STRIKER: The Time Of Harvest

“THOSE who sow wind,” they say, “reap the whirlwind.” Majek Fashek of blessed memory, in his blockbuster song “Send Down The Rain,” reiterated the popular saying that you don’t expect to sow cassava and reap up cocoyam. All these affirm that “you reap what you sow.”

Nigeria and Nigerians, most of us, have been energetically sowing disaster for as long as anyone cares to look back and the calamity has ripened. Those who will beat their hollow chests that they were not part of the sowing but did nothing while “the ruling class” was busy creating “a world after its own image” are even guiltier. After all, it is popularly and correctly said that “the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil but by those who claim to be good and did nothing to stop them.” Haile Selassie I said, “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who could have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”

To be fair, not every “good Nigerian” folded his/her arms, looking away in the pursuit of selfish interest while the country was being gradually destroyed. There were many outcries, lamentations and protests by a minority clan at the head of which were unforgettable titans like Obafemi Awolowo, Aminu Kano, Balarabe Musa, Anthony Enahoro, Ken Saro Wiwa, Gani Fawehinmi, Alao Aka-Basorun, Ola Oni, Tai Solarin, et al, as well as artistes like Fela Anikulapo Kuti and his breeds. God bless the memory of Chinua Achebe and long live Wole Soyinka that is very much alive!

There were movements and organisations then like Civil Liberty Organisation; National Association of Nigerian Students; Nigeria Labour Congress and its affiliated Unions; Democratic Socialist Movement; Committee for the Defence of Human Rights; National Democratic Coalition; et al, with their coordinating caucuses behind the scene. They were peopled by non conformists who rejected the growing monster of bad governance and evil in social engineering and fought relentlessly to kill it and sow a new seed to grow a just and free Federal Republic of Nigeria. However, their decades-long, heroic efforts were contained not just because of the brutality of venal power but largely by the indifference and complicity of the majority that were busy with vain, selfish pursuits.

Today, a generation with neither moral guidance and functional education nor righteous indignation and commitment to struggle against social injustice has surrounded us: children of the evil harvest, who know and love nothing else than money; and plenty of it, for the pursuit of hedonism and vanity. How do they earn the money? Anyhow, except through legitimate work; except through beneficial production of goods and services.

Democracy always offers the best opportunity – in the face of many other bloody choices without any guarantee of good outcome – to sow and grow seeds of goodwill and good governance in society. However, ignorance, poverty and the absence of sincere, passionate, credible progressive leadership are limiting factors at a time there is only a fading echo of the tradition of chivalry and fiery intransigence to evil. Nevertheless, history never poses a challenge to a people or society without having availed, in that society and among those people, the resources for historical transformation.

A time of grave personal danger to every citizen, irrespective of status, calls for great personal rethink, reflections and actions by all men and women of goodwill across status and divides for an organisation capable of rising above all present preoccupations (that surely lead nowhere), for redemptive agenda and action to save the country – for the ashes of our ancestors, the future of our children, and the Glory of God. Every sincere person seeking solutions to the country’s current trials and tribulations should start talking, everywhere he/she is, about such an organisation and readying to work for it. It is the vehicle that can steer us out of the present forest of a thousand daemons: not minding the political parties around, the politics in the air, or the season of upcoming elections, which all count for nothing in themselves without such a vehicle.