STRIKER: Before The Truth Sets You Free

IN John 8:32, the Bible (New International Version) says, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” I prefer the version because of the context, on the basis of the opening word, “Then.” It presumes that there are deeds to be done even before the truth is known, much ahead of it setting anyone free. Full of grumblings about unrighteousness and not being in good standing before equity are the works that majority of Nigerians ignore with veiled contempt. They are far from the day they will embrace the truth and thereby find self and social redemption.

As far as peace and security, justice, freedom and prosperity are concerned, desiring them requires interrogations of the Nigerian reality dispassionately to find out the truth about how and why we continue to perambulate about in our present wilderness of a thousand tribulations. Meanwhile, those who want to work on it and achieve it do not need to come in their thousands. All they need is, while not being saints themselves as there are none, come with as clean a hand as possible. That way, they will have the support, solidarity and followership of the majority; with that, the victory of good over evil in the land is inevitable.

Those who are the champions of exploitation and oppression in Nigeria today and have plunged the majority into unprecedented hardship with fake promises of better days ahead resulting from their wayward policies, have indeed summed up the attitude and disposition of the majority – their nonpartisan affiliation to truth, and their unwillingness to make sacrifices for the common good. Seeing clearly that majority of Nigerians are in huge deficit and beholden to self-destructive partisan “truths” and self-centred pursuits, the elites are assured that there is absolutely no meaningful resistance to injustice that can be mustered by the people. Accordingly, the elites continue to openly and brazenly showcase their unrepentant commitment to themselves at the expense of the common good.

The truth about how and why we are where we are is not hidden at all. They are told by those still committed to telling them every day before the independence of Nigeria in Newspapers, in songs, in poems, in theatres and dramas, and more recently on all social media platforms. Why then is knowing the truth and getting set free by it difficult? It takes the readiness to accept the readiness of the responsibility that the truth imposes to really know the truth even if a man or woman’s brain is cracked opened and  the truth is poured into it; without that readiness to follow the truth to the dark places it leads ahead of emergence into light, a person in front of whom the truth is standing naked will continue to have reasons to live the lie in ruinous denial.

Truth imposes responsibility; willingness precedes readiness in the task of accepting those responsibilities. Without readiness, let the majority of Nigerians arrive at just being willing to accept that responsibility first. We will accordingly arrive at the first stage in which no government that is supposed to be of the people, by the people and for the people can take them for granted. Nigerians had lived under brutal military dictatorship for years and eventually summoned the willingness to throw off their tyrannical yoke. So, what changed? The value system, and its decadence, gradually, until the man or woman saying the truth or doing right by it today is the endangered species in Nigeria, and seen by majority as the fool by the majority who are themselves dehumanised idiots; thereby easily producing the kind of government they deserve.

There are several stories of human and societal redemption, and Nigeria is capable of writing the most uplifting and spectacular of such, and why not, if Rwanda can come from horrifying genocide story to the blessed, prosperous country they are today through a leadership and followership that eventually came to reckoning with doing what is needed to make them know the truth and be set free by it?

• The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not represent the opinions or views of OSUN DEFENDER.