oyinda.:

I really thought that the point of the article was to refute the quote in d first sentence.
well, the article failed woefully on that one. and i'm disappointed that i will have to agree with Aime Cesaire.

we Africans are indeed "those who never explored anything, those who never tamed anything, those who give themselves up to the essence of things.” I totally agree.

maybe we ppl from Sub-Saharan Africa did in the past. but we have no written records of it. or these records are not accessible to the average person.
Egyptians don't even consider themselves as Africans. says a lot.

1- It did refute d quote in the first place which is that the black man contributed to the civilisation of western europe
2- ' we africans are those who never explored things ,those who never tamed anything , those who give themselves up to theessence of things' Thats what has been indoctrinated to the african mindset for centuries . we built the pyramids plus we had d civilizations of nuba
3- 'Not accessible to the average person' Thats because our leaders have refused to include it in our educational curriculum plus the currnet generation of africasn cum nigerians dont read
so yuour assertions are so wrong that you missed the message in the article,

Most Africans today would agree with Aime Cesaire’s famous description of Africans as “those who never explored anything, those who never tamed anything, those who give themselves up to the essence of things.”

To such Africans, talk of an African Renaissance is just nonsense, hot air! But they are simply victims of a racist/white-supremacist, Eurocentric education foisted on us by the European colonizers. As Cheikh Anta Diop correctly pointed out:

“The philosophy of the colonizer was to make it very clear that the colonized people could do nothing for themselves without the assistance of the colonizing people.” —Diop, Great African Thinkers, p. 349 One of the ways in which white supremacists have instilled this idea has been to demand to know: What has Black Africa contributed to civilization, or to world progress?

“In every country that one visits and where one is drawn into conversation about Africa, the question is regularly asked by people who should know better: ‘But what has Africa contributed to world progress? . . . not the wheel, not writing, not mathematics, not art . . . not this, not that and not the other thing. . .’ —L. S. Leakey, 1961, in his Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford University. Quoted in Kwesi Prah, The African Nation, p.283
The presumption was that Black Africans have contributed nothing. This presumption is false. But it was given an appearance of truth by two falsifications of history: (1) the denial of what Ancient Egypt had contributed to the cultures of the Greeks and the Hebrews, and through them to European civilization, and (2) the exclusion of Pharaonic Egypt from Black Africa.

Egyptology, in the early 19th century, had accomplished the remarkable feat of taking Egypt out of Africa, and Black Africans (Negroes) out of Egypt. Academically, Egypt was made an extension of Europe. Egyptology was habitually either silent on the race of the Pharaonic Egyptians or presented them as whites. One of the ways of doing that was through what Amos Wilson described as the ‘unwritten rule which says that if ethnicity [or race] is not mentioned, then we are talking about white-folks.’ The dogma that the Ancient Egyptians were not Black Africans [Negroes] was a major falsification of history, and it served to justify the enslavement and colonization of blacks as a project to civilize the black primitives who have been unable to create any civilization.

In order not to be intimidated by this question, we need to remind ourselves that we, Black Africans, are not on earth to contribute to their White European civilization. Our business is to build our own civilization and take care of our own interests. That said, we can, nevertheless show that we have, through Black Egypt, contributed much to their white civilization, even though that is not our job.

Europe’s denial of Egypt’s seminal contributions to the foundations of Greek and Hebrew cultures, and its conjoined denial that the Ancient Egyptians were black, served as justification for the racist contempt that Blacks have been subjected to since the days of the trans-Atlantic chattel-enslavement of Negroes, and as part justification for colonialism.

Given the adverse consequences of this gross falsification, the race of the Ancient Egyptians is a vital question for Black Africans. Which was why Cheikh Anta Diop made it his life’s work to scientifically and rigorously demonstrate the Black identity of the ancient Egyptians, the Pharaonic Egyptians who built the pyramids on the Nile; and to show that Pharaonic Egyptian civilization played a major role in shaping the classical civilizations of the Mediterranean zone, including the Greek civilization, and therefore was the foundation for European civilization. As he put it:

“For us the new, important fact is less to have stated that the Egyptians were Blacks, as one of our principal sources, the ancient writers, already did, than to have contributed to making this idea a conscious historical fact for Africans and the world, and especially to making it an operational scientific concept: this is where our predecessors did not succeed.” —[Diop, Civilization or Barbarism, p.2]

In 1974, at the Cairo Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script, which UNESCO organized, Diop, ably assisted by his disciple Theophile Obenga, faced the cream of the world’s Eurocentric scholars who claimed that the Ancient Egyptians were not black. Diop carried the day by presenting eleven categories of evidence to support his argument for the blackness of the Ancient Egyptians: these categories included the contemporary eyewitness testimony of classical European writers; melanin levels in the skins of mummies; testimony from the Bible; linguistic and cultural comparisons with the rest of Black Africa; Pharaonic self-descriptions; data from physical anthropology, blood type studies, carvings and paintings; etc.

Having demonstrated scientifically that the Ancient Egyptians were Blacks, Diop argued that “the moral fruit of their civilization is to be counted among the assets of the Black world. Instead of presenting itself to history as an insolvent debtor, that Black world is the very initiator of the ‘western’ civilization flaunted before our eyes today. Pythagorean mathematics, the theory of the four elements of Thales of Miletus, Epicurean materialism, Platonic idealism, Judaism, Islam, and modern science are rooted in Egyptian cosmogony and science. One needs only to meditate on Osiris, the redeemer god, who sacrifices himself, dies, and is resurrected to save mankind, a figure essentially identifiable with Christ.” —[Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, p. xiv]

Diop elaborated:
“The oneness of Egyptian and Black culture could not be stated more clearly. Because of this essential identity of genius, culture and race, today all Negroes can legitimately trace their culture to ancient Egypt and build a modern culture on that foundation. A dynamic modern contact with Egyptian antiquity would enable Blacks to discover increasingly each day the intimate relationship between all Blacks of the continent and mother Nile Valley. By this dynamic contact the Negro will be convinced that these [Ancient Egyptian] temples, these forests of columns, these pyramids, these colossi, these bas reliefs, mathematics, medicine, and all this science are indeed the work of his ancestors and that he had a right and a duty to claim this heritage.”—[Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality? p. 140]

Diop furthermore declared, in his last major book, Civilization or Barbarism, that: “Insofar as Egypt is the distant mother of Western cultures and sciences, as will emerge from the reading of this book, most of the ideas that we call foreign are oftentimes nothing but mixed up, reversed, modified, elaborated images of the creations of our African ancestors, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, dialectics, the theory of being, the exact sciences, arithmetic, geometry, mechanical engineering, astronomy, medicine, literature (novel, poetry, drama), architecture, the arts, etc. . . . Consequently, no thought, no ideology is, in essence, foreign to Africa, which was their birthplace. It is therefore with total liberty that Africans can draw from the common intellectual heritage of humanity, letting themselves be guided only by the notions of utility and efficiency.

—[Civilization or Barbarism, pp. 3, 4] Since Diop’s death in 1986, a major European scholar, Martin Bernal, has published detailed research to show that Greek civilization was an heir to Egyptian civilization, and has also documented how, beginning in the early 19th century, European scholarship, motivated by racist/white supremacist pride, denied that anciently accepted fact. (The book to read is Black Athena, Vol. I by Martin Bernal).

Diop’s life’s work challenged and overthrew the Eurocentric and Eurochauvinist history of the world, with its legend of the primitive Negro. It removed the intellectual basis for the racist contempt that European imperialists had instigated towards Blacks. But why the legend of the primitive Negro? Why did it arise? According to Diop, “The desire to legitimize colonization and the slave trade—in other words, the social condition of the Negro in the modern world—engendered an entire literature to describe the so-called inferior traits of the Black. The mind of several generations of Europeans would thus be gradually indoctrinated, Western opinion would crystallize and instinctively accept as revealed truth the equation: Negro=inferior humanity.

“To crown this cynicism, colonization would be depicted as a duty of humanity. They invoked ‘the civilizing mission’ of the West charged with the responsibility to raise the African to the level of other men [known to us as ‘the white man’s burden’]. From then on, capitalism had clear sailing to practice the most ferocious exploitation under the cloak of moral pretexts. . . . The memory of the recent slavery to which the Black race has been subjected, cleverly kept alive in men’s minds and especially in Black minds, often affects Black consciousness negatively. From the recent slavery an attempt has been made to construct—despite all historical truth—a legend that the Black has always been reduced to slavery by the superior white race with which he has lived, wherever it may have been. This enables Whites easily to justify the presence of Negroes in Egypt or in Mesopotamia or Arabia, by decreeing that they were enslaved. Although such an affirmation is nothing but dogma designed to falsify history—those who advance it are fully aware that it is erroneous—it nonetheless contributes to alienating Black consciousness. [Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality? pp. 25, 26]

Most Africans today would agree with Aime Cesaire’s famous description of Africans as “those who never explored anything, those who never tamed anything, those who give themselves up to the essence of things.”

To such Africans, talk of an African Renaissance is just nonsense, hot air! But they are simply victims of a racist/white-supremacist, Eurocentric education foisted on us by the European colonizers. As Cheikh Anta Diop correctly pointed out:

“The philosophy of the colonizer was to make it very clear that the colonized people could do nothing for themselves without the assistance of the colonizing people.” —Diop, Great African Thinkers, p. 349 One of the ways in which white supremacists have instilled this idea has been to demand to know: What has Black Africa contributed to civilization, or to world progress?

“In every country that one visits and where one is drawn into conversation about Africa, the question is regularly asked by people who should know better: ‘But what has Africa contributed to world progress? . . . not the wheel, not writing, not mathematics, not art . . . not this, not that and not the other thing. . .’ —L. S. Leakey, 1961, in his Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford University. Quoted in Kwesi Prah, The African Nation, p.283
The presumption was that Black Africans have contributed nothing. This presumption is false. But it was given an appearance of truth by two falsifications of history: (1) the denial of what Ancient Egypt had contributed to the cultures of the Greeks and the Hebrews, and through them to European civilization, and (2) the exclusion of Pharaonic Egypt from Black Africa.

Egyptology, in the early 19th century, had accomplished the remarkable feat of taking Egypt out of Africa, and Black Africans (Negroes) out of Egypt. Academically, Egypt was made an extension of Europe. Egyptology was habitually either silent on the race of the Pharaonic Egyptians or presented them as whites. One of the ways of doing that was through what Amos Wilson described as the ‘unwritten rule which says that if ethnicity [or race] is not mentioned, then we are talking about white-folks.’ The dogma that the Ancient Egyptians were not Black Africans [Negroes] was a major falsification of history, and it served to justify the enslavement and colonization of blacks as a project to civilize the black primitives who have been unable to create any civilization.

In order not to be intimidated by this question, we need to remind ourselves that we, Black Africans, are not on earth to contribute to their White European civilization. Our business is to build our own civilization and take care of our own interests. That said, we can, nevertheless show that we have, through Black Egypt, contributed much to their white civilization, even though that is not our job.

Europe’s denial of Egypt’s seminal contributions to the foundations of Greek and Hebrew cultures, and its conjoined denial that the Ancient Egyptians were black, served as justification for the racist contempt that Blacks have been subjected to since the days of the trans-Atlantic chattel-enslavement of Negroes, and as part justification for colonialism.

Given the adverse consequences of this gross falsification, the race of the Ancient Egyptians is a vital question for Black Africans. Which was why Cheikh Anta Diop made it his life’s work to scientifically and rigorously demonstrate the Black identity of the ancient Egyptians, the Pharaonic Egyptians who built the pyramids on the Nile; and to show that Pharaonic Egyptian civilization played a major role in shaping the classical civilizations of the Mediterranean zone, including the Greek civilization, and therefore was the foundation for European civilization. As he put it:

“For us the new, important fact is less to have stated that the Egyptians were Blacks, as one of our principal sources, the ancient writers, already did, than to have contributed to making this idea a conscious historical fact for Africans and the world, and especially to making it an operational scientific concept: this is where our predecessors did not succeed.” —[Diop, Civilization or Barbarism, p.2]

In 1974, at the Cairo Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script, which UNESCO organized, Diop, ably assisted by his disciple Theophile Obenga, faced the cream of the world’s Eurocentric scholars who claimed that the Ancient Egyptians were not black. Diop carried the day by presenting eleven categories of evidence to support his argument for the blackness of the Ancient Egyptians: these categories included the contemporary eyewitness testimony of classical European writers; melanin levels in the skins of mummies; testimony from the Bible; linguistic and cultural comparisons with the rest of Black Africa; Pharaonic self-descriptions; data from physical anthropology, blood type studies, carvings and paintings; etc.

Having demonstrated scientifically that the Ancient Egyptians were Blacks, Diop argued that “the moral fruit of their civilization is to be counted among the assets of the Black world. Instead of presenting itself to history as an insolvent debtor, that Black world is the very initiator of the ‘western’ civilization flaunted before our eyes today. Pythagorean mathematics, the theory of the four elements of Thales of Miletus, Epicurean materialism, Platonic idealism, Judaism, Islam, and modern science are rooted in Egyptian cosmogony and science. One needs only to meditate on Osiris, the redeemer god, who sacrifices himself, dies, and is resurrected to save mankind, a figure essentially identifiable with Christ.” —[Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, p. xiv]

Diop elaborated:
“The oneness of Egyptian and Black culture could not be stated more clearly. Because of this essential identity of genius, culture and race, today all Negroes can legitimately trace their culture to ancient Egypt and build a modern culture on that foundation. A dynamic modern contact with Egyptian antiquity would enable Blacks to discover increasingly each day the intimate relationship between all Blacks of the continent and mother Nile Valley. By this dynamic contact the Negro will be convinced that these [Ancient Egyptian] temples, these forests of columns, these pyramids, these colossi, these bas reliefs, mathematics, medicine, and all this science are indeed the work of his ancestors and that he had a right and a duty to claim this heritage.”—[Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality? p. 140]

Diop furthermore declared, in his last major book, Civilization or Barbarism, that: “Insofar as Egypt is the distant mother of Western cultures and sciences, as will emerge from the reading of this book, most of the ideas that we call foreign are oftentimes nothing but mixed up, reversed, modified, elaborated images of the creations of our African ancestors, such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, dialectics, the theory of being, the exact sciences, arithmetic, geometry, mechanical engineering, astronomy, medicine, literature (novel, poetry, drama), architecture, the arts, etc. . . . Consequently, no thought, no ideology is, in essence, foreign to Africa, which was their birthplace. It is therefore with total liberty that Africans can draw from the common intellectual heritage of humanity, letting themselves be guided only by the notions of utility and efficiency.

—[Civilization or Barbarism, pp. 3, 4] Since Diop’s death in 1986, a major European scholar, Martin Bernal, has published detailed research to show that Greek civilization was an heir to Egyptian civilization, and has also documented how, beginning in the early 19th century, European scholarship, motivated by racist/white supremacist pride, denied that anciently accepted fact. (The book to read is Black Athena, Vol. I by Martin Bernal).

Diop’s life’s work challenged and overthrew the Eurocentric and Eurochauvinist history of the world, with its legend of the primitive Negro. It removed the intellectual basis for the racist contempt that European imperialists had instigated towards Blacks. But why the legend of the primitive Negro? Why did it arise? According to Diop, “The desire to legitimize colonization and the slave trade—in other words, the social condition of the Negro in the modern world—engendered an entire literature to describe the so-called inferior traits of the Black. The mind of several generations of Europeans would thus be gradually indoctrinated, Western opinion would crystallize and instinctively accept as revealed truth the equation: Negro=inferior humanity.

“To crown this cynicism, colonization would be depicted as a duty of humanity. They invoked ‘the civilizing mission’ of the West charged with the responsibility to raise the African to the level of other men [known to us as ‘the white man’s burden’]. From then on, capitalism had clear sailing to practice the most ferocious exploitation under the cloak of moral pretexts. . . . The memory of the recent slavery to which the Black race has been subjected, cleverly kept alive in men’s minds and especially in Black minds, often affects Black consciousness negatively. From the recent slavery an attempt has been made to construct—despite all historical truth—a legend that the Black has always been reduced to slavery by the superior white race with which he has lived, wherever it may have been. This enables Whites easily to justify the presence of Negroes in Egypt or in Mesopotamia or Arabia, by decreeing that they were enslaved. Although such an affirmation is nothing but dogma designed to falsify history—those who advance it are fully aware that it is erroneous—it nonetheless contributes to alienating Black consciousness. [Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality? pp. 25, 26]

Nchara:

Is Onovo still the IG or has he been replaced yet? Stark, raving madness.

he has never been the IG . His just there on holidays

The Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Ogbonna Onovo, has said that kidnappers in Nigeria have foreign collaborators that coordinate their activities in the country.



The IG also said that three more persons had been arrested in connection with the kidnap of four journalists and their driver in Abia State a few weeks ago.



Onovo, who did not elaborate, spoke through the Force Public Relations Officer, Mr. Emmanuel Ojukwu, in Abuja on Wednesday. He explained that investigation had shown that the collaborators provided technical and logistic support to the local gangs physically involved in kidnapping for ransom.



He assured that the foreign elements would soon be apprehended.



He added that the Nigeria Police Force would continue to do its best to protect lives and property, but noted that it was being hampered by lack of sophisticated equipment



He stated that the Force had to hire the tracking device it used in locating the kidnappers of the four journalists and their driver, stressing that there was a limit to what police officers could do without necessary equipment.



“The police serve everybody because they are public servants and can only work to the extent of the equipment we are given,” he said.



He disclosed that the three fresh suspects were in addition to four earlier held in connection with the incident.



He said the suspects had given useful information about their network, adding that the police had dismantled the “stronghold of kidnapping in Abia State,” as some of the suspected perpetrators of the crime had fled the state.



He said, “Nigeria is sick and tired of kidnappings and we are resolved to stop this social menace in the country at large and the South-East in particular.



“Our investigations have shown that these kidnappers have foreign ties and we are going to smash them; we won’t show respect to anyone involved in kidnapping at all.”

K4:

Nigeria and Nigerians know everything and are the best in everything they do and don't need to learn from anybody.

Ghanaians on the other hand are humble enough to know that success comes from hard work, determination and the will to die for the motherland. Nigeria obviously has its own way of doing things.If Nigerians think they can learn a thing or two from Ghanaians, I don't think Ghanaians have any particular problem with that. But as we know too often on this forum, some folks simply can't stand the idea that Nigeria can learn a few things from Ghana. just watch out for some of the comments that will follow soon.

well said k4 your predictions were right , nigerians are so condescending towards ghanians that they wont admit that we got a few things to learn from them.

The ghanian team that played the match against serbian showed the nigerian team a few lessons

1 - How to invest in youth - the ghanian squad had 7 players under 23 years of age who played in the 2010 nations cup
2- team work - the ghanian squad showed how to work as a team no showboting
3- Fitness - The whole squad was fit for the duration of 90 mins
4- pride - The team had the pride to represent ghana and africa in the match

Can the nff learn from this?
No i dont think so, we got a set of clowns as nff officals who clearly suffer from myopic intelligence , corruption and mental daftness which is also a synonym for the country nigeria .
Verdict- not a chance.

Hope ghana all the best

I have come to the conclusion that nigerians are solely responsible for the sorry state of the country .
Let me disect this further
Nigerians seem to involve religion in anything they do
for eg a man wants to become a governor the first thing you hear is he is a God fearing man . No one would ask if he is a leader , if he has a manifest or if he has the vision to take the country forward
Nigerians have learnt to use religion to define everything rather than find intellectual solutions to problems
.
Nigerians have to realise that heaven helps those who help themselves so we got to start thinking and doing of how to move nigeria forward.

Nigerians are busy looking for the truth in church
let me tell u the truth
The country called nigeria is a failure
its worse of than it was 10 years ago
the average nigerian is confused ignorant and keeps waiting for god to come and build the country
70 % of its populations lives on 1 $ a day
our government are myopic intellectually daft beyond redemption and self centered
so the truth is changing churches to get miracles which would make u rich or prosperous is a waste of time
if we want to succedd in nigeria we got to change the mindset and start doing practical things rather than looking for God to do it for us cause it wont happen

What is this painfull truth a few of yall are talking about
There is nothing like a painfull truth

I have been asking myself why your average nigerian mentions the name of God in every thing that happens in nigeria.
If roads are not good the say- God help us
If there is hospital with - God help us
If there is election rigging - God help us
If a politician steals money - God help us

The reocurring theme here is bringing God into things that does not concern him
As far as am concerned we have to solve our own problems ourselves and that includes taking responsibility for the desperate severely under developed state called Nigeria.
When we decide that praying with no real action does not build a country , The better for us .Until then we can remain in the status quo and see nigerias continous fall into obscrurity .

to fl gator
The nigerian foreign affairs ministry has a bunch of intellectually myopic individuals running its affairs so i guess they would do what u said.Threaten to deny southafricans visas to nigeria.
The intellectual soulution to this is to find out why foreign embassies treat nigerians shabilly before making a conclusion .

EXCEPT the South Africa High Commission changes its policy, thousands of Nigerians may miss watching the FIFA 2010 World, which begins on Friday, due to lack of entry visa to South Africa, the host country of the global sports fiesta.
Thousands of Nigerians had, last week, besieged the 24 Molade Okoya Thomas Street, Victoria Island, Lagos office of the High Commission, with most of them threatening to forcefully enter the premises to know why they have been refused visas, even when they met all the criteria more than two weeks before the commencement of the Mundial.
South African High Commissioner to Nigeria, JKN Mamabolo, could not be reached for comment, as he was said to be out of Nigeria.
South Africa has a reputation for visa denial, coupled with rowdy operations in its Nigerian office.
The Federal Government had, last year, expressed concern over the manner Nigerians are treated at the High Commission whenever they want to process their entry visa to the country.
The situation had forced the Nigerian government to threaten a retaliatory action as a way of expressing its disapproval over treatment of her citizens

the merging of two states does not translate to economies of scale
merging of two states just because some ethnic groups get along does not to translate to a better standard of living
the state lagos state has its own problems due to overpopulation
it should therefore be the entrepreneurs and real estate investors who should build houses in areas in ogun state close to lagos due to expansion
conclusion
rather than making a vague and lofty statement that lagos should be merged with ogun
it should said  that  lagos and ogun state should co-oporate and develop policies that would benefit both states