IMF-SAPEN

“Do not be ashamed of your poverty unless you got it dishonestly.” – Anon.

According to those who should know, humanity began in Africa about five point five million years ago when varieties of Australopithecus separated from their monkey cousins.

Through gradual gradation, we moved from that lowly beginning to what we call ourselves today – Homo sapiens, (supposedly thinking beings).

A new species of the human genus has evolved. Future researchers will again place its birthplace in Africa and time at circa the late 20th and early 21st century.

Morphologically, physically, genetically, mentally and intellectually the IMF-SAPIEN is the equal of the HOMO-SAPIEN.

In fact, future anthropologists will have big-time difficulties distinguishing the two species.

What, then, are the characteristics of the IMF-SAPIEN that made it a distinct specie?

To recognize an IMF-SAPIEN, we have to go beyond the physical sciences.

Neither biology, nor geology, nor anthropology, nor archaeology, nor chemistry will help us.

Only in its behavior does an IMF-SAPIEN differ from a HOMO-SAPIEN.

Only by studying their behaviors can we make a distinction between the two species.

We thus move away from the domain of physiology and enter the province of psychology.

How, then, do we properly recognize an IMF-SAPIEN?

Many features distinguish the IMF-SAPIENS from other species of the human genus.

Below we list some of the easily recognizable traits of IMF-SAPIENism, though not necessarily in any specific order:

The most significant trait is that the IMF-SAPIEN is a colonial being.

A colonial would be an adequate description of one under colonial domination, but an IMF-SAPIEN goes way-way beyond that.

For starters, a colonial subject always harbors the HOPE of gaining his (we are not being sexist here) freedom. He considers is position unnatural, and he is full of hope of freedom.

IMF-SAPIENS on the other hand has abandoned all hope of salvation.

Our unfortunate cousin does not believe himself capable of self-redemption; he considers his position the natural order sanctioned by the gods.

In fact, an IMF-SAPIEN appears satisfied with his lowly, colonial, lot.

Having abandoned any hope for self-redemption, the IMF-SAPIEN waits, with child-like helplessness, for others to come and rescue him.

Your average Homo Sapien knows that it’s stupid to be nice to those who do not know how to appreciate the gesture, never mind to reciprocate it, not so with an IMF-SAPIEN.

He keeps giving even when his generosity is used to lampoon him. He would rather starve than allow a stranger to go hungry. Centuries of ingratitude has not dulled his sense of mis-guided altruism

An IMF-SAPIEN sits on vast wealth whilst living in wretched poverty.

Few will contest the fact that Africa is the world’s most resources-rich continent.

How then do we explain the strange phenomena of our continent being the worlds’ beggar and the world’s basket case?

How do we explain why Africans are the world’s most malnourished, the worst clothed and the most poorly housed people on earth?

We need not mention the simple truth that we are the worst educated and the most ignorant.

How do we explain the strange phenomenon that makes Africans the lowliest of the world’s lowly wherever we live?

Why are UN pamphlets on hunger and starvation always adorn with pictures of Africans?

The IMF-SAPIEN has long stopped thinking. He has long abandoned efforts to solve his own problem. He has left his salvation and redemption to others. He has folded up his arms in abandonment and has left it for others to analyze and proffer solutions to his problems.

This can be the only explanation we have for the uncountable NGOs, institutions and Think Tanks Westerners have set up to maintain their stranglehold on our lives in Africa.

Or where is it possible to breath nowadays in Africa without a Western NGO telling us how to do it?

The IMF-SAPIEN is ravaged by poverty to the point of intellectual inertia.

He accepts without protest when others insulted him with their mis-analyses of his problems.

He believes when told that his problems are lack of democracy (he should have questioned why his situation hasn’t improved after over two decades of democratic experimentation). Let someone tell me what dividend Nigerians have gained from their democracy.

He accepts without murmur that his problem stemmed from the corruption of his government (he should have asked how the Americans’, Italians’, Chinese, and Japanese’ economies boomed in spite of their frequent corruption scandals).

He receives it solemnly when told that ‘bad governance’ is his major palaver; it never occurred to our unlucky cousin to ask what the nebulous term is supposed to infer?

Our IMF-SAPIEN cousin believes that over-population is at the root cause of his destitution (he should have questioned why that is not a problem in say, Holland, where about nineteen million human beings crammed themselves into a real-estate of forty-thousand square kilometers versus Sudan where a land-mass of two point five million square kilometers is populated by only about twenty-two million people. And that Angolans eleven million people have over one million square kilometers in contrast to the almost eighty million Germans who share about three-hundred and fifty-six thousand square kilometers.)

Oh yes, an IMF-SAPIEN loves titles and nothing pleases him more than to hold political office.

Whether or not it is a political office totally bereft of any real power or authority, the IMF-SAPIEN is contented to hold his sham office.

He loves aplomb and pageantry to no end. To make his day, give him a small piece of real estate, throw in a flag, an anthem, and equip some rag-tag band of delinquent ruffians with museum pieces and call it a national army, our strange cousin will find nothing ironic in celebrating his sham independence.

Adorning himself with all the brass and epaulets money can buy, he will be seen vibrating with joy on ‘Liberation day!’

Everyone the IMF-SAPIEN invites to his house is having the best time of their lives, whilst he continues to exist in grinding poverty and mendicancy: This is among the most obvious signs of IMF-SAPIENism.

Any society largely populated by IMF-SAPIEN is immediately recognizable by the fact that the aboriginals are always at the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

As pointed to, supra, the IMF-SAPIEN sits on vast natural wealth but does not benefit from them in any tangible way.

It is thus left for foreigners to exploit these resources for their own benefits. The IMF-SAPIEN lives in rat-infested, mosquito overwhelmed and vermin-plagued hovels in slum and ghost towns (a ghost town is a ghetto inside a ghetto); the foreigners live in walled mansions in ‘exclusive’ suburbs.

The IMF-SAPIEN crammed himself (44 sitting, 99 standing – apologies to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti), into ancient jalopies (trotro in Ghana, molue in Nigeria and matatu in Kenya) whilst the foreigner tool around his towns in the latest designer high-tech 4*4 jeeps.

What is also easily apparent to visitors is the fact that almost all the foreigners in his land are having the best times of their lives, whilst the IMF-SAPIENS wallow in abject poverty.

Or has anyone ever seen a European, Arab or Asian living in any of our numerous shantytowns, ghettoes and ghost towns in Africa?

An IMF-SAPIEN does not grow what he eats: Present-day keen observers and future archeologists will notice this unique feature of the IMF-SAPIENS immediately.

This being is easily recognizable by his eating habits. His foods consist of imported items: British mad cow beef, expired Australian poultry products, European foot and mouth diseased pig feet (yuk!), expired Dutch and Swiss milk products have become staple food of our unfortunate cousin.

Our strange cousin believes himself civilized by the numbers of ‘Fast (junk) Food’ outlets in his land! That these foods give him debilitating (diabetics, stroke, heart) diseases has not dissuaded our unfortunate cousin from consuming them with gusto.

Strangely our cousin, who has absolutely no conception of time, likes to eat at Fast Food joints!

IMF-SAPIEN does not eat what he grows: Like almost all other colonial-subjects, the labor of the IMF-SAPIEN is not employed in producing food for himself and his family.

No. His heavy muscles are engaged in producing what they tell him is cash crop. (If IMF-SAPIEN is capable of asking questions, he should have asked where the cash is, that he had employed his labor in producing over the years).

He should also have asked why it is possible for people who only push pen around in Paris and London to make more money that he, who slave upward of twelve hours a day in tropical sun to farm and produce cocoa.

Our weird cousin hates his culture. As Apostle Paul said in his Epistle to the Ghanaians 20:05: ‘By their taste for foreign culture, ye shall know them.’

A society populated by IMF-SAPIENS must be a miniature (actually a caricature) of the metropolitan (dominating) power.

The IMF-SAPIEN has lost touch with his roots and most of his energies are employed in running away as fast as possible from his cultural roots.

Not only would an IMF-SAPIEN not speak his language but also, in speaking a foreign language, he must use foreign tones, mannerisms, inflections etc, etc.

A properly evolved IMF-SAPIEN would rather die than bear his traditional name.

Traditional African names have meanings and sometimes long history behind them; today many African felt no shame to bear totally ridiculous and meaningless foreign names.

The IMF-Sapiens’s mannerism consists entirely of mimicking other cultures.

Anything foreign is OK for the IMF-SAPIEN as long as it does not remind him of his own culture or traditions.

You can easily know when you get to a society of properly-evolved IMF-SAPIENS – Just listen to the leader talking to his people.

A well evolved IMF-SAPIEN society is the only place on earth where the rulers are addressing the ruled in a foreign language!

In these societies, no one sees anything wrong or ironic in societies where leaders address their own people in a foreign language!

Let us now consider the structures of the society inhabited by IMF-SAPIENS, albeit briefly.

The most notable feature of this society is structures (political, economic, social, sociological and psychological) erected that have no traditional or cultural base.

The political and economic institutions of IMF-Sapien’s society are based on alien, imported structures.

IMF-SAPIENS has long abandoned their traditional systems of governance and economic activities.

Their system of social organization is imported in its entirety.

What’s baffling is that the IMF-SAPIEN failed to grasp why these structures, which he badly-misunderstood, are failing him.

As mentioned supra, the IMF-SAPIEN is running away from his roots as fast as possible, we find him junketing from one foreign country to the other seeking solutions to his local problem.

Those who pretend to be helping him are swarming his land with their unemployed and unemployable youth, thereby solving their own unemployment problems at the expense of our unfortunate cousin.

We thus find the peculiar situation whereby those who created the problems are proffering the solutions.

This happens only in a thoroughly evolved IMF-SOCIETY.

In the sphere of spirituality, the IMF-SAPIEN is a lost soul.

Religion has been properly defined as the deification of the ancestors.

Every society creates its own religion and creates its own gods in its own image.

Not so for our peculiar and wonderful cousin.

As Apostle Paul warned in his Epistle to the Nigerians 20:05, “By their worship of foreign gods, ye shall know them.”

With alacrity, our strange cousin made a bonfire of the images of his gods. With stunning speed, he adorned his temples with the images of other people’s gods.

How else to explain the burning by Africans of the wooden images of their own gods, only to replace them with the plastic images of a blond, blue-eyed European nailed to a cross in obvious agony?

No properly-evolved IMF-SAPIEN finds anything ironic in adorning his walls with the picture of a Caucasian Jesus the Christ – even one painted by the Italian artist Michelangelo!

Nothing makes our cousin giddier than imitating the religious rituals of other people.

Our cousin is at his best elements when he can recite off his head the ‘holy books’ of other people religions.

Our unfortunate cousin sees nothing wrong in adopting badly-copied religions of his ancestors in Egypt – both Islam and Christianity evolved from Judaism,which is nothing but ideological variant of Ancient Egyptian Religion.

The leaders of IMF-SAPIEN societies love titles, ceremonies and speech making, though not necessarily in that order.

The sight of the maximum leader spewing rhetorical verbiage on the television and the radios and the newspapers daily confronts a visitor to any IMF-SAPIEN’s society.

In these societies, the leader is the state and the state is the leader.

The only other personage competing with the maximum leader for coverage is invariably the numero uno’s wife.

Go and ask Mevrouw Kibaki in Kenya or Madam Goodluck in Nigeria.

Leaders of IMF-SAPIEN societies are simply beyond irony. The opulent live-styles enjoyed by these leaders bear no relationship whatsoever to the poverty suffer by the masses of the people they are leading. This is the only explanation we can adduce for the nauseating sight of well-fed African leaders, resplendent in the best attires money can buy, meeting annually and pontificating about their people’s suffering.