Why Fools Rule!
By Gbenro Olajuyigbe
'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing'- Edmund Burke.
To govern Nigeria, foolishness is not a handicap! As a matter of fact, it is an added advantage! The intelligent environment is dead. We have replaced the hollow of its demise with suffocating bigotry and stood logic and science of truth on their heads. We have become a hot topic for research on the overthrow of rationalism and decency, a paradoxical theory on how dog leads lions!' Before i go further, let me also admit my own failure as part of the group that surrendered the potentials embedded in 'activism without borders' to the tantalising moderate but characteristically less effective NGOism – the evolution that eventually nailed the coffin of genuine activism, crippled the culture of street protest and has grounded the mill of revolution in Nigeria. We are today tucked in between bread and bravery. Our story is the tragic re-incarnation of the colonial French Policy of Assimilation. We are now paid for our passion. The passion has become regimented by the paymasters. Our Bank Accounts are rising but our spirit gets deflated by the little thorny conscience that lies at the gate of our spirit. The boundaries of our theatre are now defined and drawn by the strange cartographers of the maps of our movements and their actions. We have been driven to comfort zone where our nearest neighbours are the same people that torment us. We now share wine with the ruthless capitalists whose hands are stained with the blood of their salvage workers. We are on the same dinner table with shylocks who continue to complexify escape route to freedom and magnify the yoke of oppression. With shallow thoughts and temporary relief we are walking into the future defined by enemies of people. Future without freedom. Future paved with pains and pan caked with the reess toils of wretched workers and labouring poor. In worse cases, we become the navigators of the broad way to slavery. Socialism in the hands of my peers and comrades has become the Capitalism of the wretched! Through our choice(s) we have elongated the windy path to freedom and encumbered the ladder for the emancipation of our people. We have betrayed the cause and on daily basis becoming friends of our unrepentant enemies. The flight of our courage has emboldened the resolve of oppressors to continue on the path of serving vinegar as breakfast and gall as dinner to our people. We are the missing link in the chain of revolution and genuine transformation. We abandoned our duty of providing leadership to the oppressed and chose the easier way of self adulation. Our dereliction of duty is the single reason the oppressors are having the field day. Those who refuse to halt evil doing and de-capacitate evil doers are bound to cause more damage than all the host of evil doers. Our indolence is now bearing fruits. We now have a country dedicated to falsehood, mischief and anguish! A nation where truth is slaughtered on the threshing floor of expediency. A country ghastly becoming a paradise for rogues and hell for the just. A country where ignorance and mischief control discussions, decide debates and define direction. A country where the rule by Fools has become inevitable! A country where those who looted over Two(2) Trillion Naira Oil Subsidy are becoming Transformation Ambassadors. A country with unresolved several scandals ranging from Bullet Proof Cars through unremitted NNPC Revenues, Immigration Service Recruitment Death to Black Market Arms Scandal deserve a day with destiny. Just as the poor are in pain, their oppressors must keep a date with gruesome grief.
A country where about 160 persons were vicariously and negligently killed by a 'Prophet' through illegally erected building that eventually collapsed and the 'prophet' was rewarded with a gubernatorial and a Presidential condolence visits needs the help of Surgeons. A Country where you can sleep as a pauper and wake up a billionaire without record of enterprise and productivity needs deliverance!
Unless we move from prolonged culture of indiscriminate sycophantic slavery to embrace the civilization of liberty by relying on our explosive history of courage that was interrupted by pseudo- activism, singing song of freedom will remain an illusion. The worst form of injustice we are perpetrating as activists is the compassion we show to those whose passion in power is always to unleash cruelty on the poor masses and castrate their potentials for recovery from the socio-economic abyss into which they are sunk. Our inaction has retarded the progress of our country more than the damaging action of thieving successive governments. We can no longer make excuses for our inaction. History beckons; and victory is certain if only we retrace our steps and hold on to the ancient values of self sacrifice, class suicide and dogged commitment that derive their source from the same hill - courage of conviction!
What counts now, as Adlai Stevenson affirmed 'is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us – What conviction, what courage, what faith – win or lose.'
Gbenro Olajuyigbe is an Abuja based Human Security Expert and a Human Rights Activist.
E:Mail: [email protected]
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