NO GREAT NATION IS BUILT BY COWARDS

I was at the book launch of my good friend, Dele Momodu, during the week. The conference hall of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Victoria Island was packed to the brim with Nigerian politicians, businessmen, media personalities and the Glitterati.
Speech after speech, there was no way to hide the fact that the Nigerian people are exhausted, lost and wondering how we got here. And this has nothing to do with whether you are rich or poor, everyone is wondering what is going on.

The event was themed after the late MKO Abiola with whom Dele and I had very close relationships. 

On June 12, 2017, I organized an event at COSON House to which I invited the irrepressible Dele Momodu to speak about the Abiola experience. OMG! Dele was hot, very hot. There were however a number of my friends and colleagues who boycotted the event. They thought that the event was too dangerous. They could not understand why I had decided to open up what they considered a dead hot button issue.

12 months later, the government of the day opened up the same issue. For whatever reason, the Buhari government decided to celebrate Abiola several years after his death.

I was amused as everyone at Dele Momodu’s big book launch appeared to finally feel free to speak about the evil done to Abiola! The gag order seems to have been lifted. One speaker was so bold to say that Nigeria died the day Abiola died.

The speaker who really got through to me was Dr. Doyin Abiola, the very brilliant widow of MKO Abiola, the Managing Director of the defunct Concorde Newspapers. Dr Abiola spoke about the angst that the family went through. She expressed the view that what happened could have been avoided if the Nigerian people were determined to take a stand. She concluded by asking Nigerians not to let what happened to Abiola happen again.

Have I seen anything to suggest that it would not happen again? No! Have I seen anything to say that our rabid embrace of ancient, village, ethnic and religious values have waned? No! Is there anything to show that the poverty of the mind that pushes us to crudely acquire more wealth than we will ever need, is gone? Certainly, no! Have we learnt that injustice and evil done to one of us is injustice and evil done to all of us? Not at all. Have we realized that we will all die someday and that we can never build a great nation for our children if we remain cowards perpetually gripped by fear without the conviction to fight evil and frontally support that which is right? I am not sure.

Our politicians are on the match again. The same alignment and re – alignment that took place four years ago and gave some of us false hope that things were about to change, is taking place again. Our political parties are suddenly in a state of flux. Everyone is scheming. What I see is everyone positioning to acquire power. What I do not see is what they want to do for Nigerians with the power they acquire. You cannot help but feel that everyone is trying to position his bucket under the national money tap. The entire thing is so transactional and short termed, it gives me headache.

I am desperate to see someone with clarity of purpose and a well thought out long term plan to make this country competitive with the rest of the world. Have you noticed that after our struggle to stop being a British colony, we are now with open hands quietly accepting to become a Chinese colony? The Chinese are now funding and building our railway, airports, roadways and everything else! How are we sure that they are not also funding our politics?

Things are bad, very bad and it does not matter whether you are a Buhari supporter or you hate his guts. It is that bad. We all know that crazy things happen in politics but to have these things right in your face with so much impunity.

I have had to protest on the streets of Nigeria for a court of law in Nigeria to hear my case. You cannot sweep what is going on under the carpet or hope that it will go away.

 “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody” so declared the former army general on the day he was inaugurated as the democratically elected president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. To me, those words are the most memorable words ever spoken by Muhammadu Buhari. Those words are his contract with the Nigerian people. They were expected to set up the moral compass for a presidency many hoped would attack the lack of moral compass in the way Nigeria has been run.

A major part of the crisis that the Nigerian nation has faced since Buhari was elected is that there are many in the country who believe that despite Buhari’s words, he does not belong to them. That has been underlined by those who by their actions and body language tell you that Buhari does not belong to you but to them and them alone. These people believe that they are ‘the inheritors’ of the Buhari mandate and the inheritors behave like they are conquerors of the Nigerian nation and that they are not bound by the rule of law.

At the Federal Ministry of Justice, I personally encountered this behavior. These people have destroyed the Buhari brand. A lot of the institutions that ought to be the pillars of our nation are under attack. Look at what Bukola Saraki, our Senate President was made to go through.

While the President fights those he may consider his enemies, his biggest enemies may be those he had considered his loyalists. They are chasing away his true loyalists – those who are not politicians and are not looking forward to any appointments or contracts. They can’t understand what is going on and are fleeing in droves. Soon, very soon, the falcon will no longer hear the falconer.

If we truly want a great nation, we must resist that which is wrong and internalize the fact that no great nation in human history has been built by cowards. 

See you next week.