Halloween Reveals Mentality of Black Africans
THE ALTERNATIVE
By Reno Omokri
On Monday October 31, 2022, tens of thousands of Nigerians trooped out in their Halloween costumes to mark this chic holiday and even took photos of themselves. Many of them did not even know what they were celebrating. Their mentality is ‘White people celebrate it so it is good!’
Sadly, Black Africans are so racist against each other, and a lot of this is unconscious bias. This is why we see masquerades as evil, then dress up as demons and Dracula on Halloween. Meanwhile, African masquerades serve a purpose in the community. But what purpose do demons serve?
I first became a resident in the United States at the age of nine and I have never celebrated Halloween, because it is cultural colonialism. If European colonialists had met us celebrating an African version of Halloween, they would have outlawed it as barbaric, the way they outlawed many of our customs and cultural practices. But here we are, half a century after colonialism, celebrating European superstition.
Throughout my time as a student in England, I never saw an Indian celebrate Halloween. However, none of my Indian friends ever missed marking Diwali. Meanwhile, my Black African friends celebrated Halloween, but looked down on African events like Ojude Oba.
No wonder an Indian is now Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. They kept their culture and vice versa. But we, Black Africans, swept our culture away, and Western culture has deservedly swept us away from power, prestige and prominence!
Halloween is a pagan festival. Just like Christmas and Easter (the word Easter does not occur in the original Scripture, though the King James Version, which was translated by men with occult backgrounds, translated the word ‘Passover’ as Easter in Acts 12:4. Every other version, except those based on the KJV uses the word Passover). Halloween is an attempt at syncretising European pagan culture into Christianity to make it more acceptable to Roman citizens who resisted Christendom (Christendom refers to political Christianity).
The truth is that African customs and culture, such as our New Yam festivals, are more scriptural than Halloween. Yet, Africans look down on them. The New Yam festival is in Scripture in the form of Harvest Festival-Deuteronomy 16:10. Please show me Halloween in Scripture!
In 2022, you as an African celebrated Halloween. But you refused to celebrate your village’s New Yam festival because it is fetish. Do you not see what you have done to yourself? Your inferiority complex makes you accept Western paganism and makes you reject beneficial African customs!
How is your New Yam festival different from the Harvest festivals you read about in Scripture? From whom did the Moses who taught the children of Israel these practices learn it from? Read Numbers 12:1. He was married to a Black African. Read Exodus 18:24. Her Black father was Moses’s mentor. May God deliver my people from inferiority complex!
As a people, we as Black Africans must take an audit of our present way of life. Our culture grew organically from our ancestors’ relationship with the natural world, and that should serve as a lighthouse that guides our ship in stormy waters. Every Black African culture that is not contrary to Scripture, and is not repugnant, must be poignant to our development as a people.
Today, Nigerians are condemning the Ooni of Ife for polygamy, and celebrating crossdressers for their courage and bravery. That is what happens to us as a people when we abandon our culture and adopt foreign culture. Gay marriage becomes good. Polygamy becomes bad!
Meanwhile, polygamy is God ordained in Scripture-2 Samuel 12:8.
To show us how the wholesale adoption of foreign culture has ruined us as a people, they called our ancestors uncivilised, but stealing was almost unheard of in pre-colonial Africa. But now that we are all Christians and Muslims, stealing is more rampant than praying!
If Rishi Sunak had been a Black African, he may have changed his name to Richie Stewart. Did you see him marking Halloween? No! But he very PUBLICLY marked Diwali and performed the Puja ritual. Meanwhile, when then President Olusegun Obasanjo waved a white handkerchief in the face of the late Queen Elizabeth II, as part of the opening ceremony of the 2003 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Abuja, Nigerians were outraged. Many called him Ogboni.
Yet, waving a white handkerchief as you dance is almost a universal West African pre-colonial culture!
If a Black African visits another Black African, and is offered kola nut, that may be the last time he visits his friend. He will tag him a jazz man! Meanwhile, as Achebe said in his seminal work, Things Fall Apart, ”He who brings kola brings life”.
But if he is offered Hennessy by his friend, he will feel welcome! As Africans, we will not get superiority until we lose our inferiority complex!
We must value our culture if we want others to value us.
And it is affecting our economy. Today, Nigerians are blaming Buhari for the collapse of the Naira. They have a point. But all the blame does not go to the failed All Progressives Congress administration.
We all want to drink champagne. We must support a European football club and buy all their merchandise. It is a curse for us to drink akamu (ogi or pap).
But the bitter truth is that if we want the Naira to go up, then we must buy Innoson cars instead of Mercedes. Buy pap instead of Quaker Oats or custard. Buy kunu instead of champagne. And patronise Aba made, rather than ably made in Italy. It is not rocket science!
As Sub-Saharan Africans, we spend money on hair for our heads that we should spend on books to enter our heads. Indian women sacrifice their hair by cutting it at Hindu Temples. It is shipped, sometimes without being sanitised, to Africa. And we rush it like hot cake. When will it end? When will we see that our hair, the same hair that the Pharaohs had, is good enough?
And sadly, if a Black African woman is bold and conscious enough to go natural, it is her fellow Black African women that will put pressure on her to ‘look good’ by getting a weave on. Her husband’s friends will even complain and accuse him of not maintaining his wife!
Last week, the BBC Africa carried a story about two Chinese individuals living In Mozambique who had been arrested for manufacturing fake iPhones in an illegal factory in the Southern African nation. They threw the men in jail and destroyed their merchandise.
Now, right there is the type of pig-headed action that has kept Africa down. This is the inferiority complex that leads us to take actions that impede our growth as a people.
Rather than jailing those Chinese citizens, the Mozambican government should have seen the great opportunity before them.
They could have given the arrested Chinese counterfeiters Mozambican citizenship on the condition that they set up a legit factory to produce legal phones for Mozambicans that are not counterfeited.
If they could make counterfeit iPhones that work, then they can make the first made in Mozambique budget phones. They will make money and pay taxes to the government, and Mozambicans will get cheap phones, and they can even export and earn Mozambique some foreign exchange, and everybody will be happy!
But rather than do this, they just arrested them, destroyed their factory and threw them in jail. You see what I am saying? Not enough investment on books to go into our head. That is why we react instead of pro-acting.
Reno’s Nuggets
I appeal to the Central Bank of Nigeria to consider putting President Olusegun Obasanjo’s image on the redesigned Naira. In my opinion, he is the greatest Nigerian living or dead. He and Atiku paid off our entire foreign debt. He entrenched democracy by being the first military leader to have VOLUNTARILY surrendered power to an elected government in Africa. And he returned 20 years later to become the first civilian President to democratically transfer power to another elected President.
General Obasanjo also led the African anti-apartheid effort, and spent billions of dollars to bring freedom to South Africa. And after leaving office on October 1, 1979, he became a leader of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group that successfully fought for the release of Nelson Mandela.
Upon his return as a democratically elected President, he militarily crushed a coup in São Tomé and Príncipe, and personally took the deposed democratically elected leader, Fradique de Menezes, on his Presidential jet, and restored him to power in São Tomé city, the capital.
Chief Obasanjo also handled the Sharia crisis tactically and peacefully. On the economic front, it was under him that Nigeria had her best-ever GDP growth rate in 2002, and he was able to pay off Nigeria’s foreign debt at a time when crude oil sold for $22 per barrel.
Finally, he governed without any bias to any religion or region, including his own. And to cap it all, he has now brought peace to Ethiopia.
May God bless Olusegun Obasanjo!
#TableShaker
