1st October, 2022
By Ibrahim Kegbegbe
My style of writing may be quite different from yours, but I am still writing on my research and what I had gathered through my amiable lecturers.
I am not creating personal aggrandizement, nor am I creating journalistic hegemony over other colleagues of mine with my write-ups. Rather, I have picked up my pen to write on what Nigerians should consider a paramount value before and after the general elections: LOVE!
Love is an essential prerequisite to getting good governance in our country, Nigeria, at this political level of ours. This is what we should be looking for as Children do during the hide and seek in the moonlight!
My fellow Nigerians, love is gone in our midst and whoever finds it will be rewarded with fabulous gifts! That is the only solution to all our problems.
So, we are all the problems and the solutions. Do you know that we are not created to move from one country to another before we survive nor created to be sick and die prematurely? We are created with all sorts of resources abundant: human and other resources which to other countries of the world are priceless. We are created with all manners of endowments while others are not as fortunate.
Scientifically, the characteristics of human beings are Movement, Respiration, Nutrition, Irritability, Growth, Excretion, Reproduction and Death. I called these characteristics: “MR NIGER D” when I was in secondary school. Logically, however, let us look at the acronym of NIGERIA: Nutrition, Irritability, Growth, Excretion, Respiration and Reproduction, In, All. My brothers and sisters! A fallacy from the Biology Professors! No death in Nigeria, yet these killings! No movement from Nigeria to other countries before eating, yet this hunger! When are we going to run away from tribalism, nepotism, and fanaticism and try to embrace LOVE? My question goes to the masses, especially you the political and religious fanatics!
“Ho master! Why have you not shown us the right way? You promised that your legacy will never lead us astray. We lament over the disappointment every day. Even our step sisters and brothers complain the same way. Their anxieties and worries have become activities day by day. This is not fallacious because we always meet at your gateway. Instead of inviting us in, your gatekeeper rather ambushes us with the dog. Then we remember our friend who has become the world’s watchdog. Getting to his gateway, he tells us that he is independent of himself and that we are also independent of ourselves. Master! Master!! Is it true that our friend was trained and given independence by you? If it is so, the shame belongs to you.
All of a sudden, a voice comes beneath the earth. ‘Never wish your master shames or death. Your friend has taken only the step, to be successful, from the master while you have taken the ways from the master. Indeed! You practise the ways completely while the only step has been practised by him godly. The step is LOVE while the ways are STRENGTH and FAITH. Both of them without LOVE are nothing but FEINT.’ The voice ended.” excerpted from one of my creative works.
Nigeria did get INDEPENDENCE from Britain and so did America! My friends, why is America that is not religiously upright getting its economy right? America gets things right economically because of the love they practise for one another. America as a country would never want to lose any of its citizens. If an American wakes from sleep, his or her first utterance will be: GOD BLESS AMERICA! Is it not high time we imbibed all these characteristics? Sirs, this could only be imbibed through one word: LOVE. We prefer to sleep in American Embassy looking for visas than to look for the solution to the problems of our country. America is INDEPENDENT AS NIGERIA IS. So, let us build our nation through the loving of one another.
In the past in Nigeria, from the period of 60s; to the 80s, Nigerians were living in a peaceful co-existence irrespective of their religious differences because the leaders of all the religions only propagated their religions in one statement: “love your neighbours as you love yourself”. It was rare to know who was a Christian or Muslim during any religious festive period, especially EID-KABIR and CHRISMAS. This was how our forefathers lived their lives right from the first to the third republic.
We had two political parties during the third republic: National Republican Convention (NRC) and Social Democratic Party (SDP). The parties were required to draw from a national rather than regional or tribal basis. Moshood Abiola (MKO) a Yoruba man won a conclusive victory in the presidential election on the SDP’s platform defeating Bashir Tofa of the NRC. MKO won even in his northern opponent’s home state. This happened because there was no TRIBALISM and FANATICISM but LOVE! Nobody said, “why are the candidates Muslim and Muslim? Why is not a platform for a Christian and a Muslim?”
When the election of the third republic was annulled the whole country mourned it. Can we still practise politics and vote for the candidate of our choice on the 25th of February, 2023 with the spirit of LOVE?
IBRAHIM TAOFEEK KEGBEGBE
(A student of the Nigerian Institute of Journalism) 08024248696, [email protected]