By ABEL JOHNGOLD ORHERUATA
Prof. Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba, of PLO Lumumba Foundation, Nairobi Kenya, has noted that it is time to make Education in Africa count for Africans not to be ignored in the committee of Nations.
Lumumba stated this in his Delta State University (DELSU), Abraka, 30th Anniversary Lecture, he delivered today to a mammoth crowd cut across the country that besieged the 1000 capacity Lecture Theater, Site III Abraka.
He asked why would African not be ignored in the committee of Nations when we have Engineers but we cannot produce our cars, Agriculturists but we cannot feed ourselves, Doctors but we cannot treat ourselves, that Africa is very hot but we need Air conditioners from China.
Lumumba, who assured African students of a brighter future, expressed worries of inferiority at those who did their first degrees, Masters Degrees and Ph:Ds in African Universities, but the moment they acquired two months course abroad, they would begin to showcase it at any slightest opportunity and even prefer showing up with the Alumni stickers of the two months certificate course school than the African school that moulded them.
The DELSU @ 30th Anniversary Lecture Guest Speaker, who noted that DELSU is doing very well but should strive harder because a man that has not seen an ocean would be thinking that the lake in his father’s compound is a very big ocean, insisted that it’s time for Africa to start celebrating their own.
Reviewing the era of colonisation, how white men made us change our names, convinced Africans that when they speak a foreign language they would be considered educated, and that when they abandoned their culture they would be considered refined, he affirmed his love for God, but wished that the many churches in Africa were industries.
While yelling that Africa has a very wrong knowledge about God, Lumumba noted that “the last time manna fell from heaven was in the Bible times, now God has given us brain to rack and think, no amount of prayers would have put a phone in our hand for example”.