Something is wrong with the African race and those called “blacks” except those Africans who have broken free from the bondage of history.

I may not be able to wrap my head around what it truly is but something is wrong with Africa which is why Africa and other “black nations” of the world like Jamaica, Haiti, and the rest are completely backward.

Africa is not the only colonized continent.
Africa is not the only place where slavery was sought for. Before it became a thing in Africa, many other nations had their fair share of slavery.

Why does it seem that Africans are trapped in a time warp where the only thing we want to talk about is the past and not the future? History should be able to tell us who we were and not who we are. Why does it seem that the only topic that interests us is “ethnicity, colonialism, slavery, and the culture of our ancestors” when there are a whole lot of things out there for us?

Several nations of the world had their past, they had a culture that their fathers practiced but today, while they appreciate their history, they have moved on. Sometimes, history is the story of your ancestors but not your own story. You can appreciate the past but you shouldn’t be a prisoner of the past.

What is holding nations of Africa back is that we are prisoners of the past. We still hold bitterness in our hearts against the whites for colonialism and slavery. We still want to go back to the primitive cultures of our fathers that would have been relevant in their days but very irrelevant today, we are still trapped in labels called “ethnicity”.

Whatever ethnicity we are today was a mixture of diverse people from diverse places. What we know as the Igbo people today is made up of diverse people from diverse places just as Hausa and Yorubas. But because we are prisoners of these labels, we can’t appreciate our future as Nigerians. Nigeria should be our new ethnicity but that is impossible because we are too divided. Why are we divided? Because we are prisoners of the past and not the future.

Until we learn to appreciate who we were but never be bound by it, we may not truly evolve to be taken very seriously by those who have already moved on from the past. While Nigerians in the UK, US, Canada, and some other Western countries are already being elected into political offices without anyone asking them what their ethnicity is, we are still struggling in Nigeria to accept people who are not from our place of origin. Why won’t we make poor leadership choices when the first thing we look at when casting our vote is “ethnicity”?

Yes, I am Igbo, and proudly so. But no, I am not bound by that label, I am not a prisoner of the life of my ancestors. They lived their own lives and I am permitted to live mine. They lived their truth and I am permitted to live mine. They have already passed down their DNA to me and I think that’s enough to make me Igbo. I don't have to wear their clothes, worship their gods, or do some rituals including the inhumane ones to be Igbo. I am much as Igbo as anyone else who is Igbo.

I have nothing against anybody for being from another ethnic group. I believe that our ethnicity only tells the story of where we are coming from but not where we are going. When I look at people, the first thing that comes to my mind is that they are human and not their ethnicity. We may not share the same language but we share the same humanity, the same country, the same continent, same world.

Not every African thinks like I do because not every African has broken free from being a slave of the past. So, I will not let the opinions of those who are prisoners and slaves of the past and labels change my mind. I don't care how many Yorubas or Hausas use derogatory words about my ethnicity, it will not change my own opinion about humans regardless of their ethnicity because I cannot go so low with them. So, I believe in the Yoruba or Hausa man as much as I believe in the Igbo man.

I am not a prisoner to the experiences of my ancestors. Colonialism, slavery, racism, and the war that they experienced are all stories that must not be written off but I will not be a prisoner of that story, I will not be in a perpetual torment of bitterness because of the story of my ancestors. They have lived and gone and now, it’s time I live my own life.

We must evolve.