Photo credit: the Punch
If Fela had been alive, he ought to have been seventy nine today. I mean our own Fela would have been seventy nine years old today.
He lived his life struggling. Indeed, the struggle, our struggle, was his life.
Good enough, he did not walk the treacherous way alone. He did in the company of eminent contemporaries.
Solarin, Awojobi, Fela’s brother Beko, Soyinka, Enahoro, the Historian Osoba, Bala Usman, the two Abiolas who were wasted in the June 12 struggle, etc.
If I were in their shoes and I get a benefit of hindsight, I would probably be regretting now. I will be regretting that the society I gave so much to has remained inertial.
Our society is obviously a clay footed giant. The rotten times are here.
In which area of human endeavour can we boast to have excelled? There is a common joke that if Nigerians should move to the USA and Americans should move to Nigeria both countries would be changed in no time.
The USA will be desecrated by Nigerians while the Nigerian space will be cleaned by the Americans.
The idea is that we are the problems. Maybe it’s due to the fact that nature has over pampered us. Our weather is one of the greatest in the world. Our soil is just OK.
In fact, I’ve seen corn growing on a rock. And I am saying it with every sense of responsibility. Every state in this country has at least one mineral resource or the other.
Yet, our governors are far from being proactive. They are very comfortable in going to Abuja to collect the so-called allocation which they never worked for.
We have failed woefully in fashioning out an adequate system of ruling ourselves. It was the Westminster system at independence. It is now the American presidential system. Neither has proved to be OK for us.
How can they?
The problem is not with the constitutions. It is with us as a people. We are a people who refuse to ask questions. We are noncommittal in most positive things. We expect politicians who want to serve us to bribe us.
They do!
We do not realise that, as we lay our beds shall we find them.
Check out the level of rot in our society. No light, no water, no roads, no nothing apart from religion.
Yes, we are religious but are we Godly? The answer is in the level of terrorism, kidnapping, armed robbery, and unnecessary killings.
We have no choice except to start thinking sooner than later!
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