as Tyre.  But now Israel will bring out her children to be slaughtered."  O LORD, what should I request for your people?  I will ask for wombs that don't give birth and breasts that give no milk.  The LORD says, "All their wickedness began at Gilgal; there I began to hate them.  I will drive them from my land because of their evil actions.  I will love them no more because all their leaders are rebels.  The people of Israel are stricken.  Their roots are dried up; they will bear no more fruit.  And if they give birth, I will slaughter their beloved children."  (Hosea 9:11-16 NLT)



Kill Men, Women, and Children

    "Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, "Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked.  Show no mercy; have no pity!  Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children.  But do not touch anyone with the mark.  Begin your task right here at the Temple."  So they began by killing the seventy leaders.  "Defile the Temple!" the LORD commanded.  "Fill its courtyards with the bodies of those you kill!  Go!"  So they went throughout the city and did as they were told."  (Ezekiel 9:5-7 NLT)



God Kills all the First Born of Egypt

    And at midnight the LORD killed all the firstborn sons in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn son of the captive in the dungeon. Even the firstborn of their livestock were killed.  Pharaoh and his officials and all the people of Egypt woke up during the night, and loud wailing was heard throughout the land of Egypt. There was not a single house where someone had not died.  (Exodus 12:29-30 NLT)



Kill Old Men and Young Women

    "You are my battle-ax and sword," says the LORD.  "With you I will shatter nations and destroy many kingdoms.  With you I will shatter armies, destroying the horse and rider, the chariot and charioteer.  With you I will shatter men and women, old people and children, young men and maidens.  With you I will shatter shepherds and flocks, farmers and oxen, captains and rulers.  "As you watch, I will repay Babylon and the people of Babylonia for all the wrong they have done to my people in Jerusalem," says the LORD.  "Look, O mighty mountain, destroyer of the earth!  I am your enemy," says the LORD.  "I will raise my fist against you, to roll you down from the heights.  When I am finished, you will be nothing but a heap of rubble.  You will be desolate forever.  Even your stones will never again be used for building.  You will be completely wiped out," says the LORD.  (Jeremiah 51:20-26)

     (Note that after God promises the Israelites a victory against Babylon, the Israelites actually get their butts kicked by them in the next chapter.  So much for an all-knowing and all-powerful God.)



God Will Kill the Children of Sinners

    If even then you remain hostile toward me and refuse to obey, I will inflict you with seven more disasters for your sins.  I will release wild animals that will kill your children and destroy your cattle, so your numbers will dwindle and your roads will be deserted.  (Leviticus 26:21-22 NLT)



More Rape and Baby Killing

    Anyone who is captured will be run through with a sword.  Their little children will be dashed to death right before their eyes.  Their homes will be sacked and their wives attacked by the attacking hordes.  For I will stir up the Medes against Babylon, and no amount of silver or gold will buy them off.  The attacking armies will shoot down the young people with arrows.  They will have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no compassion for the children.  (Isaiah 13:15-18 NLT)



Samson's Murders

    (The Lord saves Sampson from standing trial for 30 murders and arson by allowing him to kill 1000 more men.)  When he reached Lehi, and the Philistines came shouting to meet him, the spirit of the Lord came upon him: the ropes around his arms become as flax that is consumed by fire and the bonds melted away from his hands.  Near him was the fresh jawbone of an ass; he reached out, grasped it, and with it killed a thousand men.  (Judges 15:14-15 NAB)



Peter Kills Two People

    There was also a man named Ananias who, with his wife, Sapphira, sold some property.  He brought part of the money to the apostles, but he claimed it was the full amount.  His wife had agreed to this deception.  Then Peter said, "Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart?  You lied to the Holy Spirit, and you kept some of the money for yourself.  The property was yours to sell or not sell, as you wished.  And after selling it, the money was yours to give away.  How could you do a thing like this?  You weren't lying to us but to God."  As soon as Ananias heard these words, he fell to the floor and died.  Everyone who heard about it was terrified.  Then some young men wrapped him in a sheet and took him out and buried him.  About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened.  Peter asked her, "Was this the price you and your husband received for your land?"  "Yes," she replied, "that was the price."  And Peter said, "How could the two of you even think of doing a thing like this – conspiring together to test the Spirit of the Lord?  Just outside that door are the young men who buried your husband, and they will carry you out, too."  Instantly, she fell to the floor and died.  When the young men came in and saw that she was dead, they carried her out and buried her beside her husband.  Great fear gripped the entire church and all others who heard what had happened.   (Acts 5:1-11 NLT)



Mass Murder

    This is what the Lord of  hosts has to say: 'I will punish what Amalek did to Israel when he barred his way as he was coming up from Egypt.  Go, now, attack Amalek, and deal with him and all that he has under the ban.  Do not spare him, but kill men and women, children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and asses.'   (1 Samuel 15:2-3 NAB)



You Have to Kill

    Cursed be he who does the Lords work remissly, cursed he who holds back his sword from blood.  (Jeremiah 48:10 NAB)



The Danites Kill the Next Town

    But the territory of the Danites was too small for them; so the Danites marched up and attacked Leshem, which they captured and put to the sword.  Once they had taken possession of Lesham, they renamed the settlement after their ancestor Dan.  (Joshua 19:47 NAB)



''God'' Kills Some More

    Then the LORD said to me, "Even if Moses and Samuel stood before me pleading for these people, I wouldn't help them.  Away with them!  Get them out of my sight!  And if they say to you, 'But where can we go?' tell them, 'This is what the LORD says: Those who are destined for death, to death; those who are destined for war, to war; those who are destined for famine, to famine; those who are destined for captivity, to captivity.'  "I will send four kinds of destroyers against them," says the LORD.  "I will send the sword to kill, the dogs to drag away, the vultures to devour, and the wild animals to finish up what is left.  Because of the wicked things Manasseh son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem, I will make my people an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth."  (Jeremiah 15:1-4 NLT)



''God'' Promises More Killing 

    I will make Mount Seir utterly desolate, killing off all who try to escape and any who return.  I will fill your mountains with the dead. Your hills, your valleys, and your streams will be filled with people slaughtered by the sword.  I will make you desolate forever. Your cities will never be rebuilt. Then you will know that I am the LORD.  (Ezekiel 35:7-9 NLT)



The Angel of Death

    My angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites; and I will wipe them out.  (Exodus 23:23 NAB)



Destruction of Ai

    Then the LORD said to Joshua, "Do not be afraid or discouraged.  Take the entire army and attack Ai, for I have given to you the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land.  You will destroy them as you destroyed Jericho and its king. But this time you may keep the captured goods and the cattle for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city."  So Joshua and the army of Israel set out to attack Ai.  Joshua chose thirty thousand fighting men and sent them out at night with these orders: "Hide in ambush close behind the city and be ready for action.  When our main army attacks, the men of Ai will come out to fight as they did before, and we will run away from them.  We will let them chase us until they have all left the city. For they will say, 'The Israelites are running away from us as they did before.'  Then you will jump up from your ambush and take possession of the city, for the LORD your God will give it to you.  Set the city on fire, as the LORD has commanded.  You have your orders."  So they left that night and lay in ambush between Bethel and the west side of Ai.  But Joshua remained among the people in the camp that night. 

    Early the next morning Joshua roused his men and started toward Ai, accompanied by the leaders of Israel.  They camped on the north side of Ai, with a valley between them and the city.  That night Joshua sent five thousand men to lie in ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of the city.  So they stationed the main army north of the city and the ambush west of the city.  Joshua himself spent that night in the valley.  When the king of Ai saw the Israelites across the valley, he and all his army hurriedly went out early the next morning and attacked the Israelites at a place overlooking the Jordan Valley.  But he didn't realize there was an ambush behind the city.  Joshua and the Israelite army fled toward the wilderness as though they were badly beaten,  and all the men in the city were called out to chase after them.  In this way, they were lured away from the city.  There was not a man left in Ai or Bethel who did not chase after the Israelites, and the city was left wide open. 

    Then the LORD said to Joshua, "Point your spear toward Ai, for I will give you the city."  Joshua did as he was commanded.  As soon as Joshua gave the signal, the men in ambush jumped up and poured into the city.  They quickly captured it and set it on fire.  When the men of Ai looked behind them, smoke from the city was filling the sky, and they had nowhere to go. For the Israelites who had fled in the direction of the wilderness now turned on their pursuers.  When Joshua and the other Israelites saw that the ambush had succeeded and that smoke was rising from the city, they turned and attacked the men of Ai.  Then the Israelites who were inside the city came out and started killing the enemy from the rear. So the men of Ai were caught in a trap, and all of them died. Not a single person survived or escaped.  Only the king of Ai was taken alive and brought to Joshua.

    When the Israelite army finished killing all the men outside the city, they went back and finished off everyone inside.  So the entire population of Ai was wiped out that day – twelve thousand in all.  For Joshua kept holding out his spear until everyone who had lived in Ai was completely destroyed.  Only the cattle and the treasures of the city were not destroyed, for the Israelites kept these for themselves, as the LORD had commanded Joshua.  So Ai became a permanent mound of ruins, desolate to this very day.  Joshua hung the king of Ai on a tree and left him there until evening. At sunset the Israelites took down the body and threw it in front of the city gate.  They piled a great heap of stones over him that can still be seen today.  (Joshua 8:1-29 NLT)



Killing at Jericho

    When the people heard the sound of the horns, they shouted as loud as they could. Suddenly, the walls of Jericho collapsed, and the Israelites charged straight into the city from every side and captured it.  They completely destroyed everything in it – men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep, donkeys – everything.  (Joshua 6:20-21 NLT)



God Kills an Extended Family

    "You have done more evil than all who lived before you.  You have made other gods and have made me furious with your gold calves.  And since you have turned your back on me, I will bring disaster on your dynasty and kill all your sons, slave or free alike.  I will burn up your royal dynasty as one burns up trash until it is all gone.  I, the LORD, vow that the members of your family who die in the city will be eaten by dogs, and those who die in the field will be eaten by vultures.'"  Then Ahijah said to Jeroboam's wife, "Go on home, and when you enter the city, the child will die.  All Israel will mourn for him and bury him.  He is the only member of your family who will have a proper burial, for this child is the only good thing that the LORD, the God of Israel, sees in the entire family of Jeroboam.  And the LORD will raise up a king over Israel who will destroy the family of Jeroboam.  This will happen today, even now!  Then the LORD will shake Israel like a reed whipped about in a stream.  He will uproot the people of Israel from this good land that he gave their ancestors and will scatter them beyond the Euphrates River, for they have angered the LORD by worshiping Asherah poles.  He will abandon Israel because Jeroboam sinned and made all of Israel sin along with him."  (1 Kings 14:9-16 NLT)



Mass Murder

    The men of Israel withdrew through the territory of the Benjaminites, putting to the sword the inhabitants of the city, the livestock, and all they chanced upon.  Moreover they destroyed by fire all the cities they came upon.  (Judges 20:48 NAB)



The Angel of Death

    That night the angel of the Lord went forth and struck down one hundred and eighty five thousand men in the Assyrian camp.  Early the next morning, there they were, all the corpuses of the dead.  (2 Kings 19:35 NAB)



Kill Your Neighbors

    (Moses) stood at the entrance to the camp and shouted, "All of you who are on the LORD's side, come over here and join me." And all the Levites came.  He told them, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Strap on your swords! Go back and forth from one end of the camp to the other, killing even your brothers, friends, and neighbors."  The Levites obeyed Moses, and about three thousand people died that day.  Then Moses told the Levites, "Today you have been ordained for the service of the LORD, for you obeyed him even though it meant killing your own sons and brothers. Because of this, he will now give you a great blessing."  (Exodus 32:26-29 NLT)



Kill the Family of Sinners

    And Joshua said to Achan, My son, give, I pray thee, glory to the LORD God of Israel, and make confession to him; and tell me now what thou hast done, hide it not from me.  And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done.  When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them, and behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it."  [Note that the sin is not looting, but failing to give the loot to the treasury of the Lord.]  "So Joshua sent messengers, and they ran to the tent, and behold, it was hid in his tent, and the silver under it.  And they took them from the midst of the tent, and brought them to Joshua, and to all the children of Israel, and laid them out before the LORD.  And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had: and they brought them to the valley of Achor.  And Joshua said, why hast thou troubled us?  the LORD shall trouble thee this day.  And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones.  And they raised over him a great heap of stones to this day.  So the LORD turned from the fierceness of his anger: wherefore the name of that place was called the valley of Achor to this day.  (Joshua 7:19-26 Webster's Bible)



Kill Followers of Other Religions

    While the Israelites were camped at Acacia, some of the men defiled themselves by sleeping with the local Moabite women.  These women invited them to attend sacrifices to their gods, and soon the Israelites were feasting with them and worshiping the gods of Moab.  Before long Israel was joining in the worship of Baal of Peor, causing the LORD's anger to blaze against his people.  The LORD issued the following command to Moses: "Seize all the ringleaders and execute them before the LORD in broad daylight, so his fierce anger will turn away from the people of Israel."  So Moses ordered Israel's judges to execute everyone who had joined in worshiping Baal of Peor.  Just then one of the Israelite men brought a Midianite woman into the camp, right before the eyes of Moses and all the people, as they were weeping at the entrance of the Tabernacle.  When Phinehas son of Eleazar and grandson of Aaron the priest saw this, he jumped up and left the assembly.  Then he took a spear and rushed after the man into his tent. Phinehas thrust the spear all the way through the man's body and into the woman's stomach.  So the plague against the Israelites was stopped, but not before 24,000 people had died.  (Numbers 25:1-9 NLT)



Murder

    At the customary time for offering the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet walked up to the altar and prayed, "O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prove today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant. Prove that I have done all this at your command.  O LORD, answer me! Answer me so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God and that you have brought them back to yourself."  Immediately the fire of the LORD flashed down from heaven and burned up the young bull, the wood, the stones, and the dust.  It even licked up all the water in the ditch!  And when the people saw it, they fell on their faces and cried out, "The LORD is God!  The LORD is God!"  Then Elijah commanded, "Seize all the prophets of Baal.  Don't let a single one escape!"  So the people seized them all, and Elijah took them down to the Kishon Valley and killed them there.  (1 Kings 18:36-40 NLT)



Kill All of Babylon

    "Go up, my warriors, against the land of Merathaim and against the people of Pekod. Yes, march against Babylon, the land of rebels, a land that I will judge!  Pursue, kill, and completely destroy them, as I have commanded you," says the LORD.  "Let the battle cry be heard in the land, a shout of great destruction".   (Jeremiah 50:21-22 NLT)



Micah Kills a Whole Town 

    Then, with Micah's idols and his priest, the men of Dan came to the town of Laish, whose people were peaceful and secure.  They attacked and killed all the people and burned the town to the ground.  There was no one to rescue the residents of the town, for they lived a great distance from Sidon and had no allies nearby.  This happened in the valley near Beth-rehob.Then the people of the tribe of Dan rebuilt the town and lived there.  They renamed the town Dan after their ancestor, Israel's son, but it had originally been called Laish.  (Judges 18:27-29 NLT)  (Note that God approves of this slaughter in verse 6.)

Keep exposing your ignorance, Mr Yknot.

So you think if there were ten 'Stonehenges' around the world, the British would ignore theirs because it isn't any longer ''unique''?

I don't know where you live, but I'll tell you this: The British venerate ANY object made in Britain that is over 50 years old - even a pin.

As do other Europeans.

They're not like you that spit on your heritage.

Historical artefacts and their discovery are not about ''pride'' and whatever. It is about discovering roots. What led to them building that? What connections does it suggest with other civilizations that did the same etc etc.

You have this naive idea of history as being something to beat one's chest over - ''we built pyramids, we're great'' etc etc, but those really into history such as myself are far beyond that level.

For us, historical aretefacts are important in themselves, without recourse to any extraneous motivations.

The size of the Nsude pyramids is unimportant as size merely depicts availability of equipment, manpower, building materials, wealth, etc.

What is important is the construction on its own merit, and the motivations behind it, and what it suggests regarding our past, notably ancient filial connections with Nile Valley civilization etc etc.

It throws open a lot of questions regarding our past.

You say there's nothing ''unique'' about the pyramids. But that's not the point.

There's nothing unique about the pyramids of Egypt either - we have pyramids in Sudan and Mexico as well, and even some in China. Doesn't stop their people from recognising them, restoring them, studying them, and turning them into tourist sites.

Even the British archaeological team called for the reconstruction/restoration of the ruins of the Nsude pyramids.

Foreigners.

I actually find it sad and disgusting that foreigners will be virtually begging you to recognise your own heritage.

That team also brought Africa's largest monument, the Eredo Earthworks to world attention. A 1000 year old giant 16,000km long rampart that surrounded the old Ijebu kingdom and which utilised more materials than was used to build the great pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

The discovery of the Earthworks by this team confirmed in global archaeolgical/historical circles the existence of a state structure in the forest regions of West Africa at least 500 years earlier than was previously thought.

To sit there and cast aspersions at this team of archaeologists that's done so much to bring these things to global attention, and even to OUR attention, is unforgivable in my opinion.

My friend don't dish it out if you can't take it. I can see you've got nothing better to do with your time other than look for fictitious links you called history.

Fictitious links? Are you insane? There's nothing fictitious about a link to a recognised UK university archaeology and conservation department. Especially one that's been known to excavate sites in West Africa for decades.

The only thing ''fictitious'' here is that excuse for a brain you've got tucked in your skull,

Its ironic how the same people you claimed brainwashed me are the only source of your imaginary pyramids. How pathetic is that?

Imaginary pyramids? I bet you haven't even read the links I posted. If you doubt that these structures existed, why not conduct an enquiry by visiting the location to see if the ruins are there or not?

Why would Dr Patrick Darling of Bournemouth University, known as one of Britain's foremost conservation archaeologists, and his team present photos of an ''imaginary pyramid'' on their university website - one that details their admirable excavation and exploration of several other artefacts and ruins, including the Kano Walls, the Old Oyo ruins, the Eredo Earthworks (Africa's largest man made structure) in Ijebu Ode, and the Benin Rampart?

Why would this esteemed professional and his team of dedicated archaeologists produce photos of an ''imaginary pyramid''?

What makes you imagine that this university archaeogical team that's explored and excavated virtually every ancient site in West Africa for 20 odd years will produce an ''imaginary pyramid'', which can easily be verified as such, and jeopardise their entire academic, and professional credibility

To what end?

Bros, you must have rocks for brains.

Do a google on Dr Patrick Darling and educate yourself, you cocky illiterate.

Some people have asked really DUMB questions here such as ''well we built the pyramids, so what''?

But the English man doesn't say, ''well we built Stonehenge, so what?''

Instead he researches Stonehenge, researches what inspired the people to construct it, makes documentaries and movies about it, invites scholars from across the world to attend seminars on it, to decipher its meaning, its import, and then he converts the site into a world class tourist center filled with tour guides, information leaflets, souvenirs and facilities for guests, and makes a ton while creating employment for his people.

Our resident inferiorized, ignorant, colonised Nigerian blockheads on the other hand would simply shrug their shoulders with the words, ''we built the Nsude pyramids. So what?''

And go about their business.

After insulting the person(s) bringing it to their attention.

End of story. Finish.

THE DIFFERENCE, as they say, IS CLEAR.

I won't bother responding to you two dolts separately. I'll just be brief.

Your inferiority complex blinds you to what is in fact an easily verifiable archaeological discovery made and photographed by the British in 1935.

http://csweb.bournemouth.ac.uk/africanlegacy/culture.htm

http://csweb.bournemouth.ac.uk/africanlegacy/index.htm

Now, Unless you are implying:

1) That the photographs are fake, or doctored by the archaeological team of Bournemouth University, or

2) That the archaeological team at Bournemouth University are a bunch of frauds and dreamers with nothing better to do than provide fake photographs to tickle Africans and themselves;

3) That the British officials who photographed the artefacts in 1935 were mischievious
     foreigners who erected the thousand year-old artefact themselves, perhaps by engaging
     in time travel;

4) And you can provide conclusive proof of any of the above;

Failing which I suggest you both shut your traps, rid yourselves of your advanced inferiority complex, and seek redemption for your gross insults upon the African heritage.

BigSis said:

I have never met a Yoruba who had anything good to say about their traditional religion.  They usually jump on the band wagon once they know it is known and popular outside of the African continent by non-Africans (African descendents though).

Blame it on the British colonialists' brainwashing machine.

The brainwashing of Africans by the colonialists was more or less total.

They did a fantastic job on us.

Yknot said:

My brother, i don't know how to put my finger on the issue. We all know Africans don't usually get credit for their work but i honestly don't know what we are going to accomplish by claiming we built pyramids.

If you spent the time to read the link rather than talk through your arss without thinking, you'd have seen the link to the University of Bournemouth UK research team which brought the Nsude pyramids to our attention. It's not ''us'' making any ''claim''.

I can understand if knowing this will boost our confidence to develop our dear country and communities further.

If you've no interest in African history and/or archaeolgy, remain in your condition of ignorance. Some people ARE interested, and not necessarily for purposes of ''boosting confidence'', but due to a variety of reasons, intellectual curiosity including.

Why do we love to live in past glory? My apologies to historians and believers of this myth. We built the pyramids, so what? What do we have to show for it today?

Again, you lack a basic appreciation of historical inquiry. I blame it on the dumbing down culture that currently permeates our existence.

Perhaps we should also close down all the history departments in all our schools and universities, and pack up studying history altogether. Afterall, what's the point in knowing what happened to us in the past?

By the way, I'm not sure how artefacts photographed in 1935 by explorers become ''myth'' in your universe, but then again, some people do insist on remaining dumbed down, despite all attempts at rescue.

https://www.omniglot.com/images/langsamples/smp_hieratic.jpg

Ancient Egyptian Hieratic writing.

This was the second of the two major writing systems, the first being the largely ceremonial Hieroglyphics.

Hieratic was used for bureaucratic and mundane recordings.

Note vague similarity of Hieratic writing to latter-day Arabic.

In ancient Egypt , the ability to read and write, and therefore to manage the state, was a monopoly of the priestly caste and court officials.

This may account in part for the lack of transfer of vital skills from fleeing migrants headed southwards into West Africa for instance.

The Arabs invaded Egypt in 600 AD or thereabouts, causing massive disruption and southern migrations. 700 years previously Blacks had been forced to flee southwards following the Greek invasion of Egypt led by Alexander the Destroyer (known as the Great).

It is during these southern migrations that bands were led by the likes of Oduduwa, to settle in West Africa.

The Greeks and Arabs meanwhile appropriated much of the knowledge of Egypt, raiding te Great Library at Alexandria that held the very pinnacle of knowledge availabe to humanity at the time.

They proceeded over time, to make what was reserved for the few elite under the Egyptian dispensation, ie knowledge: writing, architecture, mathematics etc available to more and more of their people. The educated African elite, the 'big boys' would have been retained in Egypt by force or of their own accord. Which noble wants to flee down the Sahara with commoners, dodging slave raiders, snakes, and wild animals?

The commoners were led by the likes of Oduduwa to settle in places like Nigeria, and other groups had similar leaders, who led them to their current station. Probably accounts for why we have no great architectural wonders in West Africa (although lack of mountains for stone didn't help either).

It explains why we lacked the tradition of writing. Our ancestors were the peasants of Egypt - the ones forced to flee - like the refugees you see fleeing war in Somalia today, with few of them literate even today, talk less of back then.

But our Nile Valley heritage is discernible in language similarities with Medu Netr, the Ancient Egyptian language, and in other expressions of our culture, practices such as Divine Kingship, Libation, Bride Price, Masquerades, Circumcision, Ancestor veneration, Funerary practices - kings are still buried with treasure in Nigeria - as it was in Egypt etc etc.

Brainwave:

Egyptian Creator God was known as Ra

Igbo Creator God often referred to by the term Chukwu[b]ra[/b]

WHEN WE RULED - THE GLORIES OF EGYPT
https://wysinger.homestead.com/princeamenkhepeshet.jpg
Tomb Wall of Prince Amenkhepeshet son of King Ramses II & Queen Nefertari, and the grandson of the Pharaoh Seti I.

https://www.voicefinfinne.org/English/Images/Tut3.jpg
King Tutunkhamun

[img]http://www.voicefinfinne.org/English/Images/Tiye2.JPEG[/img]
Queen Tiye

https://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/priest2.jpg

''[The Egyptians were the first people to] attain the physical and moral sciences necessary to civilized life, It was, then, on the borders of the Upper Nile, among a Black race of men, that was organized the complicated system of worship of the stars, considered in relation to the productions of the earth and the labors of agriculture; and this first worship, characterized by their adoration under their own forms and national attributes, was a simple proceeding of the human mind."

Constantin-François Volney (1757-1820), The Ruins of Empires, Boston, J. Mendum, 1869.


https://manuampim.com/Images/4Rmt.jpg
Tomb of Rameses

https://www.tierradefaraones.com/imperio_antiguo/dinastia_05/05-02/05-02fa.jpg

https://www.art-and-archaeology.com/egypt/egy27-3.jpg
Statue of Horemakhet

[img]http://www.ancient-egypt.de/assets/images/Abb.0084-Sethos_errichtet_Djed-Saule.jpg[/img]
King Seti

https://www.crystalinks.com/bes.jpg
Bes, the Dwarf god

https://wysinger.homestead.com/khnumhotepII2.jpg
Khnumhotep II was Overseer of the Eastern Desert, a title granted in Year 19 of the reign of the Pharaoh Amenemhet II, about 1910 B.C., 12th dynasty

https://www.essaysbyekowa.com/AU-Shead.jpg

[img]http://perso.wanadoo.fr/symbuli/inaccessible_etoile/images_etoile/osiris.JPG[/img]
Osiris

"The prehistoric native of Egypt, both in the old and in the new Stone Ages, was African and there is every reason for saying that the earliest settlers came from the South, There are many things in the manners and customs and religions of the historic Egyptians that suggests that the original home of their prehistoric ancestors was in a country in the neighborhood of Uganda and Punt (Somalia)". E.A. Wallis Budge


https://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/farm5.jpg
Farmers

[img]http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/themestream/isis_black.jpg[/img]
Isi Anu (Isis): Great Ancestor Mother of the Kememu (Egyptians)

https://www.homestead.com/wysinger/amenemhet29.jpg
Amenemhet I, 1st King, 12th Dynasty

https://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/amenemhet14.jpg
King Senwosret 12th Dynasty

https://www.geocities.com/jerod_motley/tut1.jpg
Kng Tutunkhamun

https://wysinger.homestead.com/files/photo99.jpg
Niankhpepi, 6th Dynasty

https://www.homestead.com/wysinger/anen7.jpg
Amenhemet I

https://wysinger.homestead.com/bodp.jpg
Papyrus discovered in the famous Deir el-Bahri Cache, this is part of the Book of the Dead belonging to Pinudjem I

https://wysinger.homestead.com/painting03.jpg

https://i-cias.com/egypt/photos/luxorb7.jpg

https://www.homestead.com/wysinger/link.jpg
Ahmose Nefertari

https://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/meresankht11a.jpg

[img]http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IS/SANDERS/PHOTOS/EGYPT/KINGS/kings03.jpg[/img]

https://www.homestead.com/wysinger/shaba_op_351x6000.jpg
Shabaka

[img]http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IS/SANDERS/PHOTOS/EGYPT/KINGS/kings07.jpg[/img]

https://www.homestead.com/wysinger/files/kingtahargo.jpg
Taharka

https://www.homestead.com/wysinger/senusreti.jpg
Senusret II

https://www.homestead.com/wysinger/tIII.jpg
Thutmose III

Diodorus of Sicily - 91 BC to 20 BC

Diodorus devoted an entire chapter of his world history, the Bibliotheke Historica, or Library of History (Book 3), to the Africans ["Aithiopians"]. Here he repeats the story of their great piety, their high favor with the gods, and adds the fascinating legend that they were the first of all men created by the gods and were the founders of Egyptian civilization, invented writing, and given the Egyptians their religion and culture. (3.3.2).

"Now they relate that of all people the Aithiopians were the earliest, and say that the proofs of this are clear. That they did not arrive as immigrants but are the natives of the country and therefore rightly are called authochthonous is almost universally accepted. That those who live in the South are likely to be the first engendered by the earth is obvious to all. For as it was the heat of the sun that dried up the earth while it was still moist, at the time when everything came into being, and caused life, they say it is probable that it was the region closest to the sun that first bore animate beings".

[160,000-year-old fossilized skulls uncovered in Ethiopia are oldest anatomically modern humans.]

Diodorus continues:

"They further write that it was among them that people were first taught to honor the gods and offer sacrifices and arrange processions and festivals and perform other things by which people honor the divine. For this reason their piety is famous among all men, and the sacrifices among the Aithiopians are believed to be particularly pleasing to the divinity,"

"The Aithiopians say that the Egyptians are settlers from among themselves and that Osiris was the leader of the settlement.The customs of the Egyptians, they say, are for the most part Aithiopian, the settlers having preserved their old traditions. For to consider the kings gods, to pay great attention to funeral rites, and many other things, are Aithiopian practices, and also the style of their statues and the form of their writing are Aithiopian. Also the way the priestly colleges are organized is said to be the same in both nations. For all who have to do with the cult of the gods, they maintain, are [ritually] pure: the priests are shaved in the same way, they have the same robes and the type of scepter shaped like a plough, which also the kings have, who use tall pointed felt hats ending in a knob, with the snakes that they call the asp (aspis) coiled round them."

"There are also numerous other Aithiopian tribes [i.e. besides those centered at Meroe]; some live along both sides of the river Nile and on the islands in the river, others dwell in the regions that border on Arabia [i.e. to the east], others again have settled in the interior of Libya [i.e. to the west]. The majority of these tribes, in particular those who live along the river, have black skin, snub-nosed faces, and curly hair".

(Diodous Siculus, Bibliotheke, 3. Translated by Tomas Hagg, in Fontes Historiae Nubiorum, vol. II: From the Mid-Fifth to the First Century BC (Bergen, Norway, 1996))

All hail the great queen!

You know she's not human like the rest of us.

Shango said:

So competition for the cellphone market benefits nigerians how? Okada drivers with cellphones that cannot send their children to school and are barely scraping buy at least can buy cellphones on the Cheap. WONDERFULL. THAT IS THE TYPE OF PROGRESS WE NEED. NEVERMIND IMPROVING SCHOOLS OR PROVIDING A DECENT MEANS OF LIVING. AT LEAST OUR POOR PEOPLE CAN AFFORD GSM CELLPHONE TO CHAT WITH THEIR NEIGHBORS ABOUT THEIR WONDERFULL LIVES IN THE GREAT NAIJA.

You sound ignorant. A healthy telecoms sector is vital to the development of any economy. It makes businesses more efficient, and reduces the need to travel for the most basic tasks, thus saving on energy costs as well as time costs. The GSM revolution has also provided gainful employment to not less than 200,000 Nigerians.

Or maybe you, Shango, have the jobs to offer them instead?

Seun said:

Making Nigeria a great nation is not the ultimate goal in life. Personal happiness/fulfillment is more important.

I bet the legion of corrupt leaders we've had think the same.

Thanks for your input.

@ jen33
if u were indeed a reasonable person u would know that there is not need to insult people simply because they do not share your views. this is the same thing the country is facing in the hands of a dictatorial OBJ.
u keep making references to your friends who got jobs like they are the most important people in nigeria. so because a few of your friends got jobs the rest of the population can go to hell? in any case u take me back to where i am coming from. u claim your friends who are foriegngraduates are getting jobs in nigeria while the thousands of nigerian graduates roam the streets jobless! who does this potray the 'new nigeria' u are trying to force down our throats?
like donzman said keep posing pictures. u are obviously unable to reason

My youngest cousin graduated in Fine Art at UNN, and had no work for like 6 months. He started messing around with Web technologies like Flash/Director/Photoshop etc.

Meanwhile, he worked as a waiter at some bar, and added to a few hussling here and there, gathered 300,000 naira. Two years later, today, the guy's got his own Advertising business, home based, and he's inundated with requests from companies like Shell/Guiness Nigeria/Oando, and smaller companies, simply because there's a boom and companies in Nigeria have wisened up to cutting-edge advertising.

I expect this guy's business to be generating nothing less than $500,000 pa over the next couple years.

This is the new Nigeria we're talking about. This guy, he did not have any ''connection'', beyond connecting you with a woman to fuuk if you visited him.

Graduates these days pool resources and form companies in Nigeria, many of which go on to  become multi-million naira enterprises.

Some, multi-million dollar enterprises.

Many don't want to hear this. But it is TRUE, and it is happening.

NOW, WHAT STOPS OTHER GRADUATES FROM DOING THE SAME?

NOTHING.

A change of mentality towards a  more entrepreneurial mindset among our graduates is EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED.

Ultimately, as their businesses bloom, the graduates will be the ones to create the jobs for the less-qualified.

Many Indian graduates don't come out looking for who's going to employ them. They start up an outfit themselves by pooling resources, and before you know it, BOOM - the business explodes into a multi-milion dollar concern.

The banking reforms in Nigeria have made it such that if you have a SOLID BUSINESS PLAN today, you can walk into the banks and virtually DEMAND funding for your project, which itself will, be looked at by top-notch analysts, and on passing the criteria - BOOM. You got the finance.

Right now, banks are virtually CRYING OUT for just such projects. They are awash with billions of dollars, issuing from a deliberate policy to engineer private-sector led growth.

This is exactly what India's doing, despite that 60% of industries there rely on generators for their power supply. Yes, India!

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0601/p05s01-wosc.html

So we're not in this unique hell we all imagine ourselves to be in. I think the government has gone a long way in laying the foundations for sustainable growth, which is more than I can say for ANY GOVERNMENT in Nigerian history.

Donzman said:

If you can provide a COCRETE example of where this high end - low end reasoning has worked in Nigeria, it willl help. I've already showed you how it FAILED when it came to cellular phones (not GSM).

I read somewhere projections to the effect that 50 million Nigerians would own a cellphone by 2008, making it by far the largest telecoms market on the continent,

Thus, I don't think GSM has ''failed'' one single bit.

I don't think we require 'concrete examples' of 'high end - low end reasoning'.

In terms of things working well or straight, there are not a lot of good examples to draw from in Nigeria.

We are basically operating in virgin territory in Nigeria, under the new dispensation characterised by banking reforms which have empowered the banking sector (this has never happened), elimination of the debt burden, and greater financial transparency.

So it's no use calling for past examples - there aren't any.

But we can see the trend in other places such as India for instance where many private apartment blocks are now being constructed with the less well-off in mind, compared to 8-10 years ago when they catered exclusively for the nouve riche.

I think we can legitimately draw from the experience of others to project where such policies would take us.

OBJ has initiated the construction of 13 power plants most of which the next administration will inherit.

Between 1978 and 1999 when OBJ  came into power just TWO power stations were built by all the presidents - Shagari, Buhari, Babangida, Abacha, Shonekan, Abdulsalami - and they were atrociously maintained which led to massive degradation.

OBJ tried to fix the damage done via refurbishment which failed to increase output, and this made him decide to construct an inprecedented 13 plants that should substantially reduce the incidence of power failure.

If people are too STUPID to see the potential benefit of such policies to the economy, while wallowing in self-pity, too bad.

The New Nigeria is about to LEAVE YOUR SORRY ASSES BEHIND, while you suck up to your salary masters in the west.

And one more thing, the middle class is EXPANDING RAPIDLY in Nigeria.

Foreign investors are TROOPING IN.

Just two days ago a group of investors from Birmingham England stormed Nigeria looking for where to invest $4 billion.

The Economy has received a very creditable international rating by financial houses and the stock market is among the fastest growing in the world, as is our economy.

SIT IN YOUR COLD LONDON FLAT thinking you know what's going on in Naija.

Nigerian graduates in the UK and US are queueing up to return, as they're being offered attractive salary packages in line with the demand for their services.

WHEN LAST DID THIS HAPPEN IN NIGERIA?

In fact many of those apartments you see (plus many you haven't seen) are being snapped up by the young, educated middle classes, including returnees, not government millionaires or whatever.

I have many friends renting /buying - paying mortgage in VGC, and other areas springing up, and they are simply educated  business men/ IT personnel etc etc  - not government officials!

So sit there and be moaning about the problems.

NIGERIANS SMARTER THAN YOURSELVES are whisking in and out of the country, seeking and taking advantage of the opportunities being created.

Over 200,000 Chinese have left THEIR country to come and take advantage of the huge opportunities available in Nigeria.

You think they don't know we have this problem or that problem?

But they see the direction the nation is heading, and they want to be part of it.

While our know it all moaners SIT ON THEIR LAZY BACKSIDES IN THE WEST moaning all day about what their country can do for them.

Awon Ode!

Take the current construction boom for instance.

Nigeria has decided on a path of private sector-driven development. Once you understand this, you'll grasp the reason why the first batch of apartment blocks springing up are of the relatively upper-scale variety.

Look at it from the point of view of an investor. Would you construct for the poor, or for the rich?

Good.

But there will come a time when the market for the rich elite is saturated and this will force private developers to begin to cater for the lower-income groups, even at the risk of lower profits - or go out of business.

But make no mistake, they will aim for the projects that offer the highest returns first.

In fact they'll scramble to put them up - as we're currently witnessing.

The important thing is for the machinery of state to maintain the economic momentum that supports the construction boom.

The rest will take care of itself.

A survey of world economies will reveal that any economic expansion begins with the empowerment of the middle classes. The wealth generated by these classes is used to develop small scale businesses that employ the masses.

Small scale businesses are the pillar on which developed economies stand.

India is experiencing an economic boom, with similar structures/luxury apartments springing up.

These are not being snapped up by ''the average Indian'', who lives in poverty often worse than the average Nigerian - but by the Indian middle classes.

In the era the UK was constructing the Wembley Stadiums, the Buckingham Palaces, the Houses of Parliament etc etc the vast majority of Brits lived in penury.

TEN people sharing a room in London was very common, and according to a leading journalist of the period, the majority of urban dwellers lived in accomodation ''unfit for animals''.

But as the middle classes got wealthier and expanded, they built shops, factories, and a thousand and one business concerns that employed and trained ''commoners'', and as competition for the best ''commoners'' increased, so also did their salaries, benefits, and training etc grow.

With the taxes paid by the ever growing middle classes, the state was able to develop infrastructure across the board, housing and basic amenities began to be provided to the increasingly demanding, better paid and educated ''commoners'' till the point the UK is at today where commoner and lord are barely distinguishable.

I don't see anyway it can work differently in Nigeria.

If the present economic boom, the construction boom etc persist for the next ten, twenty years, thirty years etc, it is inevitable that the prices of such apartments etc would fall within the reach of a wider majority.

If ever there was a truism, Rome wasn't built in a day.

There's a clear resemblance of the Nsude pyramids to the Step Pyramid of Saqqara in Egypt by the way.

https://www.suziemanley.com/images/step_pyramid.jpg

https://csweb.bournemouth.ac.uk/africanlegacy/images/nsude_pyramids.jpg

When we look at the resources available to Egypt at the zenith of its power and influence, it dwarfs whatever was available to the builders of Nsude, in the Eastern Nigerian forest. This explains the size of the Egyptian pyramids in comparision to say the ones of Sudan, or Nsude. But the intimate cultural connections with ancient Nile Valley civilization suggested by their very construction are compelling.

Nsude Pyramids in Abaja, Northern Igbo land

''The Nsude pyramids in 1935. These ten circular stepped pyramids were associated with the Uto deity and were made of mud. Their reconstruction is needed.'' - Bournemouth University Archaeological team.

https://csweb.bournemouth.ac.uk/africanlegacy/images/nsude_pyramids.jpg

[img]http://mccoy.lib.siu.edu/jmccall/jones/igbo/arunsi10.JPG[/img]


Source:
http://csweb.bournemouth.ac.uk/africanlegacy/culture.htm

You saying because it's ''only Lagos'' they should charge lower than it's worth? You need to see some of those houses up for sale in Lekki etc - most homes in CA are mere toilets compared to 'em.

Ikomi, I'm just an ordinary Naija man with no ties to any govt agency or individual.

The problem with some diaspora Nigerians is that they seem to feel a need to justify their escape by continually running down the country. But the reality actually speaks of substantial progress by the OBJ administration in many areas.

Right now an unprecedented 13 power plants are being constructed in the country, after efforts at refurbishing the existing ones failed to increase output owing to the gross neglect, and theft of equipment they suffered under previous military regimes.

95% of the power plants we have now were built in the 1970s. Only one or two were built since then.

Shagari, Babangida, Abacha, Shonekan, Abdulsalami built just ONE power plant between them.

Now OBJ is building 13 at a go with three to be commissioned this week.

That constitutes massive progress, the manifestation of which will be felt after OBJ  has left office.

All this coming alongside a construction boom and expansion in banking, plus $55 billion dollars in reserves, and our now eliminated debt burden.

The $25 billion national railway network project signed with China and South Korea will lead to a revolution in the transport sector, and drive costs of basic goods (especially food) down.

The main reason for high prices of food is the transportation expense and difficulties of shifting products from farm to distant markets. The rail network will offer a cheap fast and effective movement of people and goods across the country. This will encourage even more entrepreneurship in areas such as agriculture and trade.

The incoming Yaradua administration has pledged to continue with OBJ's work, and retain most of his staff, and that is very inspiring news to the new Nigeria.

A Nigeria with its sleeves rolled up, and unmistakeably on the move.

The truth, my dear Angel, is that your asss is sitting in London speaking grammar, while your mates are in Nigeria cleaning up.

I know several young guys and girls who left secondary school
less than three/four years ago and are now running profitable enterprises in Nigeria that the banks are backing to the tune of MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.

The economy is booming. Construction is booming. The banks have BILLIONS OF DOLLARS now, and are backing all sorts of projects.

Stay there in London and be receiving salary and talking bollocks.

By the time you know wassup, your mates have set up waterfront mansions to live in while you wallow in second-class anonymity in the London cold.


Apartment Block Lagos (completed)
https://www.klifconsultants.net/pictures/residential_01x.jpg

Cooper Road Flats Lagos (completed)
https://www.cpmslimited.com/projectimages/cooperRDelev3.jpg
https://www.cpmslimited.com/projectimages/cooperRDelev1.jpg
https://www.cpmslimited.com/projectimages/cooperRDelev4.jpg

Standard Chartered Bank Lagos (Approved)
https://www.designunion-ng.com/control/architecture/5.jpg

Ikoyi Hotel (New) (Und Const)
https://www.ntaprojects.co.uk/IMAGES/proj_14.jpg
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m69/topstar_01/Progress.jpg

Hotel Bauchi (recently completed)
https://www.nigeriantourism.com/new-pictures/bauchi/Hotel-2.jpg

Abuja Palace Hotel (Und Const)
https://www.abrucharchitects.com/resources/_wsb_470x358_APH-1.JPG

Commercial Development Port Harcourt (Und Const)
[img]http://www.abrucharchitects.com/resources/PB_COM5_Genesis+Mall-Main.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.abrucharchitects.com/resources/PG-RUCH+HT-2.jpg[/img]

Michael Okpara University of Agriculture (Block G) Umuahia, Abia State (Und Const)
https://aim-consultants.com/images/wbank/17A.JPG

Grand Sq. Commercial Development Abuja (Und Const)
[img]http://www.abrucharchitects.com/resources/PG-RUCH+COM-1.jpg[/img]

Ocean Bay Condominiums Lagos (Approved)
https://www.legacyrealties.com/projects/big_oceanbayc.jpg

Maryland Flats Lagos (Approved) (Maryland Lagos)
https://www.bravuraarchitects.com/images/bigimg/maryland/MRD_Box%207.jpg
https://www.bravuraarchitects.com/images/MRD_Box-8.jpg
https://www.bravuraarchitects.com/images/bigimg/maryland/MRD_Box%206.jpg

Apartments Abuja (Approved)
https://www.teliosdevelopment.com/projects_photos/LuxAbachaRdPortH1.jpg

Legal Towers, Lagos (Approved)
https://www.teliosdevelopment.com/projects_photos/LegalTowVILagos1.jpg
Legal Towers, Victoria Island, Lagos. This residential estate will offer an exclusive residential enclave in a prenium Victoria Island location. To be built on a site ajacent to the Lagos Law School, the estate will consist of 30 luxurious apartments each with its own service quarters, swimming pool, well designed gardens and lawns, and a club house with a bar and gym.

Apartment Block (Port Harcourt) (Completed)
https://www.teliosdevelopment.com/projects_photos/StadiLuxTHPH1.jpg
Jersey Estate Port Harcourt (Residential) (Und Const)
https://www.teliosdevelopment.com/projects_photos/T_JerseyEstPHLux2.jpg

Current State of progress
https://www.teliosdevelopment.com/projects_photos/JerseyEstPHLux1.jpg

Hotel Development, Port Harcourt (Approved)
https://www.teliosdevelopment.com/projects_photos/PortHarcHotelDev1.jpg
Hotel Development, Port Harcourt. International  five star Hotel to be strategically located on an 8000 sq. metre site in GRA, Port Harcourt. This ultra-modern Hotel will contain 100 luxurious bedrooms and suites, restaurants and lounges that cater to international tastes with a tropical flair, conference facilities, shops, a business centre, and onsite parking.

Heritage City Theme Park Abuja (Und Const)
https://wysinger.homestead.com/park.jpg

Office Block Lagos (recently completed)
https://www.ceplimited.com/images/hs_pic14.jpg

Rebecca Court Lagos (Apartments) (Und Const)
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m69/topstar_01/Rebecca20Court.jpg

You're welcome. 

Apartment blocks, Lagos (completed)

https://www.nigertowers.com/images/building8.jpg

https://www.nigertowers.com/images/building4.jpg

https://www.nigertowers.com/images/building6.jpg

https://www.nigertowers.com/images/building13.jpg

Adeniran Ogunsanya Shopping Center, Lagos (Proposed)
https://www.meyerpienaar.co.za/adelag001.jpg
https://www.meyerpienaar.co.za/adelag002.jpg

Apartment Blocks Lagos (completed)
https://www.klifconsultants.net/pictures/new/xreb3.jpg
https://www.klifconsultants.net/pictures/new/xreb1.jpg
https://www.klifconsultants.net/pictures/new/xreb4.jpg

Office Building, Lagos (Und Const)
https://atoarch.com/assets/images/portfolio/studio/models/wemabod/picture4_b.jpg
https://atoarch.com/assets/images/portfolio/studio/models/wemabod/picture3_b.jpg
https://atoarch.com/assets/images/portfolio/studio/models/wemabod/picture2_b.jpg

Lima Place (Apartments) Lagos (completed)
https://www.participant.com.ng/propgallery/LIMA2.jpg
https://www.participant.com.ng/propgallery/LIMA7.jpg

Tima Tower (Apartments) Lagos (completed)
https://www.participant.com.ng/propgallery/TIMA3.jpg
https://www.participant.com.ng/propgallery/TIMA2.jpg

Victoria Court (Apartments) Lagos (completed)
https://www.participant.com.ng/propgallery/vcourt3.jpg
https://www.participant.com.ng/propgallery/vcourt2.jpg

Sapetro Tower, Lagos (completed)
https://www.chagouryconstruction.com/cmpts/sapetro_pic.jpg

Zenith Tower Lagos (completed)
https://www.sunnewsonline.com/images/zenithhouse.gif

Ocean Parade Towers (Apartments) (Und Const. Lagos)
https://www.chagouryconstruction.com/cmpts/bananatowers_pic.jpg

Elf Petroleum Nigeria Ltd. Housing Estate, Lagos (Und Const)
https://www.chagouryconstruction.com/cmpts/victoriaisland_pic.jpg

Stone Gate Flats Lagos (Und Const)
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m69/topstar_01/StoneGateFlats01.jpg
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m69/topstar_01/StoneGateFlats03.jpg

Stone Gate Flats Lounge
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m69/topstar_01/EntertainmentLounge.jpg

Garki Ultra Modern Market Abuja (Completed)
https://www.urbanshelternigeria.com/images/garki_market_front.jpg
https://www.urbanshelternigeria.com/images/garki_market_admin.jpg

Brick City Abuja (750 houses) (completed)
https://www.urbanshelternigeria.com/images/2BR_SD_2.jpg
https://www.urbanshelternigeria.com/images/2BR_ROW.jpg

Sunshine Residence (Apartments) Lagos (awaiting approval)
https://www.accustudio.com/marketplace/gallery/exterior/apartmentComplexNigeria3.jpg

NPDC Insurance Building Abuja (Und. Const)
https://www.interstatearchitects.com/images/npdc.jpg

Abuja Kings Town (4000 Residents) (Und Const)
https://www.auliclimited.com/images/MasterPlan_2006_model_36.jpg

Apartment complex Abuja (completed)
https://www.omargrp.com/images/luxuryjabi3.jpg
https://www.omargrp.com/images/luxuryjabi2.jpg
https://www.omargrp.com/images/newhouse2.jpg
https://www.omargrp.com/images/newhouse3.jpg

Cornerstone Apartments, Lagos (completed)
https://www.sunnewsonline.com/images/Cornerstone.jpg

The President, Lagos (Apartments) (Und Const)
https://img.findaproperty.com/ltg/deptford/p1610048.jpg
https://img.findaproperty.com/ltg/deptford/p4610048.jpg
https://img.findaproperty.com/ltg/deptford/p7610048.jpg
https://img.findaproperty.com/ltg/deptford/p6610048.jpg

Sun Residences Lagos (Apartments) (completed)
https://www.sunnewsonline.com/images/Building.gif

MBA Tower Lagos (Apartments) (completed)
https://www.sunnewsonline.com/images/tower.gif

Shippers' Plaza Abuja (completed)
https://www.urbanshelternigeria.net/images/shippers_house.jpg

NITEL Building Kaduna (awaiting approval)
https://www.aim-consultants.com/images/wbank/20.JPG

CBC Building Lagos (Und Const)
https://www.dnl-ng.com/Images/House%205a.jpg

Enugu House Abuja (completed)
https://www.ebeano.org/photos/Projects/enugu_house_abuja/enugu_house_june2_6.jpg

Lekki Hotel Lagos (Approved)
https://www.sbtjuul.co.za/graphics/CN200501/article13.jpg

AJH Towers Lagos (Apartments) (completed)
https://www.pppil.com/img/im402.jpg
https://www.sbtjuul.co.za/graphics/CN200501/article13.jpg

Pinnacle Plaza, Abuja (Retail) (Und Const)
[img]http://216.92.243.207/elmansurgallery/_files/photogallery/pinnacle_plaza.jpg[/img]

Coscaris Center Abuja (Und Const)
[img]http://216.92.243.207/elmansurgallery/_files/photogallery/coscharis_centre_type_b.jpg[/img]

Arco House Abuja (Und Const)
[img]http://216.92.243.207/elmansurgallery/_files/photogallery/office_5.jpg[/img]

Fritt Hill Apartments Lagos (completed)
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m69/topstar_01/FrittHillApartments01.jpg
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m69/topstar_01/FrittHillApartments05.jpg
https://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m69/topstar_01/FrittHillApartments01.jpg

Cable Point Estate Lagos (Residential) (completed)
https://www.uacnplc.com/images/brands/updc/premium/cablept/cable1.jpg
https://www.uacnplc.com/images/brands/updc/premium/cablept/cable6.jpg
https://www.uacnplc.com/images/brands/updc/premium/cablept/cable4.jpg
https://www.uacnplc.com/images/brands/updc/premium/cablept/cable5.jpg
https://www.uacnplc.com/images/brands/updc/premium/cablept/cable1.jpg

Shopping Center for Woolworths and Nakamichi, Lagos (proposed)
https://www.klifconsultants.net/pictures/commercial_05x.jpg
https://www.klifconsultants.net/pictures/commercial_04x.jpg


Buena Vista Estates Lagos (nearing completetion)
https://www.bvestate.com/images/photo2.jpg
https://www.bvestate.com/images/photo1.jpg
https://www.bvestate.com/images/photo4.jpg
https://www.bvestate.com/images/photo3.jpg
https://www.bvestate.com/images/photo5.jpg
https://www.bvestate.com/images/photo6.jpg

Nigerian Cultural Center Abuja
https://www.europaconcorsi.com/db/pub/images/11882/1421070293.jpg
https://www.europaconcorsi.com/db/pub/images/11882/112136314.jpg
https://www.europaconcorsi.com/db/pub/images/11882/1273677139.jpg