The ultimate task of the media and the writer is, I supposed, “to present the truth always and void of prejudice or personal feud” (Timothy Bakole). Perhaps that, I should swiftly contend, is the ‘false’ morally upright narrative systematically fed to the conforming constitute of Africans and beyond. The above decent portrayal of the role of the media, especial by the West contradicts the reality obtained in practice.
Information is a weapon, a source of power, and a mechanism of control because it dictates how the people perceive issues and react to events around them. Understanding this, a host of information and a series of western media and government propositions are slowly instilled by these imperialist powers into the minds of the Africans and the rest of the citizens of the world through various covert means and results to shape a super negative vision of the world about Africa and black people in general.
The first step in attaining this ignoble agenda commences with establishing total dominance for sources of information, and the second is the construction of a ‘crafted reality’ that serves the purpose of keeping the receiver of the information, dwelling on a false state of reality. This has been, unfortunately, a very thriving colonial and neo-colonial project in Africa facilitated through the radio, newspapers, television, educational institutions, the church, mosque, and lately (but every effectively), through the social media.
This spectacle of a sustained deliberate systematic misinformation campaign by the western media, Eurocentric institutions, and governments, coupled with the robust approval and support of puppet leaders in the continent, has served to continuously miseducate the Africans to hate even themselves, of course unconsciously.
Like the proverbial satire of my late Aya (grandma), no farmer needs to be reminded what the season is…”a battle of the minds.”
I grew up loyal to the radio. At young, trusting every word of its echo line hook and sinker. As I grow, every new set of claims and news echoing from it raises a host of critical questions about my people, self, country, continent, and the world at large, which my faculty was never wise enough to interrogate before.
I would come to realize, inquisitively, that I have been deprived of knowledge about myself, and being shaped through miseducation, to accept the idea that I have no history nor future- to be gaged in the inkling that my forebearers were, and so am I of a barbarous and primitive civilization.
As a result, and as I continue an expedition of self-discovery, it hit me severally that the gravity of crime done to my psyche and many, have shaped an incompatible personality-cognitive dissonance within myself, and many among my people.
This crime against the psyche of many in the continent, is a permanent imperialist agenda, the combined effects of frequent misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda, aggressively aimed at miseducating the neo-colonized, the African. The fact that Western governments and their media organizations boldly and disingenuously continue to peruse a superior mentality narrative in their relationship with Africa, reveals the gravid nature of such a dastardly agenda and confirmed the colonial delusion that Africa and Africans are of no worth.
Consequently, when Western media deliberately broadcast or publish negative, unbalanced, half-truths and decadent aspects about Africa and her people it should be understood that such is done in service of a racial, geopolitical-imperialist agenda. Such is the galling, painful, and sickening racial prejudice that black people, Africans continue to endure in the hands of a civilization that has no morality left in its fibre but continued, in serious contradictions, to preach the same.
This systematic campaign, while deliberate, also speaks to the delusional colonial mentality disorder confronting the West. Of the many aspects of western colonialism and imperialism, they have convinced themselves, characterized the African and Blackman in all negativities possible, and sold fatal falsehood to their people. They engage in false teachings, deceiving their societies that Africa had no history, written or otherwise. Save for its bastardized resources, Africa for them has nothing, but just DARKNESS and everything negative. To solidify these apparent lies, they engaged in “The Destruction of Black Civilization”, to “…Underdeveloped Africa”, undertook projects for the “Miseducation of The Negro” etc.
These self-invested delusions are today haunting the West as it struggles within itself to establish and lead a just and morally upright world (supposedly). The lies, deceptions, disinformation, misrepresentations, and imperialism-driven agenda, as it relates to Africa, are continuously exposed. Nevertheless, they are repudiating letting go of the old odd colonial mentality narrative of racial superiority. For many reasons, but chiefly because this narrative still seats well within the Western populace; furthermore, racialists with racial policies continue to run critical institutions, including Western mass media.
The continuous misrepresentation of facts as an illustration of the reality about Africa, and its people should be a battleground in the arena of struggle for the true emancipation of the continent, her image, and every sphere of human life. This is a battle for all of us, a task especially for the enlighten African minds, because “our past may explain why we’re suffering but we must not use it as an excuse to stay in bondage” (Joyce Meyer). If we are to build a continent with a well-informed dutiful mass, we should confront these racial prejudices in the same manner as colonialism was confronted, fiercely.
All governments of the continent have a stake to play. This negative and essentially anti-black attitude of the Western media must be uncompromisingly and ruthlessly confronted by all responsible governments of the African continent.
