(An Awakening for a Lost People)
There is a timeless echo in Fela Anikulapo-Kuti’s 1977 Afrobeat classic, Zombie — a song that satirized blind obedience and the decay of critical thought. Decades later, its message still rings with unsettling truth. The more things change, the more they seem to remain the same.
Once upon a time, near the flowing Niger River, there lived a people — richly diverse in tribe, tongue, and tradition. Despite their differences, they were bound by something greater: humanity.
They valued human dignity, fairness, justice, and love. They danced and celebrated together, knowing that while culture may differ, their shared worth as humans united them. Long before the West coined the phrase human rights, our ancestors lived it.
Their system of justice was guided by wisdom, not wealth. Disputes were settled by elders whose hearts beat for truth. Every verdict was a reflection of communal integrity — sincere, fair, and binding. Their authority did not rest on power but on trust.
But then, something shifted.
Our fall did not begin with the failure of our traditions — it began when self-interest corrupted sincerity. When some among us began to trade truth for personal gain. Brothers sold brothers for mirrors, glass cups, gunpowder — even a pack of chocolate. That was the beginning of our undoing.
From the moment our elders began to paint lies as truth and truth as lies, we lost our moral compass. When we started glorifying wealth without origin, we lost our soul. When we taught our children to blindly revere unworthy elders, we planted the seeds of decay.
And when we began to despise our native wisdom in favor of imported systems that neither understood nor respected us, we invited chaos into our home.
Then came silence — the silence of the masses. We stopped questioning. We stopped thinking. We stopped doing. And in that stillness of the mind, a new breed emerged — Zombies and Loyal Idiots.
These are not the walking dead of horror tales but the living dead of our society — humans whose capacity to reason has been chemically, mentally, and spiritually subdued by forces of greed and manipulation. They move, talk, and live — but without conviction or curiosity. Their purpose is simple: to keep their masters’ power intact, even to their own destruction.
But this sickness is not beyond cure. These zombies and loyal idiots can be healed. The human mind, once reawakened, can never again be enslaved. No spell is strong enough to bind a people united in truth and consciousness.
We must ignite that inner revolution — a total emancipation of our minds and spirits. We must wage war not with guns, but with awareness.
We are victims of a carefully engineered poverty — of body, mind, education, and morality. Poverty that blinds us to our worth and numbs us to our oppression. But we are not hopeless. We are not helpless.
We are humans, not zombies — blessed with will, intelligence, and spirit. The time has come to stop merely demanding a better life and start living the values that create it.
We have walked this dark path for too long. Now we must choose another — one that leads to collective dignity, prosperity, and freedom.
We are the captains of this ship, the generals of this march, the authors of our own destiny. Let us rise — beyond mediocrity, beyond fear, beyond tribal and religious divisions.
Those who hold us down are few; their power thrives on our silence. But they fear our awakening — they fear our unity. They fear the brilliance that will emerge when we rise together.
So rise.
Think.
Question.
Reclaim your mind.
Rebuild your nation.
Not for the few — but for all.
Author: Chris Curtis
Email: chriscurtiswrites@gmail.com
