I understand the passion, my friend.
I was in Lagos on Bar Beach during the coup of Yakabu Gowon when the dissidents were tied to stakes and shot - not once, but several times to please the bloodthirsty crowd who had dressed in their finest and waited several hours for the event.
I was in Lagos when a curfew was in force at 8:00 P.M., and anyone caught outside after that time was shot.
I saw the bodies of the street people tossed into trucks in the mornings to be taken to the bay off Ikoyi Island for the sharks to eat.
I've stepped over people lying on the sidewalks dying of cholera and come back an hour later to see them dead with no one noticing their passing.
I've been propositioned by an eight year old girl to give me oral sex in exchange for enough kobos for a chunk of bread.
To give her money was to guarantee her death by the scores of bigger kids waiting to take it away.
I've witnessed the squalor and filth in Nairobi, Kenya, whose main source of income is tourism.
I've witnessed the graft and corruption in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where the local government had stored tons of grain donated by the US to feed the poor.
The grain was sold to an English entrepreneur who resold it back to the local government who then resold it to the people - all in a successful effort to cover their tracks.
I've seen the people in the bush beating back the jungle to plant their yams in every conceivable spot to have some hope that they could escape starvation.
I've seen the hatred of tribe against tribe when nothing would satisfy them but complete genocide.
And some American blacks want reparations??!
They should be on their knees every day thanking God that their ancestors were delivered into slavery!