God’s Prophetic agenda for Africa
By Theodore Effiong
Cross River Latter Rain Mission: UK
ISBN 1-902-689-054

THE success and failures of African governments have less to do with spirituality and more to do with the dirty game of politics.
Preachers old and new in Africa are often faced with a challenge that Western preachers do not encounter that is to explain to their congregants why God does not seem to care for Africa.
“Our African grand-parent Ham was not blessed, so he did not have a legacy of blessing for us but left us instead with a deep hunger and thirst which pushes us on everywhere in search of a blessing …we get fascinated by huge rocks, big trees and rivers and so give them our worship,” Nigerian Reverend Theodore Bassey Effiong responds.
Reverend Effiong in his book God’s Prophetic Agenda for Africa writes that Africa is where it is today because we are the descendants of a cursed ancestor that is Ham the son of Noah
Effiong reinforces the argument used by preachers of old and the West to justify their occupation and looting of the continent.
When the queen of England sent the first looters to Africa, they had a preacher and an economist although they declared that their voyage was a civilising mission to preach ‘good news’ to the people.
Soon after arrival their sermons were laced with verses such as ‘blessed are the meek’ and ‘blessed are the poor’ delivered to make the locals ‘forget about earthly treasures’.
It is and always has been all about economics.
The preacher quotes Genesis 9, where the scriptures say Noah drank wine, and in his drunken stupor he lay down naked.
His second born son Ham, (the father of Africa), entered his tent and beheld the nakedness of his own father.
After seeing the nakedness of his own father, he went out and broadcasted it to his brethren.
He exposed his fathers’ nakedness to them instead of quietly retreating and covering him up as Shem and Japheth did.
Noah then went on to curse Canaan the son of Noah that his offspring would be servants to Japheth and Shem.
Therefore poverty, corruption, Idolatry, witchcraft, water spirits, tribalism, occultism nepotism that are found in Africa are a result of the curse bestowed upon black people by God through Noah.
The worst atrocities in the history of mankind have been committed by colonisers during occupation like Belgian King Leopold the second where he carried out mass murders and mutilations in order to collect resources like rubber and other minerals.
It is said almost 10 million Congolese nationalities were murdered.
Hence what is left behind is a shell of a people traumatised, victimised and corrupted by violence then asked to forget it and carry on as if nothing happened.
Infact, they are reminded by the Bible and men of cloth that what they are enduring is a result of a curse by God who decided to punish an entire race for millenniums.
Yet Western congregations are constantly reminded that they are the descendants of Japheth and Shem, the blessed sons of father Noah.
Africa has ‘despots’ and ‘dictators’ in our history like the Congolese former president Mobutu Sese Seko because the continent is cursed by a demonic spirit from Nimrod the son of Ham who was said to be the most vile man and king in the history of Christianity.
The preacher does not state that a good leader who stood for the development of his country like Patrice Lumumba had been assassinated by the Western so-called blessed offspring and replaced with a more ‘pliable’ Mobutu Se Se Seko who would give them room to loot.
Leaders who agitate for the advancement of their own people like Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah were quickly despised as dictators only to get heroic status decades are their death by the same people that removed him.
The likes of our very own President Mugabe who has pushed more for economic emancipation than most leaders in Africa is vilified not just by international players but also locals who believe the redemption of Africa lies with the offspring of Japheth.
The writer rightly quotes scholar Walter Rodney who wrote that an estimate of 20 million African slaves were exported to the Western world.
He also goes to add that the continent is not only riddled with billions of World Bank debt but goes on to blame Africans for their inadequacies.
Every developing nation is encouraged or ‘persuaded’ to take loans with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The Bretton Woods institutions who were created as loan sharks to further develop Europe then force nations to take economic adjustment programmes that include them taking a loan that will keep them in debt for generations.
These programmes are not suited for developing economies and in many cases if not all the countries’ economies fall and the countries fail to repay the debt as happened in Zimbabwe in the 90’s.
Stripped, looted, trodden the African is reminded that all of these are because one ancestor saw his father’s nakedness and the entire race was doomed.
The writer naively believes that the descendants of Japheth were “blessed with God fearing leaders and God glorifying bills were made and passed which uplifted the life of their nations.”
These god fearing leaders have waged war with innocents just so they can loot resources for example the Iraq and Afghani wars where thousands were killed under false pretexts.
The preacher misses the point that the success of the West has nothing to do with their closeness to God but rather decades of greed, looting, enslavement which resulted in cheap labour using the same verse to justify their atrocities.
The writer concludes his book saying Africa will rise despite the millennium curse as God has finally moved to pardon the continent.