By Nathaniel Dortie
I attended an inter House sports event sometime back at Main Grammar School, Ekiagbodo, in Delta State.
At a side event organised outside the school, some Ijaw boys were organising a drinking competition. “How many litres of real Ogogoro can you consume at a go?” One smallish guy took in almost 4 litres and was still beaming with smiles!
Not long after, another young man within the audience, who was not part of the drinking, got terribly drunk and had to be rushed away.
A friend tapped my shoulder and advised that we leave the environment. “They can transfer the drink into an innocent bystanders’ body” he cautioned. “How can that be possible?”, I queried.
That was over 30 years ago. Long before the manifestation of our present day Bluetooth technology. But our father’s technology has those capabilities. Come to think about it You can Xender your files from one phone to another by Bluetooth.
By definition, Matter is anything that occupy space and has mass. The files you are sending are ‘Matter’ because they occupy spaces in your phone and has mass!
Matter exists in three states; Solid liquid amd gas. These states can interchange. Hence water can change from solid, to liquid and evaporate into a gaseous state with the application of heat!
Also, some matters can change states with the application of hydrogen or other compounds.
Back to our father’s application of this Bluetooth technology. Imagine that our fore father’s have the technology, to transform the Ogogoro from its liquid state, to a gaseous state and then Bluetooth it to another body. Would that not be explainable by science? Yet, we call it Voodoo or Witchcraft!
This phenomenon has not been innovated hence you are likely to call it evil. But Imagine where a patient in the hospital has serious health challenges. The nurses or doctors have no way of tracking the veins to administer intravenous medication.
Imagine that you decided to take the medication and transfer it to the body of the patient.
Would that be an evil usage of our forefathers technology?
Me think that our fore fathers technology require innovation. When the Western world invented the telephone, it was not as convenient as it is today; It was not mobile.But later generations improved on it. So is the steam engine as a fore runner to the fossil fuel engine of today.
Therefore, the failure has been from our generation. Calling such technologies Voodoo or Witchcraft is just excuses for our laziness and failures to add value to our ancestral technologies; failure to innovate!
I think we ought to shelve the mentality of always condemning our indigenous solutions and embracing Western ways. Otherwise, we may never find true development. My humble take!
