Jan
21
2010
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”- Martin Luther King
The Lagos version of the Abuja walk by the Save Nigeria Group titled, “Enough is Enough” is taking place today at 10am. We’ll be moving from Arch Bishop Vinning Memorial Church to the Government house in Alausa. Our message has not changed, we are marching in peaceful protest against the current issues which stem from the same root -lack of good governance! Ever so often the intellectuals want to ask -why are you walking? Will this walk achieve anything? Are there no other risk free things that can be done? Is there a hidden agenda? Intellectuals love to ask questions, and thankfully, I’m not un-intellectual as well, so I can answer what I can.
6 months ago, I stayed for many hours everyday at the intensive care unit of a Teaching Hospital, waiting outside in the sun everyday as my young mother struggled to live. Ever so often power would fail in the hospital, and I will hear the UPS of the most funded and most equipped room in the hospital beep as it neared its life’s end. Amazingly these life support UPS’ were no different from those used for small personal computers. I sat and watched as many fairly clothed bodies got wheeled daily to the mortuary. It wasn’t rocket science, but it struck me, when power fails, people die! My mind wandered back easily to the road accidents that I had seen on my many road travels over the past few months, and to the other thousands of lives lost uncelebrated. It’s real, that we are losing people who ought to be alive daily in this country!
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Jan
16
2010
There is a trend I’m picking up and it’s grieving my soul. The most religious (Christian or otherwise) societies in the world, are it’s poorest and most underdeveloped. The cities that pack millions into auditoriums are the ones that don’t have any representation in other aspects of human influence. It’s seems like an inversion of everything that I have learnt, that light should give illumination, that spiritual enlightenment should lead to economic, social, governmental and whole revival. Thorough analysis however reveals, that the opposite is true. Continue Reading »
Jan
08
2010
Yesterday was quite a full day for me, it was a day in which many things simply came to a head. I had deliberately refused to comment on a number of issues for a while, hoping that in the period of my silence things will bounce back to normalsy. The more the days pass however, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that we are approaching a failed state. Optimism is good, if it is bound at the bottom by reality, at the top by faith and at the sides by work. Baseless optimism is a cancer, it’s false hope and mere lies.
Rather than confront our issues and do what we need to do to save our nation from a head on collision course with failure, we tell ourselves it’s all going to be well, God will do it, we make God out to be our slave. In the face of unconstitutional behaviour, in the face of televised dishonesty, of forgeries at the highest levels, of being labelled as terrorists, of no power at home and a vacuum in the seat of power, the elite in Nigeria have not heard the drums of war. We pacify ourselves with phrases that show that even if we lose all, we still have something. We are voiceless in our own country, slaves where we should have been princes, our young sons and daughters flee from our shores preferring to be slaves abroad than at home, and our elders have nostalgic memories of when they were slaves to colonial masters. This house is falling, and those who exercise the power of faith limit it to their words and are slow to back it up with action. My brothers and sisters, if we continue to fold our hands we will soon have them cuffed. History is replete with trends we can learn from, the distance between our current state and people seeking refuge in other nations as refugee is not as far as we have been deluded to think. The time to have a stand and stand for it is now! Continue Reading »
