Economic Salvation Is In Your Po

Economic Salvation Is In Your Pockets Not In Foreign Land

Farouk Martins Aresa

There is hope O! Some youths, at the risk of their lives, belled the cat. They invaded a police station with petrol cans demanding the release of their colleagues unjustly detained. Police relented for fear of their dear lives. These are not armed robbers, hooligans or thugs, they are just as mad as hell as in Arab Spring. Why not your Looters in the States and Capital Houses?

It is unproductive telling youth: colonization of 50 years ago crippled their future. Yet, the first million most Africans make today, find ways out into foreign countries to “blow”. Even those without a million borrow money from friends and relatives to check out of their countries.

The truth is Africa, is the place to make a great deal of money. Get this straight. Any Foreigner comes to Africa to make money, Africans go outside to spend money. Got it! Since we have been conditioned to think that Africans can’t achieve within, some of us have accepted that only foreign investments can save us. So, why not try “civilized climes” honeypots?

Poorest American/European without central sewage still proud. If we complain that there is no enabling environment in Africa, we must then wonder why people leave their place of comfort and come to hostile environment in Africa to make money. Stop fooling yourself, they are not Foreign Portfolio Investors looking to develop your countries. They are in Africa to make a kill and get out as soon as they can, in order to spend the fortune made, turning their lives around.

When you hear about their Foreign Partners and Foreign Shareholder, dig deeper! There are no foreign investors anywhere that would invest money in the so called emerging/poor economy without guarantees that they would make, double, triple or more on their investment. But local businesses cannot borrow at 20% rate and make a profit. If you think that is normal, point to loans anywhere except in developing countries where the interest rate is 20% or more.

Foreign investors hardly lose money in Africa because they are guaranteed by Governments. If their investment is not returned, they owned the projects, as in Zambia. These are real genuine projects, not odious loans where the borrowers representing African countries pocket half and the lenders pocket the other half leaving African Governments holding empty bags. On top of that are interests and penalties ballooning initial loan as demonstrated by Paris Club loans.

Leaders and even judges claimed they got the money hidden inside sewage tank for outlandish expenses from fake businesses. There must be free money in foreign countries to realize their tastes even after life. Any living African that has ever worked in foreign countries, if they are sincere, would tell you how supervisors worked the last penny out of them before they could earn a dime. In view of how they spend recklessly abroad and conspicuously at home; it makes no sense. We can never make the kind of money overseas foreigners make in Africa. Never!

Good schools, hospitals and jobs only exist in foreign countries, why not in Africa! If that is not the case, our leaders and the wealthy would not be sending their children to schools outside Africa. Even when they are sick with headache, they rush out of Africa to foreign hospitals. God forbid, if they die, the name of the hospitals or mortuaries in some foreign countries must be displayed conspicuous in their local obituaries. Putin: Africa is only good as their burial ground.

Education is not just programming, it is ideas from our brain, courage from the heart and dream from the mind. So there is no reason our educational system, hospitals and industrial estates would be suitable for our development since we abandoned, never explore or innovate within. Conditioned, we appreciate only what foreigners establish for us at home or seek it abroad so that we can patronize them forever. It is only logical that it would not be in foreigners’ interest to adapt our education and workforce, in order to compete them.

Africans generally and Nigerians in particular are called high achievers overseas. We hear about them every day, making money abroad. Indeed, Nigerians are known as the richest single ethnic group in America. Richer than whites and the Jews in many foreign countries. Statistical raw data can be deceitful and manipulative. What they do not tell you is that Africans work to death for less in one job: do two or three jobs, hardly at home to spend valuable time with families.

While it is true that there are highly qualified Africans, they never make the same salary or accorded the same privileges as their colleagues abroad. Many of them have to work overtime or second jobs as their fellow Africans work professional job in the day and jobs they will not do in Africa, at night. Even well qualified doctors trained in these foreign countries, rush to Emergency duties after a very busy schedule. Pity foreign doctors that gave up trying to make set-marks western examiners use to block or preserve limited space for their own students.

Nevertheless, there are those making good money and living comfortably but disrespected and disdained. If some of them dare tout their ingenuity, they are told to go to Africa and save their countries. If you-Africans cannot produce a single country most black people can be proud of, you’ve lost bragging rights in a foreign country. Yet some Africans echo the derogatory names they call our countries: it’s like a “neegga” calling others “neegga” their Massa labelled them.

Do not come out blaming your desperation on others, change it at home! Yes, it gets to you after a while. Find out why highly qualified Africans go back home where they make less money but are gratified for the respect and appreciation for their accomplishment. One gets to realize after a while, that there is more to life than money. It is true that one has to make that money first. Until then: please do not preach the unhappiness or evil that money brings. Even after juju men warnings, they insist on the imaginary money first and damn the consequences later.

Unfortunately, we never heard about those in reckless pursuit overseas that fail to make it or those that die out of pressure and depression. It does not help if those that are lucky to make it flaunt the money they got by hard work, hook or crook in the face of those still struggling. Some look at it as desperation to surpass and if foreign countries are the place to make a great deal of money, so be it! Heedless and oblivious since: Slave organ donor farms in Libya is no deterrent. Didn't they claim any country, even Libya, is better than other African countries?

Only to find themselves in slave camps actioned as organ donor throughout the world. They start begging African countries to rescue them. Make Africa livable so that other blacks can be proud of a place to call home. Charity begins where?

African American/European struggle to rediscover their African history: that they were children of wealthy Kings and Queens before Arabs and Europeans came to disrupt our civilization: trying to knock down stereotypes that they were saved from “sheetass” Africa. Now African youths call their place of birth worse, echoing their “disdain-ers”.

Foreigners never liked Nkrumah but they respected him. He was so respected, Asians invited him to negotiate peace treaty with them. While in Asia, Africans overthrew him at home. Another one bit the dust for trying to save Africa. We only worship looters that find foreign investors that make it easier to launder African foreign reserves.

Christian and Arab religions or culture failed to capture Japanese, China and Russia that have mastered their Arts and Sciences in their own local languages and successfully competed with them by been innovative on top of what they gained from the Western world. Africans are still following, tracing their steps by claiming Rome was not built in a day. Yet we had African history, Arts and Sciences that they learned from us as Barbarians, later disguised as theirs!