RE: …DOWN THIS MINE!

TONY ALUMBA: You Miner Number 34! Wallahi I have concluded you were missing until they confirmed that all of you miners have been rescued intact. Welcome out! So when will you return home? KAWU BALA: I think the problem is even beyond down the mine; could be likened to a dungeon below sea level, if […]

TONY ALUMBA: You Miner Number 34! Wallahi I have concluded you were missing until they confirmed that all of you miners have been rescued intact. Welcome out! So when will you return home?

KAWU BALA: I think the problem is even beyond down the mine; could be likened to a dungeon below sea level, if there’s ever anything like that or, as the Hausa say: Ba gaba ba baya. Even a right-thinking citizen is as confused as the next person. Our hope is that Allah will look kindly to us this time around, in sha Allah!

ISIAKA ALIYU HASSAN: Thanks for your column. I am particularly disturbed by the fact that Murtala has been demoted from being a hero. If Murtala is not a hero, then this country has never produced a hero, and never will.

ZAHRADDEEN NASIRU GETSO: Reading this article, everything said rings true. May Allah save Nigeria from its unpatriotic sons, and may he preserve you to continue to educate and reorient us, amin.

ABBATI DANKANTI GUMEL: If late General Murtala could be forgotten and neglected in Nigeria’s 50th anniversary list, I am sorry to say Nigeria is advancing backward. That means we have a long way to go before we realise our heroes and achievers. Therefore, realising our goals and objectives would take us much longer than earlier anticipated. The President of Chile and those rescued miners have played a significant role in nation-building for not jumping to the conclusion of pinpointing who did it, or apportioning blame on one another for the nation’s near-disaster.

A ZAKARI: Very informative and beautiful, and not one word of hatred. Very objective and amusing, the writer got it “just right”. Keep writing Mallam Bala and we will keep responding. Writing is indeed a matured business meant to share learning. It absorbs and discharges knowledge, and plants and exchanges ideas. Murtala is indeed an Africa Hero and a Nigerian Hero too. If the powers-that-be think otherwise, it is really dumb. And it is a great failure on their part to grasp a great lesson in history.
AMINU SHARIF AHLAN: This mining story is apt and poignant. Thank you very much. But let me ask you Mallam, what is stopping people like you from contesting elections? Why pray for others? Why not you? Why not?

AHMAD YUSUF KATSINA: Alhamdu lillah for this and all the other write-ups. May Allah prolong your life to benefit us.

MM UTHMAN: Perhaps only Mandela can aspire to equal the heroism of Murtala. No one else, especially a Nigerian leader, before and since, can compare. Murtala is heroism encapsulated. He is nonpareil.

BALA MINNA: You may recall that, when 911 occurred in the United States, former President Bush almost immediately said he knew who did it. Luckily, those he blamed said they did it. Here, the claimants of the act have been vehemently exonerated by the number one ‘representative’ of the victims. Wonders never end!

IBRAHIM MUSA GWAMMAJA: No, BOKO HARAM didn’t do it! No, they didn’t!

SULAIMAN ADAM MUHAMMAD: Chile and Nigeria are as different as between a ‘sincere’ system and an ‘anyhow’ system.

AND FINALLY: Facebook posting ‘From Chile, a Lesson in Restoring the Dignity of Man,’ by President Goodluck Jonathan, Thursday, October 14, 2010 at 2:35pm (Reproduced in full, as may be very useful to us citizens some day, I tell you): I was recently represented by the Vice President at the Founders Day Lecture of the University of Nigeria and I was struck by the motto of the University – “To restore the dignity of man”. That phrase had been playing in my mind especially as it represents the end result of the type of leadership my late boss, President Umaru Musa Yar’adua and I decided to give to Nigeria – Servant Leadership – but it took on a whole new meaning to me as I watched the raw display of leadership by example displayed during the rescue of the Chilean miners.
There are immense lessons to be drawn from the patience, persistence and perseverance displayed by the miners as they went through their ordeal. Their heroic comportment inspired their nation’s leadership and the general population to forget political and religious differences and come together to work as a team to resolve a problem. Like the Three Musketeers in Alexandre Dumas’ work of fiction, the Chileans displayed that it was one for all and all for one.
This incidence in which the miners endured the longest underground entrapment in human history shows us in Nigeria that there is nothing impossible to a people who are capable of putting away political and religious differences aside to work together. We may not have it all or know it all but when we work together we will be able, like the Chileans did through this encounter, “to restore the dignity of man”.
I also noted and ask all leaders and intending leaders to also note the presence of both the leaders of Chile and Bolivia who rolled up their sleeves and were prepared to help without any airs and attempts to play the big man. In fact it is worthy of note that though only one of the miners was of Bolivian origin, the Bolivian president still considered it worthwhile to be physically present during the rescue efforts. My dear friends and fellow Nigerians, information without transformation is only entertainment not education.
Let us learn from the Chilean experience and not just be entertained by it. Nigerians have to be their brothers’ keeper. This should be above board because your brother is every Nigerian, not just those of the same religion, region or tribe as yourself. For instance we as Nigerians should no longer see an accident on the roadside and drive past. It is inexcusable.
I have made sure that the police no longer require reports before hospitals can treat accident victims and we would soon criminalise the act of hospitals refusing such victims. Also I am communicating to all cabinet members who are driving in convoys that they have a duty to stop and offer assistance to accident victims even if they must miss or be late to their appointments.
We must learn a lesson from the Chileans and that lesson starts from me. – GEJ