A Call for True Independence for our Country By Omoh Ojior

Remove French Language Course From Our School Curriculums

My beloved people of our country, in the name of Osinegba, Oghena, Olorun Olodumare, God, and the Gods of our land, Africa, please remove all the foreign language courses from our children’s school curriculums.  Especially, the French language course should be removed without any further delay.
Equally the Chinese language course that is reported to have been introduced into some schools curriculums in Ibadan should also be replaced forthwith with Yoruba, Etsako, Calabar, Igbo, Edo, Hausa, Esan and Urhobo, to mention but just these few.  Our founding fathers and mothers are not resting in their graves with the goings on in our dear country, Nigeria. They are praying that their effort must not be in vain.


It has been reported that the treacherous Chinese had compelled some of our misplaced people that are in positions of authority to learn to speak Chinese.  This was to enable our people to read contracts written in Chinese language in our land here in our country.  It is sad, to say the least, that some of our front officials in whatever capacity may be sick to have accepted such an immoral idea in our country. Please, my people do not take my comment as being harsh and too strong.  I have written about the Chinese attitude towards Africans and their practices in Africa and in our country many a time before now.  “Memorandum to Nigerians on How Nigerian Can Ensure the Survival of Nigeria, 2008,” (Our Green Book), was published by Onima Institute for Tradition and Development USA, Inc.  “Be careful of the Invading Chinese,” page 50, is a section in the Green Book devoted in 2008 to advising our people about the unfavourable aspects of the Chinese that will be detrimental to the well being of our people, our culture and land, if we do not take our time.  The Chinese have actually invaded our land. Can any Nigerian tell me how the Chinese could take over Zambian Police Force and set up a Chinese Police post in South Africa?  Chinese children that are now learning Igbo and Yoruba languages in our country are a Chinese project, to do so as a way for the Chinese to know how to know us to get us, just as the British brought English and the Christian Church to capture our emotion, spiritual understanding to destroy our human strength, our language, traditions and culture.


The same thing is the character, attitude and behaviour of the French in Africa and precisely, in our country.  Each time I remember what the blasting of an Atomic Bomb in the Sahara in the 1960s by France, and the negative impact, did to our people, I tend to feel differently about the French in Africa.  I love all peoples with human touch, but what are we to do with our human imperfection, to those who deliberately seek us to be in perpetual pains and agonies? Our Founders would be unhappy with these inhumane events in Africa were they alive.

Historical event of recent revealed about the French in the lives of 14 (fourteen) West African countries should be of a serious concern to all Africans.  The 14 (fourteen) West African countries are Benin Republic, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Cote  d’ Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville,  Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.  The African Union Ambassador to the United States, Her Excellency Dr. Arikana Chihombori-Quao has in recent months exposed France to the public in her speeches. France has been collecting 500 billion US dollars every year from the 14 West African countries, all which were France’s former colonies. The former Ambassador revealed that the 500 billion Dollars is a form of Tax that the French had written into the agreement that the former colonies were compelled to sign before they were granted a so-call “Independence.”   The 14 West African countries that are former colonies of France are still paying the tax to date. The French call the signed agreement, “Colonization Continuation Pact for the Benefits of Slavery and Colonization.”


Each of the former presidents of any of the 14 Independent former colonies who had tried to opt out of the colonization continuation pact/ agreement was immediately assassinated.  It has been in doubt that the hands of France was not in all of the assassinations. It is a big shame on racist France that formulated such obnoxious and dehumanizing policy of “colonization continuation agreement for the benefits of slavery and colonization.” It is a shame as well on Africans for having failed to get racist France to nullify or abrogate the provision that compelled or forced an inhuman taxation on Africans who were in its former colonies.


In spite of this slave master mentality of France and the French toward Africans in post slavery and post flag Independence eras, the people of our country, the people of *Nigeria have also, continued to maintain a colonial-neocolonial mental attitude in matters that fall within nonnegotiable parameter for Black peoples.  When the French continue to doubt and debate within and among themselves, the acceptance of the Black persons as humans, it is a nonnegotiable issue that the capacity, intelligence, endurance and capabilities of the African, anthropologically speaking, have been proved beyond measure.  It is an incontestable fact naturally; the French man or woman is no match for an African male or female. To subjugate our selves before the French is a sin before God and the Gods of our land including the Founding Mothers and Fathers of our political entity.


Therefore, the removal of French language from the school curriculums of our children has been over due. The learning, teaching and or speaking of the French language in our country should only be opened to those who have been employed or deployed into *Nigeria’s diplomatic corp. institution or Foreign Service.  Nigerians in Foreign Service or in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are well suited to study French language course in a special school for that purpose.  There are such special schools in some countries whose citizens are very conscious of themselves, their sovereignty and, culture.  That we have many French language speakers as our neighbours is not a valid reasonable argument as it is such an argument that undermines our sovereignty and as a people; such an argument can only be proposed from an unconscious mental state of the mind.  It should therefore be unacceptable.  Our children are speaking English in ignorance with their parents unable to speak their own mother tongue and they are made to learn French. This is very unhealthy for today, tomorrow and the future of our country.


It is time for the people of our country to demand true Independence for our country from our neocolonialist politicians who seem to be concerned only about looting the national wealth of our country.  The people of this country, *Nigeria should not become a laughing stock before the international communities.  We are not fair enough to criticize government over its short comings when we, the people, have not demonstrated our true nature and desire to be free. It is our understanding that a government is as good as the people it governs.  There is nothing political that the people are doing to contribute to the political development of our country.  In a democracy people interact with their government, elected representatives and political appointees, and such interactions include protests and demonstrations.  If a government is bad and unresponsive to the needs of the people, and the people are good and care about their lives and that of the future wellbeing of their children, it is their right and duty to replace that government.


Nigerians need to wake up now from their deep slumber to do what is right.  The British gave us flag Independence and treacherously put our political destiny in the hands of uninstructed, uninformed and unprepared nomads.  It is our time to assume true Independence status with our body and Soul.  We belong to no one else but to ourselves, therefore we cannot remain undisturbed when our country is not standing firmly. Nobody gho destroy this country for us, (Aisha Yesufu) unless we fold our hands and do nothing about restoring our right to earn a true living.  Foreign idiosyncratic banners and symbols should now evaporate by the people’s energies of our land.  While Ghana is welcoming home Africans in the Diaspora and conferring on them with Ghanaian citizenship, members of the Nigerian cabal  are busy legislating land for cows while planning how every Nigerian will become an Arab by religion in his own home, *Nigeria.


The name,* Nigeria comes from the racist word “nigrittas,” and it meant “Negros land,” which is what they call Black peoples, but the British colonizers twisted the meaning in deceit and told Africans that the name Nigeria means people of the Niger area. The original name of the River that Mongo Park, a British, called River Niger is Osimhi or Oshimili, but renamed Niger, which, to the racists, actually meant Negro river. Renaming was what they did to many places and things throughout Nigeria; things and places which they did not know their true original names.  Historically, the proper name our country ought to have assumed upon Independence should have either be Biafra or Shongai.  Many countries that were of the former British Empire went back to their historical names before colonization.  This is the ideal thing to be done by our people now.  The same thing goes for the Green and White Flag. A flag that befits our country should have positive and dynamic colors such as Black, Yellow, Red, Blue, Green, White and Orange, because these put together will invoke dynamism and strength, therefore our current Flag of Green for agriculture and White for peace need to be change.


Also, for us to demonstrate that we appreciate our culture, beginning with our President and our elected representatives our people should renounce their foreign names and replace them with our native names which identify us first as Nigerians. The name one bears is who he or she is; if one answers to Arabic or English name, he or she is Arab, English or British because a name is an identity.


Finally, French language should only be used by our men and women in Foreign Service, and Nigerians should help to decolonize all of the Franco Phone countries with designed cultural exchange programmers. This is with a view to restoring their original languages before French colonization.  French language is not an African language therefore there is no valid reason to sustain it at the detriment of all the original African languages ordained by our Creator in the now nick-named Franco Phone region in Africa. Let us restore democracy that existed before colonization, during post colonial era, post Independence and before Military interregnum, in our life.  Let us become a true Independent African nation that we ought to be for the rest of the African States to follow.  It is a duty we owe to our Creator, the Gods of our Continent and to humanity.


By Omoh T. Ojior, Ph.D.
Professor of Political Science