It is no longer news, neither is it surprising that the
average Nigerian is very complacent and usually disconnected from the realities
of their predicament. It is only in this part of the world that a person pushed
to the wall will prefer to jump over it while his counterparts at other places
turn around to confront their problems head-on and eventually over-come them.
But the Nigerian is so unfortunate that he had allowed the teachings of false
and fraudulent religions perforate his thinking, and that has consequently made
him nothing short of a confused entity who does not want to take up the
responsibilities that his generation has placed upon him to perform, instead,
he abdicates those responsibilities at the door-step of a kind God who had
hither-to endowed man generously with the gift of reasoning to fish himself out
of the icy waters of life. The general situation is not very different even in
an academic environment where the students had at one time claimed to be
Intellectual Fighters for Emancipation (IFE) as virtually every member of the
community has ceased the opportunity of the Students Union’s absence to become
a tin-god at the injurious detriment of the generality of students. For this
piece, I zoom my critical lens especially on the extravagant and saucy nature
of buttery operators around us. Despite the neck-braking prices that students
pay for various goods, these sets of people still find it necessary to garnish
this burden with verbal insults at the slightest opportunity which they devise
very often. But on the 16th of October, 2012, in Adekunle Fajuyi
hall, their cup ran over. While preparing for a 7:00am class which I had on
that interesting day, an angry fellow student who had been thoroughly and
psychologically battered with words and the sprinkling water the previous night
went round the hall with a mega-phone to mobilize students to address issues
appropriately that morning. Information later got to me that that morning
turned out to be the mother of all alliances as Fajuyians trooped out to
lock-up the upper buttery and unanimously sent their tormentors away from
business. I believe that event would go down in the minds of all that
experienced it that the mass of people cannot be intimidated for a long time
for according to Abraham Lincoln, “You can fool all the people sometimes, you
can fool some people all the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of
the time”.
I am glad
that the above serves as an analogy and resonates to the larger society of Africa
at large. Leaders at all levels engage in an open rape of the same people they
were made to govern with impunity, they insult the moral intelligence of their
naturally honest followers and squander the common wealth of the nations. The
African had always been made to work out the marrows of his bones to satisfy
the whims and caprices of some task masters while his own purse cries heavily.
The oppressive class had always trampled on the underprivileged, the poor is
getting poorer and the rich getting richer at the expense of the conspicuously
poor. The predicament of my fellow Africans get me heart-broken, yet, majority
of Africans have proven to be too reluctant to stand for their own cause for
various illogical reasons ranging from religion to even the fear of death which
is inevitable to us all. Therefore, shake off your fears, damn all consequences
and be ready to take your destiny into your own hands. This is a clarion call
for my readers to spread the gospel of an all-out African revolution, a call to
up-root every element of oppression and neo-slavery and wipeout their agents.
This is the only way Africa can be liberated from her present bondage and set
her on a pedestal of hope.
Abiodun Omonijo
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