A book by Femi Akomolafe: "Africa : destroyed by the gods":
Introduction
My motivations for writing this book came from the pain I feel when I see the havoc foreign religions have wrought on Africa, especially in the last three decades.
On all the indices known to statisticians, Africa continues to perform abysmally. This is despite all the religious pyrotechnics one sees on the continent, especially by the new so-called Charismatic Christian sects.
Traditionally, Africans are a deeply spiritual people. It is sad and painful to see how our deep spirituality was used to turn us into unthinking zombies. It appears like the African elite, by which we mean the political as well as the spiritual elite, are in cahoots to keep the people in perpetual ignorance.
Ignorant people are easy to manipulate and to convince to look for a paradise in the afterlife, while the elite steal the nation’s resources to build their own paradise here on earth.
My sojourn in Europe led to my questioning lots of assumptions. Principal among this was the pertinent question of whether a people (Europeans, in this case) who came to despoil Africa with slavery and colonialism, would also come with a Saviour to save us?
The same goes for the Arab conquerors who imposed their religious belief system on the territories they conquered.
It makes absolutely no sense to think that the same people that came to colonise us under very savage conditions, would also show us the saviour to redeem us.
This, simple logic tells us, would have defeated the whole purpose of the colonial enterprise.
My stay in Europe revealed to me the wide gap between Europe’s theories and its practices.
It also convinced me that Christianity served the purpose of softening the people that Europe wanted to enslave and colonise...[more]
