There is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness, and darkness is not a subject of history. Very painful phenomena and this calls for sustained battle by the African media, who are currently positioned to free Africa from the ethnocentrism of yesteryears, to correct such ignorance. And Thomas Jefferson, the American founding father denied Africans of capacity for great poetry. Among the blacks is the misery enough, God knows, but no poetry.
Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet.
Religion, indeed, has a Phyllis Wheatley, but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published under name are below the dignity of criticism. And the same goes for the Westerners denial of Africans ability to philosophize and some Africans like Leopold Senghor, the former President of Senegal, had perpetuated this. Senghor had stated elsewhere that Africans are good at expressing emotions while the Europeans are good at thinking. Prof. Ajayi are increasingly taking up the study of Africa and that the physical presence of Africans in the world is expanding demographically but how this will consolidate or contradict the ancient negative stereotypes is yet to be seen.