His assertion, which he lays out thoroughly if you watch the whole video, which I recommend, is that the Africans had never seen a functioning country. Prior to colonial rule, they'd never experienced anything other than primitive, tribal society. Here's an excerpt. I have edited this transcript for clarity. Her dialog is in italics.
We had tribal wars. And you must understand, even though the only thing African tribes have in common is skin color. Once we go to this tribe is a different language, different religion, different everything. Food, everything. It's like you've been to China, in France, except the way in the same region. Let people get this picture clear. It was a continent with only tribes.
(When the Europeans arrived in Africa) there was no republics. There were no countries. No modern day concept of what country means. There were no formal boundaries and borders. So let's talk about Benin itself. How many tribes were in Benin at that time? About 50. 50 different tribes or more... But you can't say Benin because there was no Benin. You can say the region. You see what I mean? It was a region that stretched all the way from the Nile River in Nigeria, all the way to Ghana, just a region. That's no name for anybody. There was nothing like Benin, Nigeria, Ghana.
No. But there was a concept of Dahomey.
That's correct. That's a tribe ... That's one tribe of very brutal guys. Guys with potbelly married 200 wives, and they call them chiefs. And the foreigners named them kingdoms, because that is the only way they know from where they were coming from Europe. But there was no kingdom. We are not kingdoms.
It's any pot belly guy married to many women with his family making war on the other small tribes, and they were describing them based only on the word they know. The Europeans say, oh, this people's kingdom. It was only chiefs. We never had kings in Africa.
Explains a lot.
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