The overwhelming access to American TV in Nigeria is a good thing and a bad thing. It is a good thing because openness to the world and drinking information and knowledge from the rest of the world is always a good thing. It is a bad thing because many of the Nigerians lapping up American television punditry do not know that they are in fact far more knowledgeable about the world than the insular American TV pundits they adore. So, a Nigerian, blissfully unaware of ideological underbellies aimed at denying the very humanity of his black ass, begins to lap up FOX News punditry about the events in Paris. How is this Nigerian to know that the extreme right wing lunatics perorating about Paris on Fox News probably didnt even know that there was a Paris other than the city of Paris in the American state of Texas until last week? So, they begin to talk about the magnanimity and generosity of France in taking in those ungrateful Arab immigrants from Algeria. They blame France for accepting so many of them, ending up now with 5 million actual and potential terrorists. In Lagos, my friend, Sola Kuti, is listening. He is ecstatic. He has been struggling a little too hard to be Nigerias equivalent of FOX News. There is no ignorance going on at FOX News in America that he does not localize for Nigeria. I dont know if he is still into extreme rightwing denials of the kidnapping of the Chibok girls because he spent months railing that no girls were kidnapped. And now that his role models at FOX News are spewing a lot of ignorance about who those 5 million North Africans in France are and how they got there, enter Sola Kuti with his Nigerian version! Denying that anybody died in Baga - as usual, it is merely opposition propaganda to embarrass the President and support Boko Haram - he reprimands Nigerians for not knowing that unlike those northerners who are butchering themselves to embarrass the President in Nigeria, no Frenchman was involved in the Paris massacres. Sola Kuti, no Frenchman was involved in the Paris massacres? O ma se o. This level of ignorance would be tolerable if it was coming exclusively from FOX News. Tolerable because it is expected of them. But when a Nigerian devotee of FOX News begins to spread it, unaware that he is even more knowledgeable than the pundits at FOX, then one must step in to draw the line for him. If you have read one or two books, youd understand the fact that three French Islamist terrorists, Cherif Kouachi, Said Kouachi, and Amedy Coulibaly murdered thirteen of their French compatriots last week. When next Sola Kuti gets off of FOX News to tell you that no French man was involved in the terrorist attacks against Charlie Hebdo, forgive his ignorance but advise him to go back to his history textbooks. Tell him to concentrate on the barbarity of French colonization. Tell him to concentrate on the uses to which France put North African and subsaharan African bodies during her ordeal in the hands of Germany in the World Wars. Tell him to focus on keywords like Harkis, Beur, and Tirailleurs Senegalais if he wants to understand why the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly are 100% NAFDAC-Certified French terrorists. Tell Sola Kuti to start his assignment by watching the movie, The Battle of Algiers. And tell him to read a lot of Frantz Fanon. Tell him that contrary to what he hears on FOX News, the great grandparents of these terrorists did not get to France in the arms of the humanistic generosity and magnanimity of the Republic of France. Tell Sola Kuti that you cannot apportion all the glory of Frenchmen like Zinedine Zidane, Karim Benzema, and Samir Nasri to France and then transfer the murderous and terroristic ignominy of the Kouachi brothers to Algeria. It does not work that way. They are all French. Very very French. Tell Sola Kuti that when an African American commits a crime, we do not go about saying that no American was involved in the crime! Finally, tell Sola Kuti that if he does not arm himself ideologically before listening to FOX News, he will come to believe that African Americans got to the United States in five-star luxury Ocean Cruises in line with American generosity and magnanimity. As for his instinctive politicizing of the corpses in Baga, leave him to his conscience.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 18:11:33 +0000
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