Persuasive Speech on behalf of the Ibo culture at the Royal Colonial Institute

Good evening all, 
   What an honour! Nothing gives me more exhilaration than being here today, surrounded by such a afternoonified audience. 

We are gathered here today to discuss my expedition to the “lands of the savages”, and while we are aware of the stories that have generated from missionaries such as Reverend Samuel Ajayi Crowther, however  this speech may make a stuffed bird laugh, it is important for us as a nation to admit that the colonisation may have been a shot to the brown, I was left absolutely Poked Up after a eye-opening and quite frankly an adventure that was  Nanty Narking. 

The Igbo people form one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. In addition, did you all know that their language has dozens of dialects? Of course you didn’t. Are you all aware of the social and and political structures that the Igbo people have? And many of you are asking, why is an English man bringing this up? Joseph Chamberlain regarded that every European power that possessed the colonies was seen as a possessions valuable to the mother country.  But we disregard that these are countries, cultures, religions and human beings, not possessions! 

I arrived in Nigeria with a British mindset and left with a human one. I was exposed to new things, new cultures, new situations and new people. I was accepted with open arms, not because of who I was, not because of the fear I imposed due to my superior skin. I was accepted because it was a ritual among the Igbo people to do so.  

There is a reason that we are all congregated here today. We are colonisers, we set up headquarters and bases of operations within the African land to help support our great country. But what we have failed to realise is that the only savages in Africa are the ones that came in, uninvited;  riding in with  our ships and materials.. but the worst thing that these savages brought to Africa was their uncooperative ideologies that almost saw an entire culture, an entire religion and an entire world go into extinction. We don’t think about such things, mainly because we are not the ones that suffer through the idea of colonisation.
 
I will leave you all with this thought, “ We feel now that our rule over these territories can only be justified if we can show that it adds to the happiness and prosperity of the people” said by Joseph Chamberlain. We are experts when it comes to the benefits of ourselves, however we are failures when it comes to labelling the Africans as “Savages” when  in reality the only unpardonable act has come within ourselves.