By Jude Atupulazi
Africans, especially Igbos, have been charged to look no farther for God than in their fellow man.
This charge was given by an Igbocentric scholar and Founder of Nkolo Mahadum (Wisdom University), Dr Obiora Mba, a U.S. based pharmacist.
Speaking to newsmen about the mission of his virtual university, Mba decried what he termed the miseducation of Africans by the White Man whom he accused of imposing his beliefs on Africans, forcing them to jettison theirs.
He said his university was championing awareness for Africans so they could be saved from what he called mental slavery.
Quarreling with some concepts of God, heaven and hell, Mba said that God was in man, while heaven or hell was determined by the state of mind.
According to him, anyone who did good for another person was the person’s God and when the receiver felt happy for what was done for him, that person was in heaven.
Conversely, he posited that anyone who wronged a fellow man was a devil or Satan and the unhappy state of mind of the person wronged was tantamount to being in hell.
“We realized that we Africans, Igbo people, especially ,were not adequately educated, we are miseducated; we’re misinformed,” Dr. Mba said, while encouraging Africans to embrace critical thinking by making use of what he called their Ako N’Uche (common sense).
“This is what our university tries to teach,’ he said of his institution which operates as an open university without requiring special examinations like the one conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculate Board (JAMB).
He criticized the current system of governance and education in Africa, attributing it to colonialism and creation of artificial boundaries.
“The concept of heaven and hell is that on this earth we are living, there is no place called heaven that when you die, you will go there; just as there is no place that we are living that is called hell that you go when you die,” he contended.
Dr. Mba therefore described heaven as a state of happiness and normalcy, and hell, a state of discomfort and unhappiness, caused by human actions rather than a supernatural entity.
“When a human being is doing good to you; you are in heaven; if somebody is giving you money to solve your problems, you are in heaven. Whomever that is making you happy in that normal Homeostasis is your God,” he explained, amid the possibility of being seen as a heretic.
He therefore urged man to see his fellow man as God and do good to him.
