Yet, like Oliver Cromwell and Sir
Thomas More, despite the sign of the times and the hazards and perils of
standing against injustice and tyranny, we must rid ourselves of our
fears and speak the bitter truth. And that truth is as follows.
The more our government persecutes
its perceived enemies, the more they are sowing the seeds of
disintegration in our country. The more they oppress and attempt to
intimidate those they seek to silence and subjugate, the more they
engender anger, rebellion, alienation, enmity and division.
Nobody wishes to be part of a
country in which apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing, islamisation,
state-sponsored terror, religious bigotry and the selective application
of justice is alive and well. Nobody wishes to be part of a contraption
which seeks to empower and strengthen a tiny minority and which seeks to
impoverish and enslave a pliant and docile majority.
If you want a country to remain
united you do not go out of your way to kill, destroy, intimidate and
tell lies about those that oppose you, that criticize you and that are
not in your political party.
You do not attempt to relegate
Christianity into being regarded as a weak, inconsequential and second
rate faith. You do not burn the cross and attempt to shame our
faith. You do not drag our nation into a military coalition of Sunni
Muslim countries. You do not refer to concerned Christians as "religious
bigots".
If you want your country to remain
together you do not get into bed with the Jihadists. You do not refuse
to condemn the heinous activities of your kinsmen, the Fulani militants
and herdsmen.
You do not tolerate the banning of
preaching in public places, the banning of all-night prayers or the
licensing and pulling down of churches anywhere in the country.
You do not condemn the bombing in
Brussels and remain silent about the massacre in Agatu, the slaughter of
the Igbo in the east and the mass murder of the Shia in Zaria. You do
not behave like the King of the North and instead you conduct yourself
like the President of Nigeria.
If you want your country to remain
together you do not try to convict and jail your opponents for no just
cause or attempt to silence them with sensational, salacious and
baseless allegations and lies.
You do not use the security agencies
to insult and threaten them on a daily basis and attempt to demonize
them with half truths and mendacity before the entire world.
You do not impoverish the people
with half-baked and ill-conceived economic and fiscal policies which
have resulted in untold hardship, an unprecedented economic recession,
high food and fuel prices, endless fuel queues, high electricity
tariffs, the exile of the U.S. dollar, the unofficial devaluation of the
naira, high unemployment and the lowest generation of electrical power
since 1999.
You do not tell your people that you
are ''not a magician'' and that they have to live with the debilitating
and traumatic fuel queues up until May.
You
do not tell the Nigerian people to hold the vandals that are sabotaging
our pipelines responsible for the lack of electricity that we are
suffering and the perpetual darkness that we have found ourselves in.
You do not throw 76 hardworking farmers in police cells in Enugu simply
because they attempted to defend their wives, children and farms from
the rampaging, lustful and bloodthirsty clutches of the Fulani militants
and herdsmen.
If you want your country to remain
together you do not tell your people that you will import Brazilian
grass and establish grazing lands and settlements for Fulani herdsmen in
the south.
You do not say that as a testimony
of your so-called ''monumental efforts'' to save the nation and as part
of your contribution to national and international development our
country will start producing toothpicks in 2018.
You do not say that we will send a
man into space in 2030 when we can't even produce enough petrol and
refined products to fuel our cars and meet our local needs in 2016.
If you want your country to remain
together you do not implement an economic policy that is nonsensical,
counter-productive and irrational, that drives away foreign and local
investment, that has killed the manufacturing and industrial sector,
that has crippled farmers and the agricultural sector and that has
turned us into a nation of poverty-stricken paupers and destitute
beggars.
You do not implement a foreign
policy that has turned us into the joke of the African continent, the
laughing stock of the civilized world and the lackey of the Arab world.
You do not use your Armed Forces to
intimidate your people or your AK-47-wielding ethnic militias to kill,
crush and terrorize those that you consider to be subhuman slaves and
second class citizens.
You do not attempt to break the
spirit of those that refuse to worship you and bow down before you with
brutal aggression and naked intimidation.
If you want your country to remain
together you do not demonise President Goodluck Jonathan and leading
members of the PDP and attempt to break them, humiliate them and destroy
their legacy.
You do not lock up Col. Sambo Dasuki
and Mr. Nnamdi Kanu indefinately, ignore court orders that have ordered
their release and throw away the keys of their dungeons and cells.
You do not provoke God by using the
machinery of state to ruin the name and annihilate the families, homes
and lives of those that you hate and those that oppose you even though
you know that they are innocent of any wrongdoing.
You do not denigrate and unleash
your thugs on the people of the Niger Delta and you do not attempt to
turn Nigeria into Africa's North Korea.
These things that you insist on
doing do not breed love, peace, joy, hope and unity: they breed hate.
They also breed bitterness, defiance, suspicion, fear and rage and
ultimately they will result in civil unrest and a bitter and prolonged
conflict.
I do not believe in violence and
neither do I call for or support the idea of an armed struggle. I am a
man of peace and like Sir Winston Churchill, the United Kingdom's
greatest Prime Minister, once said I believe "jaw jaw is better than war
war". I do not subscribe to the logic of force and instead I believe
in the force of logic.
However when a people are pushed up
against a wall and when a government has as its primary objective the
silencing and cowering of the opposition and the destruction and
humiliation of leading opposition figures, things begin to change very
quickly.
When dreams are shattered, when
hearts are broken, when children weep, when widows mourn, when tempers
flair, when hearts harden and when blood boils, the center cannot hold
and things fall apart.
When men cry through the night for
the future of their nation and when women wail in despair because there
is no hope for their children, the center cannot hold and things fall
apart.
Where the voice of reason is
drowned, when lawful opposition is reigned in, when peaceful dissent is
silenced and when the fury of violence becomes inevitable, the center
cannot hold and things fall apart.
History proves that those angry
young men and women that do not believe that they have a future in a
united Nigeria and that do not share or care for our disposition for
peaceful dialogue will eventually say "enough is enough" and rise up
like an all-powerful, angry and erupting volcano.
They will push the rational and
reasonable aside and they will pick up their weapons of war in a
desperate attempt to break the yoke of slavery and liberate themselves
from the bondage of servitude.
Let us pray that it never comes to
that. Let us trust God that restraint and good reason will prevail. Let
us hope that we settle our differences in a peaceful manner.
Let us pray that those that hold the
reigns of power today will eventually change their ways. Let us hope
that they remember that they will not be there forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment