Every human being is endowed with power of creativity. The harnessing of life energy has been around from the earliest times of humanity. Sadly in Africa, the power is rarely harnessed for our development because of bad leadership that fails to provide enabling platform for its children to flourish.
As a child in the village, we made telephone from milk can and thread before we even knew a device called telephone existed. And we finally saw one, we just stared in awe!
Growing up in the village, we created our on toys using the raw material around us, but we never progressed beyond that crude invention to quality products. Why? Because of bad leadership that fails to encourage.
This is 21st Century, majority of Africans still live in 18th Century. Omolanke still competes with M'olue on our Nigeria city roads. We don't make anything but consume everything made by others. We do not suffer from poverty of imagination, we are conditioned to accept our condition without a fight because we are lazy and our minds are corrupt. We used to assemble automobiles but we failed to extract (steal) the technology to make something we can call our own. We used to assemble Volkswagen and slap "Igala" on it making it our brand, and the Whiteman just laughed at us! There's more Mercedes Benz on our deplorable roads than you will find in Germany. Our universities produce more engineers than there are in Great Britain, yet none has attempted/succeeded in making a bicycle spoke we can tag Made in Nigeria.
What's so remarkable about these kids building a billard? Is pool game an African invention? And, even if it were, what a crude joke this is? Of course, this young boy would excel in pool games, perhaps beat a White player to pulp if given the chance, because he has had to learn under a very harsh and challenging environment. And so what? Is it not the same way Africans excel in all human endeavors when taking out Africa. Even Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a slave came back well seasoned in Bible to spread Christian religion. Isn't that something?
Boasting about pyramid and those ancient inventions is getting old. It's time to move beyond the old into qualitative new status like our old counterparts - India, Brazil, Korea, Chile have done, and stop boasting about this sort of nonsense.
Hey, I fancy the way this boy holds the stick and his intensity. He seems to know his stuff. He's going to be a fabulous player someday if he's ever luck to get out of this dump!
By Olu Olaoye
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