Buhari says, ‘let my people go’!
Some others talk about ‘pure federalism’, which is another way of saying ‘we do not want to share whatever is in the ground in our territory’. Yet others talk about the last confab as a linchpin for their passion of separation and revenge. A final group populate the Goodluck Jonathan Campaign Group, whose main strategy […]
Some others talk about ‘pure federalism’, which is another way of saying ‘we do not want to share whatever is in the ground in our territory’. Yet others talk about the last confab as a linchpin for their passion of separation and revenge. A final group populate the Goodluck Jonathan Campaign Group, whose main strategy consisted in the use of scare tactics, and sordid horror images on TV and in newsprints, meant to set the people of this country against themselves by reopening and reinfecting old wounds. Never has a more irresponsible campaign been run as has been run by PDP. I know a few people who have put these evidences together and a few of our ‘big men’ may have to answer to the ICC, in the event of any post-election violence. Talk about destroying a delicate country put in one’s charge!
I had cause to marvel about that situation and concluded that it was very similar to a story in the Holy Bible where two women approached King Solomon, both laying claim to one child. Call that baby ‘Nigeria’. Anyway, King Solomon came up with a bright idea to determine who really owned the child. He brought out a long machete and asked the ladies “why don’t I just split the baby in two and hand you both half both ways, equally?” One of them immediately replied. “Please don’t sir, dear King. I would rather surrender the baby than watch him die. Let her have it!” That is me. That is APC. The other one however said she didn’t mind if the baby was killed and split in two. That is PDP. That is Jonathan and his supporters. I have never seen a gang of crazier people assembled for one campaign. Fani-Kayode, Fayose, Okupe, Abati, and a recent addition, one Mukhtar Alex Daniyan (MAD for effect), who behaved like he was hooked on hard drugs in a recent youth debate. PDP does have them!
But two weeks to the postponed election – a postponement that merely heightened tensions in the land and concretized the already hardened positions of Nigerians – I have the privilege of standing back once more to survey the polity. And again, another picture emerges, that is again reminiscent to what had happened in Biblical times. I hope our pastors – many of whom are on the dollar-sharing gravy train of the PDP- are still using the Holy Bible as their reference document? I am also referring to those pastors, as well as Imams, that tell us all God wants is for us to ‘pray for our leaders’, who somehow have forgotten the roles played by the prophets in the Bible in checking the excesses of different Kings, and the position of Jesus Christ and Prophet Muhammad (SAW), towards oppression, corruption, and mismanagement. None of the good prophets ever sat around, refusing to do anything. Incidentally only Prophet Jonah comes to mind as one who tried to abdicate his duty. He ended up in the belly of the whale.
The real big story has to do with when the children of Israel were fighting to leave Egypt and the Pharaohs will not let them go. God sent Moses to fight for the Israelites. Now Moses was an old man (like Buhari). The Egyptians were very cruel to the Israelites, even though they had much money. They were only interested in using the Israelites as slaves to toil, and lift heavy stones, with little rewards (like the Nigerian thieving elites, robber barons, and crony capitalist and their enablers in government are using the majority of poor Nigerians, owing salaries yet bragging to win votes). Moses’ role was not to get into the Promised Land with the Israelites, but at least to free them from slavery and bondage. We have always said to naysayers that Buhari’s coming is symbolic. He may not transform Nigerian into paradise in four years but he will surely set this country on its path, and stay the hand of oppressors, by God’s Grace, insha Allah. I believe strongly that Buhari will enable a more egalitarian and just society where inequality of income will not consume all of us; a society that cares for its most vulnerable, where the abundance of the land reaches almost everyone. This is not to say the rich will not stay rich. But hardwork will count for something.
This analogy is made more pungent, with the number of clogs that PDP and its forever oppressing friends are throwing in the wheels of this impending change. Very much like the seven plagues with which God tried to force the hands of the Egyptians. Only now in reverse form. Wickedly so.
In our instance, we have seen how many people who support the ‘continuation’ of oppression, blind revenge, prejudice, ethnic and religious stereotyping, financial mismanagement and greed in Nigeria have come up with all sorts, just to ensure this Moses does not lead us out of oppression. Let me recount:
Initially, they said he was a military dictator; that he will put everyone in jail or kill them. They made documentaries of those he sentenced to firing squad for trafficking drugs (which also kill others). Then they made a lot of hue and cry over his school leaving certificate, or lack of one. We almost all went deaf! Then they transited, while keeping all these tribulations going on, and twanging the chords of hate in the hearts of Nigerians, to his health. They forged health reports bandying several diseases around; from Parkinsons to Prostrate Cancer, concluding that it was Testicular Cancer. Unlike the Holy Bible, when it was God that was manufacturing the plagues, from boils to toads, to compel the Egyptians, the traducers of our people are the ones churning out, one dastardly chicanery after another. They have no love, respect, or fear of anyone or anything. Only a fear of being discovered and made to recompense the people.
Then they tried to stop the elections. And so they rushed to courts. There has to be something that can be done. A legal plague perhaps. An armada of suits lay in court. Okupe, Fani, Fayose, all swear on their mothers’ graves that no matter what happens, they, the agents of Pharaoh, will NEVER allow the people of Nigeria to exit the dungeon where we are locked. Never, they swear, will they allow Buhari lead Nigeria!It doesn’t matter what the longsuffering people of Nigeria, who have waded to decades of penury, whose monies are used by a few to become the biggest shoppers abroad, who revel in Byzantine opulence, think!
As we speak they are still ‘turning tricks’. “Sack Jega!”, “Stop the Card Reader!”, “Postpone once more!”, “Buhari must withdraw!”, “Disqualify him!”, “Let the military take over!”. What will we not see or hear? Fayose published a living man’s obituary earlier. Then capped it by disgracing his own mother as a ‘pampers-wearing’ bed-wetter. All to keep the children of Nigeria in the land of slavery!
But certainly, they will come to the threshing floor. The wheat will be separated from the chaff in Nigeria. We are full of prayers, and hope, and resolve, that this country will be better run and that equity will come upon the land. Let us pray, that when God himself shall visit this country with his very wrath, that we and ours be passed over, as the children of Israel were once passed-over.
LET MY PEOPLE GO!