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Wednesday,Feb 17,2010
On the Grind - With Alex Wheatle MBE
Standing 5’7, give or take an inch or three, Alex Wheatle isn’t exactly the tallest gentleman. Shoulder....
By Ola Akanbi
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Monday,Feb 01,2010
The Root of all Evil
The love of money it is said is at the root or origin or inception or starting point or beginning of all evil and t....
By Kingsley Omose
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Monday,Feb 01,2010
Religious Crisis, Terrorism, and Our Security
This must be a very difficult time for Nigerians and Nigeria itself, especially with recent events such as; Bauchi ....
By Chinedu Vincent Akuta
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Thursday,Dec 03,2009
Embattled Deji Has Bought His Way Out Of Akure Crisis
I hope to make this article the last contribution I want to make from this end on the simmering crisis between this....
By Dr. Wumi Akintide
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Monday,Nov 23,2009
The Horrible Witch (book 1) - a short story
It was one of the scariest years of my life because I knew what was going on. Someone was invading my house. It was....
By Didi Adibe
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Monday,Nov 23,2009
The Vampire Teacher (a short story)
“Mmmm.” Another bright and shiny morning I murmured. “Can I smell pancakes? What’s the spec....
By Udoka Adibe
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Monday,Nov 09,2009
Speed Limits
Ever since I wrote my article on: Alcohol And Road Accidents In Nigeria, published on my blog (http://briefsfromaku....
By Chinedu Vincent Akuta
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Sunday,Aug 16,2009
On The Blues Scene!
For those with an eye for entertainment, here’s some news about our most exciting and entertaining up and com....
By Kerrie Braithwaite
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Friday,Jan 30,2009
University of Nigeria Alumni Association (UK branch): Inaugural Meeting
The inaugural meeting of University of Nigeria (UK branch) takes place: Date: Saturday, January 31 2009. ....
By University of Nigeria Alumni Association (UK Branch)
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Monday,Dec 15,2008
How sugar began to taste as bitter and as sour as Agrimony Herbs
That morning, the rain forest woke up with songs. By noon the Atlantic flourished in its hoary and azure under the ....
By Konye Obaji Ori
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How sugar began to taste as bitter and as sour as Agrimony Herbs
By:
Konye Obaji Ori
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That morning, the rain forest woke up with songs. By noon the Atlantic flourished in its hoary and azure under the feldspar sun. Birds flew under the dense white clouds that gathered over the aquamarine sky. The sun was in full luster. By evening ships had begun to arrive at the shores. And as they docked, waxen spirits disembarked. The spirits had the ghoul forms of the ghosts of cavernous nights. Terror flew in the air. The autochthons were terrified but philoxenous, nonetheless. Mothers held unto their children in protective embrace. Fathers sat outside, in front of their houses with a will to defend-- for the last time the waxen spirits were ashore, they bundled men, women and children into their stallions of waves, in chains of steel and manacles of iron.
But the waxen spirits had not returned to capture but to take possession of the land. They began to offload containers loaded with guns, strange books, effigies and shackles that were invisible to the ordinary eyes. It seemed as if the sea goddess had protected their voyage, for their stallions of waves that housed their tools of obliteration were unscathed by her salt. As they offloaded, the land moaned.
Soon the generations were deluded. The waxen spirits replaced the statue of the local gods with the effigy of a strange man hanging on a tree. They said the man was the savoir of the world and that he had died for the natives to be free. The spirits attached a retributive justice to those who did not believe or who did not worship the new deity. With this retributive justice, they sewed fear in the hearts of the autochthons. The waxen spirits destroyed the great shrines of the people and built their own shrines; where the autochthons would assemble to worship the strange man hanging on a tree. They killed the forests and burnt the cultures that housed the chronicles of sacrosanct texts, alchemical secrets of traditional medicine men and potent herbs. They killed the philosophies, the credos, the idiosyncrasies and the creeds of the autochthons that grew smaller and smaller in being.
As they drained the depths of the ancestral memories of the autochthons, the ancestral spirits of the land withdrew into secret spaces, abandoning the natives to their fates. New cultures began to grow, discord was sewn amongst tribes, greed was imbibed into the elders; the deity of the waxen spirits had risen above the natives, new songs and chants filled the air. The autochthons had become subjects to new authorities. They lost their identity and traditions. They lost their self belief and power. However, there were risings of new houses, new roads and new cultures at an un-bargained recompense and gnomon.
After many epochs, the waxen spirits boarded their ships and left the land of the autochthons and freedom songs filled the air from the Cape of Good Hope to the sand dunes of Timbuktu.
However, before the waxen spirits left, they had put the land in the hands of some autochthons that had helped them enslave the people and perpetuate their devilries. These traitors became the politicians of the land. As foretold, the politicians thrived in corruption. They were greedy, stony hearted, blinded to the future, deaf to the cries of the people, lost in their senses of reasoning and short sighted to their views of power.
Division soon rocked the tribes and the people. Unity died and the pit between the rich and poor widened. The autochthons soon had wars upon wars. Despite the natural boons and the economic boom that abound in the land, the people continued to drift many worlds away from the land of the waxen spirits. The politicians squandered the wealth of the land with the help of their waxen spirit lords who oversaw every political and economic activity in the supposed independent land. Thriving on the misery of the autochthons, the waxen spirits flew to the moon, walked in space and created miracles of science and their land became more or less, like the proverbial heaven they preached to the natives.
The suffering of the people grew, their will for transformation was depleted by the power of the waxen spirits who still benefited from the crooked politicians they had created and installed in the land. The nightscapes became filled with lamentations and psalms of the bereft. Tyrants soon emerged, born from the extremities of the crisis. Political parties arose, but they were soon at war with each other in the spirit spaces beyond the realm of the worries and sufferings of the people. Herbalist, witches, wizards, pastors and Islamists took sides with the politicians. A desperate and greedy pursuit of power became a part of the culture. The native politicians who drew support from the waxen spirits got it at the recompense of the diminution and draw back of the progress of the native people.
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