STAGE THREE

STAGE THREE

The third stage of colonization is now in progress. This is part of a ten-stage program of total obliteration.

At the onset of the first stage, the colonizer attacked us violently and mercilessly, killing our leaders and taking our land.

At this first stage, they directly rule us and live on our land, openly displaying their weapons of destruction to threaten us and remind us that they are capable of obliterating us and willing to wipe us off the face of the earth at the slightest provocation.

It is at this stage that we are taught that we owe our very existence to their goodwill and that our very land, peace, freedom and happiness come from their generosity and mercy.

They become mightier than our gods.

It is at this first stage that we invent names such as Oguntoyinbo, meaning Ogun, our divinity of industry is comparable to our colonizers, but certainly not greater.

In the second stage, they denigrate our language and degrade our language, in the process of taking it from us.

They compel us to regard our language as a local language and theirs as the international or global language of expression.

They instruct us that those who are worthy of discussing with are not our people in the local environment, but those who live far away from us, in distant lands such as Europe, America and Asia.

They shift the focus of our conversation and vision away from our vicinity and make us cast our gaze, and shape our tongue to speak foreign languages.

They reward those among us who best speak these foreign languages and punish those unable to do so by shaming them, depriving them of jobs, economic prosperity, and social advancement.

It is also during the second stage that they rename our land, rename our people, rename our plants, rename our rivers, rename our institutions and give us foreign gods to worship while changing our indigenous languages.

During this second stage, the colonizers succeed in chaining our minds.

Then comes the third stage, in which it is no longer necessary for the colonizers to live among us. They return to their countries, after establishing their ways, politics, economics, military, religion, and all other institutions among us.

Most importantly, they impose on us rulers who follow their strict instructions.

They watch these rulers very closely. They build embassies and consulates on our lands, and maintain a military presence to consolidate their powers and compromise the authorities of these local leaders, who are nothing more than their puppets.

They make it appear that we are in power, and we are the ones choosing our leaders and in charge of our lives.

But we forget that they have already taken everything away from us, including our value systems of judgment, and that we stand on our land like a dead tree already hollowed out inside by termites, just waiting for the wind to blow and uproot it.

This is the third stage of colonialism.

And we are currently at this third stage of a ten-stage program.