For Martina

MARTINA was a domestic help I got to know years back. She has her umbilical cord interred in a this-way-to (no insult meant) village of Kaduna State. Her parents were aged more by vicissitudes of life than passage of time. She was, however, determined to be tougher than the tough life that made her almost 16 years of existence a grapple. Abuja’s embrace was vicious.

After training, Army deploys special police squad to fight Boko Haram

Her sojourn so far, was a here-and-there tossing, despite her grim resolve to succeed.  Her story disproves the theory of unyielding determination, as the main recipe for “making it”. There were compelling variables that bettered and battered her robust passion to becoming a successful Wig and possible future Silk. I introduced Martina to Jesus and while I won’t say she was completely in, she wasn’t on her way to hell either. Age factor also made studying a bit strenuous. Her age was well beyond public school primary five stuff; though her limited-opportunity background says admitting her to the said class was an act of generosity on the part of the school operators. She didn’t make it to secondary school and obviously had not become a lawyer the last time I heard of her. Does her story sound familiar?

Except for a few profiting from the current rot and those bagging the scum of the crumbs from their tables, you can hardly meet any Nigerian, home and abroad, who desires the norm currently depicting the nation. Countless citizens also earnestly dream of a country correctly earning again, the Giant of the Continent badge. Many are even determined to do whatever it would take for the groaning giant to strut again. But determination, as seen in Martina’s case, will not always be enough.

A system will always be a system, working and delivering to the caprice of those controlling the levers and until a new set of operators take over, dissenting noise, can only get the current operators, into a fast-and-furious destructive pumping and thumping. Noise does not alter or tether them, it is always a signal to them to move further away from what is being revealed and condemned. For a battered system like ours to work efficiently, there must be a displacement, not a shift. The Holy Book says you don’t put a new wine in old wine skin or vice-versa. The inexorable catastrophe, as affirmed by the Word, is what is being witnessed today. But it is a new year and the old must not detain us here. To sustain an evil system, men usually metamorphose into principalities and powers. We see them everywhere around us. It is a new year and they and their acts should not detain us here.

So, what is going to be new? I laugh when those who think they are intelligent try to replace God’s factor with hard-work, researches, sagacity and patriotism. The current system of the world is firmly in the hand of the devil and his handpicked representatives, ambassadors and apostles. That is why leadership world over is going south. Has growing national wealth, corporate prosperity and individual riches in the so-called First World countries made life less brutish and men godlier? Is the much-trumpeted computer-generated flying-GDP not making men more bestial? Is there much difference in untimely death statistics between developed and un-developing worlds? Isn’t everything much of same everywhere, despite the alarming prosperity in one part of the globe and abject poverty in the other?

Men had never needed God, in all genuineness, like now. For those who genuinely desire newness for a country like Nigeria, I must warn that their determination, regardless of how steely, would achieve nothing without God. For that determination to be purposeful, the primary focus must be shifted to God in all righteousness, because no efforts poured into what is in existence now would produce a different result. I’m not talking religion here. I’m pushing for a complete switch to holiness and righteous living, for starters. Then the promise of “all other things shall be added” can now be claimed.

One may wonder why the Alaagbas and Baba Adinnis aren’t leading the charge. It’s simply because they are part of the system. The rescue effort won’t require a crowd. I’m certain a few untainted men and women, with unyielding resolve not to be compromised, would be enough for God to prove His mightiness over those doing the unthinkable to sustain the current system, including weekly bath at T-junction with human blood, making them to end up with snaky skin. They know themselves and the judgement would be swift.

A genuine change should be sincerely desired for Nigeria and Martina. With the kind of system both have found themselves, only God can do the impossible for them; ending their clamour well and finishing it strong. It is both a prayer and a desire. Happy New Year.

 

Amosun’s Politics 101

If Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State pulled through the Adekunle Akinlade’s succession project, his enemies currently laughing his travails would be compelled to be quiet for a while. Going by how he walked into the Oshiomhole ambush all in the name of supporting Mr. President’s choice for the party’s chair, common-sense should tell his ilk to be aware of such future wholesale adoption, for whatever and whoever’s sake.

Amosun, Rochas Okorocha, Abdul’Aziz Yari, Rotimi Akeredolu et al must have discovered by now that Politics 101 is not a special elective you handle carelessly to pass with “just let my people go” grade. Except these embattled governors, especially Amosun, managed not to carry it over by having their ways using other platforms like the APM Amosun is using in Ogun, the obvious lack of tact in the handling of Oshiomhole’s enthronement and coronation, is bound to haunt SIA’s politics for a longer time.

Many have argued that SIA mismanaged his political capital and presidential profit. Maybe. But the more important message in the current mess is not only his to learn. Ti koko ba nfe ni lefe (I’m not really in translation mood today).