Why not a National Science and Technology Day?
Posted by By Akogun Akomolafe at 4 April, at 13 : 21 PM Print
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The cockpit of spaceship endeavor
“We have already compared the benefits of theology and science. When the theologian governed the world, it was covered with huts and hovels for the many, palaces and cathedrals for the few. To nearly all the children of men, reading and writing were unknown arts. The poor were clad in rags and skins — they devoured crusts, and gnawed bones. The day of Science dawned, and the luxuries of a century ago are the necessities of today. Men in the middle ranks of life have more of the conveniences and elegancies than the princes and kings of the theological times. But above and over all this, is the development of mind. There is more of value in the brain of an average man of to-day — of a master-mechanic, of a chemist, of a naturalist, of an inventor, than there was in the brain of the world four hundred years ago.
These blessings did not fall from the skies. These benefits did not drop from the outstretched hands of priests. They were not found in cathedrals or behind altars — neither were they searched for with holy candles. They were not discovered by the closed eyes of prayer, nor did they come in answer to superstitious supplication. They are the children of freedom, the gifts of reason, observation and experience — and for them all, man is indebted to man.” – Robert Green Ingersoll.
It is both sad and ridiculous to see the amount of time and resources our officials, including the President, expended in debating the merits and demerits of sending 200 priests to Jerusalem to, please don’t weep, pray for the nation.
This comes at a time the country has been sent back into the Stone Age – with no water, gas, electricity and internet connection!
How do we expect to be taken seriously outside of our shores, when we have a head of state, whose time is consumed in seeking celestial interventions in purely earthly problems?
How do we expect to be taken seriously in the comity of nations when our President prefer to parlay with priests in seeking solutions to national development challenges, rather than call on our scientists and engineers?
How do we defend a president that uses an iPad, and still believe in sending scrounging priests to Jerusalem to seek God’s intervention in the affairs of men?
I have said severally that our leaders in Africa have no business parlaying with fraudulent, smooth-talking priests, adorned in their cassocks of ignorance, thievery, and superstitions.
Historically, the priestly class is among the worthless.
Like leeches, priests lead only parasitic lives.
Since they lost the absolute powers they wielded in medieval times, priests throughout the ages always align themselves with ruling classes in order to maintain their ill-gotten privileges and wealth.
Instead of asking useless priests to continue chanting ineffectual prayers, our president should have called an assembly of Ghanaian scientists, engineers, and technologists.
He should challenge them to look for indigenous solutions to some of the problems confronting us.
This should be backed by vigorous government support in terms of heavy investment in mathematics and science education.
Science is not the answer to all the problems, but investment in scientific education and research will yield better results than all the prayers we chant daily in our so-called places of worship.
There is nothing new here since the only countries that have managed to develop their economies/societies are those that took science and technology seriously.
To safeguard our future, our children’s mind must be totally unshackled. They must be exposed to mathematics, science and rigorous critical thinking. They must be unfettered in exploring the unknown. Their minds must not be shackled by fear of goblins of the sky, or of desert gods and their murderous prophets and their demons and their devils.
Bloodsucking priests must not be allowed to have a say in our national development agenda.
A few years ago, another leader of our great nation opined that only the gods can solve our developmental challenges.
The statement irked me so much that I wrote a piece, We didn’t vote for gods! , which is reproduced, in part, below:
It is barely bearable for me when I hear spiritual leaders say that we in Africa needed divine and spiritual intervention to solve our numerous socio-economic and developmental problems, but it galls me to no end when I hear our elected representatives pantomiming the same nonsense.
I am neither thrilled nor amused by the spectacle of African leaders holding prayer breakfasts and other useless spiritual jamborees.
The sight, in fact, makes me very angry. I find the sight of African leaders kneeling in supplication insulting, as it portrayed us Africans as mindless simpletons incapable of solving any of our problems without external interventions – be it from NGOs, IMF or gods.
What sights daily confront us in Africa except incapable and visionless leaders jumping from one Western capital to another in search of solutions to their country’s problems? And whenever their feet managed to touch the local ground, they are busy scurrying around churches and mosques beseeching the Almighty to come down to earth to lead them out of the morass their crass ineptitude, personal selfishness and total lack of vision have led their nations.
How could our politicians (or are they really politricians?) so easily forget that just a few months ago they campaigned and made promises to us?
We voted for people who told us that they have the answers to our economic and social woes, thus fulfilling our part of what I considered to be a contract.
For an elected official to turn around and tell us that only the gods can save us is dishonest, to say the least. He has broken his part of the bargain! And why is it that our leaders needed divine intervention only when they have to provide amenities and services for ordinary people.
No one sees them praying or supplicating before awarding themselves fantastic salaries and other emoluments! We don’t see them pray to gods before they acquire their presidential jets or build their palaces!
It looks like a scam to me when an elected politician turned around to tell me that he requires divine support, in order to do what he claimed he could easily do when he canvassed for my vote.
The sight of African presidents on bended knees supplicating to a god to come and solve their nations’ problems is repulsive to me.
Do we need the involvement of almighty God to grow the food that we eat?
Do we need the angelic intercessions of any goblin of the sky to solve our erratic water and electricity supply problems?
Do we need to bend knees and pray before we can provide adequate telecommunication services or grow the food that we eat?
Do we need any god to tell us to desilt our choked gutters and obey simple laws of hygiene?
Do we need to burn candles, eat grass, drink petrol, rub olive on bodies or speak in tongue before we obey simple laws of hygiene?
Give me a break!
It is the time that we in Africa recognize that no society has ever been developed by any god.
If by development we meant qualitative improvements in the lives of people, we can say that Jehovah certainly did not develop Palestine when he purportedly led some Habiru (Hebrews) in that land.
It is human beings, using their native intelligence and brains, who mastered their environment and transformed their societies for the better.
This is the simple truth. Let anyone that knows better correct me if I’m wrong.
History recorded that this transformation could be achieved within a generation as per Israel, Malaysia, China, South Korea, and Singapore.
Let anyone come forward and cite for me a single example of a nation that has attained economic development through divine intervention.
Let anyone come and give me an example of a single thing any god has ever done for any people.
This is a challenge to all those swindlers in priestly garbs and their apologists.
Is it by any coincidence that the only country in the so-called holy land that has attained a high level of economic, scientific and industrial development is secular Israel?
Although nominally a Jewish state, Israelis no longer put their trust in Jehovah; they have embraced science and technology wholeheartedly.
Israel’s technical schools are rated among the best in the world.
When Jehovah purportedly led them in a useless nomadic trek across the Palestinian and Arabia deserts, the Jews starved. And they did not stop starving until they took to science and technology. It was not their knowledge of the Torah, but their embracement of modern science that enables the Jews to turn their desert into blossoming Oasis and become a net exporter of food. It is through science and technology that the Israelis were able to defeat vastly numerically-superior Arab forces.
It is by arming themselves with superior knowledge that modern Israelis were able to triumph over all adversities/adversaries. Moshe Dayan gave us an inkling of this in his autobiography, where he wrote about his shock at not seeing a single book at the golden-gilded palace of the Moroccan Monarch.
Our leaders will do well to tell us the simple truth that we are deluding ourselves if we believe that some gods are coming down from the sky to solve our problems for us; it will never happen.
“The founder of a religion must be able to turn water into wine — cure with a word the blind and lame, and raise with a simple touch the dead to life. It was necessary for him to demonstrate to the satisfaction of his barbarian disciple, that he was superior to nature. In times of ignorance, this was easy to do. The credulity of the savage was almost boundless. To him the marvelous was the beautiful, the mysterious was the sublime. Consequently, every religion has for its foundation a miracle — that is to say, a violation of nature — that is to say, a falsehood.
No one, in the world’s whole history, ever attempted to substantiate a truth by a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of a miracle. Nothing but falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle ever was performed, and no sane man ever thought he had performed one, and until one is performed, there can be no evidence of the existence of any power superior to, and independent of, nature.” – Robert Green Ingersoll
Our Presidents will do well to tell us that we are wasting our time by reading so-called holy books of dubious origins and zero knowledge base.
What have we gained, as a people or as a nation, from all the endless spirituals pyrotechnics that daily deluge us?
What have we benefited, tangibly, from all the charade being perpetrated by shameless impostors pretending to stand between us an Alujanah?
I have lived in societies where human beings are decently feeding, clothing and housing themselves without appealing for divine intervention!
I have lived in lands where human beings live in material comfort with absolutely no spiritual intercession whatever.
If anything, history tells us that it is only those lands that banished ignorance and set the gods strictly aside that have improved their physical environment and material well-being.
Methinks that it is time we give the gods a break. By endowing us with immeasurable mineral resources the gods have certainly done their best for us.
As a great African writer once put it, “The Gods are not to blame.”
We have no one but ourselves to blame if we continue to wallow in poverty because we refused to employ our intellects to solve purely temporal problems, as others have done and continue to do.
The poser and the challenge for us are why is it that our continent is the world’s richest in terms of mineral resources, and yet we remain the world’s underachievers and basket case?
We die in millions when there is drought and we perish in millions when there is a flood!
Our electricity suppliers continue to blame too much water or too little of it in our dam, for their inability to provide us with steady power supply.
And this is after over half a century of self-governance!
Instead of properly educating ourselves to face the challenges of a globalized world we rather would spend an inordinate amount of time in churches, mosques, prayer camps and what have you.
And we pretend not to know why we live poorer than pets in some countries!
Instead of de-silting our gutters, we would rather go and dance ourselves senseless at HOLY GHOST RETREATS; and we pretend not to know why we are dying of easily curable diseases.
We would rather dance or beg than work.
We would rather party than read books.
We would rather celebrate than think.
Mental, intellectual and physical lethargy is our main problem and this is the truth that our leaders should be bold enough to tell us.
In almost everything we do, we always seek the easiest way out.
Take a look around and see the number of NGOs our compatriots have shamelessly set up to solicit Western, Asian and Arabian money under one pretense or another!
We have absolutely no self-respect whatever as we are ever prepared to self-flagellate ourselves for whatever crumbs the Arab, the Asian or the European are willing to dole out to us.
And we pretend not to understand why others continue to treat us with contempt even in our land!
While the rest of humanity is making giant strides in creating things to make life more comfortable, our lives continue to be ruled by ignorance and superstitions.
We still believe the fiction that bad lucks are caused by witches and wizards and could be banished by olive oil.
In this age and time, spiritual leaders still have the audacity to tell us the ignoble lie that a god created a devil to torment our lives, and that that devil could be expelled by bathing in sea water!
We must certainly be the last species of humanity that still believe that barrenness could be cured by reciting some psalms and the tying of a talisman around a waist!
What is particularly galling is that our rulers continue to live far and above the poverty line they set for the rest of us.
Or do our dear presidents go to bed on empty stomachs? And do they and their families lack the facilities to cater for their health? Or when was the last time our dear leaders slept in darkness or failed to make an emergency telephone call?
If our dear leaders enjoy all these comforts without divine intervention, they have no business pulling the wool over eyes by asking us to beg a god in order to enjoy what is considered basic in most of the other countries.
Instead of telling us stupid lies about gods intervening in the affairs of men, our elected leaders should tell us why:
A poor country like ours continues to pay fantastic salaries and emoluments to Ministers and special assistants. (To give an example, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, one of the world’s richest nations, live in his own house and drive his own car when he is not on official duty. And so do all his Ministers).
An impoverished country like Ghana needed such expensive presidential cavalcade. (Again to give the example of the Netherlands, only the queen of that country travel with a motorcade and police escort).
A country like Ghana makes it her business to give car loans to parliamentarians. (In the Netherlands, a car loan for an MP is strictly the business of the MP and his car dealer and bank manager, period).
Why on earth a nation with no national airline acquired two presidential jets.
I have said it and I repeat it here that we in Africa will start to make headway in life only when we can compel our rulers to live on the same level they set for the rest of us.
“We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this year’s fact. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years.” – Robert Green Ingersoll
PS: Will someone kindly tells me what, amidst our overwhelming squalor and general impoverishment is there to be grateful and thankful to any god about!
About the Author
Femi Akomolafe is a passionate Pan-Africanist. A columnist for the Accra-based Daily Dispatch newspaper and ModernGhana, and Correspondent for the New African magazine, Femi lives in both Europe and Africa, and writes regularly on Africa-related issues for various newspapers and magazines.
Femi was the producer of the FOCUS ON AFRICANS TV Interview programme for the MultiTV Station.
He is also the Man and Machine Coordinator at Alaye Dot Biz Limited, a Kasoa-based Multimedia organisation that specialises in Audio and Video Production. He loves to shoot and edit video documentaries.
His highly-acclaimed books (“Africa: Destroyed by the gods,” “Africa: It shall be well,” “18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories” and “Ghana: Basic Facts + More”) are available for sales at the following bookshops/offices:
- Freedom Bookshop, near Apollo Theatre, Accra.
- The Daily Dispatch Office, Labone – Accra
- WEB Dubois Pan-African Centre, Accra
- Ghana Writers Association office, PAWA House, Roman Ridge, Accra.
- African Kitchen in Amsterdam Bijlmer
Where to buy them online:
On Lulu Books:
18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories https://goo.gl/Skohtn
Ghana: Basic Facts + More: https://goo.gl/73ni99
Africa: Destroyed by the gods: https://goo.gl/HHmFfr
Africa: It shall be well: https://goo.gl/KIMcIm
Africa: it shall be well
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Africa: Destroyed by the gods
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My Lulu Books page: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/FemiAkomolafe
Get free promotional materials here:
- Africa: it shall be well: http://alaye.biz/africa-it-shall-be-well-introduction-in-pdf/
A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: It shall be well’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-it-shall-be-well-a-free-chapter/
- Africa: Destroyed by the gods (How religiosity destroyed Africa) http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-introduction/
A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: Destroyed by the gods’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-free-chapter/
Contact Femi:
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Kindly help me share the books’ links with your friends and, grin, please purchase your copies.
Comradely,
Femi Akomolafe
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