We lie just about everything, forgetting that the victory of falsehood is pyrrhic; we delude and denude ourselves when we undermine the score of truth and the verdict of history.” – Prof. Chris Nwaokobia Jnr.
A cursory assessment of the work of official spokespersons and government functionaries leave much to be desired as they appear to have accepted chicanery, conceit and con as values in defence of state actions and inaction. We read convoluted press where facts are twisted with intent to deceive. We see government agents all too willing to call a spade a kitchen utensil, and we observe ever and anon the flight of truth from the corridors of power. Yes, every so often we wear a frown when our ‘leaders’ speak because the preponderant conjectures are that before us is a feast of lies.
The truth is that most times we truly are treated to a festival of half-truths by those whose job is to govern. We hear them and their spokespersons laboriously presume us fools and nitwits. They sell to us nebulous feats and unverifiable strides. They present uncompleted projects as completed jobs and commission half jobs as finished projects. They wave and dance with glee, telling us it has never been this well with Nigeria. They spew sacrilege thinking that history is short. They are a hoard of liars and a band of egotists.
The truth is that the moral of governance in this nation is thin. The truth is that the margin of rectitude in the leadership of our fatherland is short. And the truth is that good men have elected to stay aloof, mouths agape and hands akimbo. We have strayed from the basic values of nationhood, which is altruism and swallowed the destructive pill of egocentricity. We live in a space where it has become all men for themselves and God for us all.
The truth is that we have become government to ourselves as we provide practically all we need. Yes, we provide electricity for our homes using generators. We provide water through our personal boreholes. We provide education for our wards as we pay heavy fees to private schools, public education having been tragically lowered on the list of state priorities. We provide private security to stay sizeably safe. Sad, we have ignored the reason governments exist and by Jove accent to the plunder of our collective wealth.
Countrymen, we must rise up to the demands of the moment. We must say to those who superintend over this nation that the time of conceit and ill rule is gone. We must acknowledge the challenge that an ever progressive world throws at us and insist on accountability in governance. We must discharge the burden that a universe seeking the abolition of poverty places before us and challenge leadership to probity, to service and to sacrifice. Yes, we must tell court-jesters and state hirelings that posterity shall hold them in bad light should they continue on the ignoble path of perfidy, hokum, delusive mumbo jumbo and deceit. Only truth builds, only truth heals and truth only, restores.
The truth is that those always asking us to take it easy are either mischievous or have soiled their hands with bloodied loots from our collective till. There is no time anymore for the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. We either fix Nigeria or get fixed by the hoard of rampaging buccaneers whose reason in politics is me, myself and I. The truth is that Nigeria is increasingly becoming a comic relief in the comity of states. We have become the reference point in most cases of state infraction of due process.
The truth is that insurgency and homeland terror sustain because there are persons in government making huge pecuniary kill from the killing of our countrymen. The truth is that mutiny thrives because there are senior officers in the Armed Forces in cahoots with the Haramists for filthy lucre. The truth is that security votes are fleeced by office holders and the common man is left to vote his hard earned resources in protecting self.
The truth is that we must forthwith elect to rise beyond our ethnic and religious differences and congregate at the parlour of concerted action. We must march through the hallway that leads away from indolence to the court of proactive action. We must say of this era that the moment of change came and we did not fail. We must rise above the divides of ethnicity and religion, we must surmount the dichotomies of region and faith, and we must mortify the impious divides of clan, and mine the endless profit that this glorious coalition of people holds. Such is the way to go.
The truth I lay before you cannot but grow if we elect to see the failures of the past as a collective, and surge through the smokescreen cast before us by the ethnic jingoists and religious chichidodos that inundate our political amphitheatre. Only then can we through hard-work and patriotism berth the sublime future that a united deep-thinking and loving people can weave.
We can make Nigeria great again, we can rediscover our values, we can lead Africa back to the world as the greatest brand known to humankind, and we can reinvent the strength of the blackman. YES, we can cremate the debilitating mass of corruption that obfuscates our stride, we can mummify the cadaver of hate and place before a universe seeking true love the memento of love crafted by the awesome people of the Niger and the Benue Rivers, and this is the TRUTH. May God bless Nigeria.
CONCLUDED.