Photo quote of the day

IN AFRICA, DOES RELIGION HAVE ANY INFLUENCE IN OUR DEVELOPMENT?

When ‘delicate’ subjects such as religion are thrown up for discussion and it goes against it, the religious climes are heated up and this is often seen as rebellion (MOST ESPECIALLY IN THIS OVERLY RELIGIOUS AFRICA), and the majority of people get aggressively defensive.

This is not due to the fact that they are informed or know the truth about the subject; the reverse is in fact, the case. They hide their ignorance behind the mask of arrogance. One major thing about some of these people is that they are not only ignorant about their history, they also blatantly reject vivid facts and are scientifically and technologically lazy to do research.

Just because these things have been passed down to us by whomever and for a long time doesn't make them any true.

Most people and religion believe in a supreme creator (as do I) and also believe in a mediator of some sort through whom they reach their creator. What is found to be ULTIMATELY AMUSING AND DISGUSTINGLY ANNOYING is the fact that my Africa is blind and has opted to be so by wittingly denying pure crystal clear truth.

In China, the mediator(s) or their God looks Chinese. In India, their God looks Indian. In Europe, their God looks European. Even in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece and others. Zeus has the semblance of a Greek and Horus the semblance of an Egyptian and so it is for the rest of the world as it relates to them. But, it is only in Africa you have a mediator or God who looks completely different from the people. And then, they are told not to question anything whatsoever.

In the words of Marcus Garvey; A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

And when this fundamental truth is brought to them, they outrightly without thoughts dispel this or feel unconcerned. They tell you “’God’ is not a ‘God’ of color” or it doesn’t matter. But it seems that the black man is the only one that does not see this as a mind-control mechanism.

This has the likeness of growing up in a family where your parents do not look like you in any way and you having common sense, but you are either told or refuse to ask the very obvious questions.

How do you worship somebody's 'God' and not subtly worship the person? Just so simple, the brain works by association...Yes, that is how the brain works.

But then, how do you explain this to these sets of people who are miracle hungry and filled with fear;

Educated/literate,poor/rich, and deeply religious

Uneducated/illiterate,poor/rich,and deeply religious

Uneducated/illiterate,lazy thinkers, poor/rich, and deeply religious

Educated/literate and lazy thinkers, poor/rich, and deeply religious?

They are bound to brush aside whatever facts you show and truths you present. Yet, these are youths who ought to know better, leverage on the internet and other sources of information present today!

This goes far beyond sad and Africa needs to wake up from her slumber!!!

HOW HAS RELIGION HELPED AFRICA??

Show me a continent, a nation/people, or a person who have abandoned their originality and progressed... NONE! ZERO! NADA! NO ONE!

Real progress wakes up in the bed of originality. Nobody can dispute this. When a person or people picks up what is not theirs, they spend a great amount of energy and resources defending it rather than living in peace just being it.

Whether it is believed or not, accepted or not,  one of the major problems we have in AFRICA, is that we abandoned our indigenous spirituality (I choose not to call it religion because, across almost all the languages of African origin, there is not a native word for RELIGION) and chase after other people's own. In so doing, we abandoned the real issues of development and are faced with defending religion.

The likes of INDIA and CHINA, in short, the Asian continent are advancing well because they stuck to their religions and tackled other pressing issues when the same people who brought us religion left them.
They learned their technology and rejected their religion because the latter is more important to them. The results are thus obvious world over such that the colonial masters now go to them (in most cases).

For one, if religion is even the basis of progress, with the amount of religious houses and level of religious beliefs in the foreign religions present in Africa, there should have been some form of development.

In Nigeria today, you cannot have a president whose religious belief is not brought to the fore even beyond and above his competence.
Or have any developments in any area without religion coming to play.

I wonder how people can preach to others to stop copying the west, individually in their social lifestyles and then stay stuck copying their religious lifestyle. Is that to say originality works in certain areas and don't work in others?

Africa must wake up!

PHOTO-QUOTE OF THE DAY

THE NOBEL LAUREATES OF AFRICA - KOFI ANNAN

Kofi Atta Annan (born 8 April 1938) is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006. Annan and the United Nations were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world." He is the founder and the Chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as being the chairman of The Elders, a group founded by Nelson Mandela.

From 23 February until 31 August 2012, Annan was the UN–Arab League Joint Special Representative for Syria, to help find a resolution to ongoing conflict there. Annan quit after becoming frustrated with the UN's lack of progress with regard to conflict resolution, stating that "when the Syrian people desperately need action, there continues to be finger-pointing and name-calling in the Security Council". He has been involved in several humanitarian projects and won several awards including the Kora All Africa Music Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.

Secretary-General of the United Nations

Appointment

On 13 December 1996, the United Nations Security Council recommended Annan to replace the previous Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt, whose second term faced the veto of the United States. Confirmed four days later by the vote of the General Assembly, he started his first term as Secretary-General on 1 January 1997. He was reelected for a second term in 2001, which was unusual since this meant a third term for Africa. The Asian states didn't protest although it should have been their turn because Annan was so popular among the UN member states and UN staff.

Activities

Recommendations for UN reform

Millennium Development Goals

The United Nations Global Compact

Establishment of The Global Fund

Responsibility to Protect

Lubbers sexual-harassment investigation

Nobel Peace Prize

In 2001, its centennial year, the Nobel Committee decided that the Peace Prize was to be divided between the United Nations (UN) and Kofi Annan. Annan was awarded the Peace Prize for having revitalized the UN and for having given priority to human rights. The Nobel Committee also recognized his commitment to the struggle to containing the spread of HIV in Africa and his declared opposition to international terrorism.

Farewall Adresses

On 19 September 2006, Annan gave a farewell address to world leaders gathered at the UN headquarters in New York, in anticipation of his retirement on 31 December. In the speech he outlined three major problems of "an unjust world economy, world disorder, and widespread contempt for human rights and the rule of law", which he believes "have not resolved, but sharpened" during his time as Secretary-General. He also pointed to violence in Africa, and the Arab-Israeli conflict as two major issues warranting attention.

On 11 December 2006, in his final speech as Secretary-General, delivered at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, Annan recalled Truman's leadership in the founding of the United Nations. He called for the United States to return to President Truman's multilateralist foreign policies, and to follow Truman's credo that "the responsibility of the great states is to serve and not dominate the peoples of the world". He also said that the United States must maintain its commitment to human rights, "including in the struggle against terrorism."

Kofi Annan Foundation

In 2007, Kofi Annan established the Kofi Annan Foundation, an independent, not-for profit organization which works to promote better global governance and strengthen the capacities of people and countries to achieve a fairer, more peaceful world.

THE NOBEL LAUREATES OF AFRICA - MOHAMMED ElBARADEI

Mohamed Mustafa ElBaradei (born 17 June 1942) is an Egyptian law scholar and diplomat who was the last Vice President of Egypt serving on an acting basis from 14 July 2013 until his resignation on 14 August 2013.He was the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an intergovernmental organization under the auspices of the United Nations, from 1997 to 2009. He and the IAEA were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. ElBaradei was also prominently featured in the Western press regarding relatively recent politics in Egypt, particularly the 2011 revolution which ousted President Hosni Mubarak, and the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état.

Public career as IAEA Director General (1997 - 2009)

ElBaradei began to serve as Director General of the IAEA, which is based in Vienna, on 1 December 1997, succeeding Hans Blix of Sweden.He was re-elected for two more four-year terms in 2001 and in 2005. His third and last term ended in November 2009. ElBaradei's tenure has been marked by high-profile, non-proliferation issues, which include the inspections in Iraq preceding the March 2003 invasion, and tensions over the nuclear program of Iran.

Nobel Peace Prize

On 7 October 2005, ElBaradei and the IAEA were announced as joint recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize for their "efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy, for peaceful purposes, is used in the safest possible way." ElBaradei donated all of his winnings to building orphanages in Cairo. The IAEA's winnings are being spent to train scientists from developing countries to use nuclear techniques in combating cancer and malnutrition. ElBaradei is the fourth Egyptian to receive the Nobel Prize, following Anwar Sadat (1978 in Peace),Naguib Mahfouz (1988 in Literature), and Ahmed Zewail (1999 in Chemistry).

In his Nobel lecture, ElBaradei said that the changing landscape of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament may be defined by the emergence of an extensive black market in nuclear material and equipment, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and sensitive nuclear

technology, and the stagnation in nuclear disarmament. To combat proliferation, ElBaradei has suggested keeping nuclear and radiological material out of the hands of extremist groups, tightening control over the operations for producing the nuclear material that could be used in weapons, and accelerating disarmament efforts. ElBaradei also stated that only one percent of the money spent to develop new weapons would be enough to feed the entire world and that, if we hope to escape self-destruction, nuclear weapons should have no place in our collective conscience and no role in our security.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said that he was delighted that the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to the UN nuclear watchdog and its head, ElBaradei. "The secretary general congratulates him and the entire staff of the agency, past and present, on their contributions to global peace," a spokesman for Annan said.

PHOTO-QUOTE OF THE DAY