Our great, beautiful country of great and high men, sages and patriots, who are not allowed or chanced to perform their duty to their fatherland the way they should or ought to do, is entering a new epoch as we enter a new season of independence. And in this new epoch of our 56th year of our political independence from Britain we are moving towards a new character and design of nation-building. For those who are currently at the helms of our affairs politically and otherwise the sands are running out; and our politics and noises and voices at Babel would soon be remedied.
In fact, let me state very quickly, very urgently, that I am sending this writing from my sanctum sanctorum. Because of the current state of things in our country, I enter where I have not entered for quite some donkey time – if you permit me to say and do so. In a spirit of deep yearning and contemplation I enter my sanative chambers of self to embark on the exercise of religious communication in the quest for solutions to our national malaise on the occasion, this occasion of our 56th year of nation-hood that our people of power, authority and influence just celebrated with a whimper. And what a whimper it was – a whimper bereft of true grammar or syntax of a whimperer and a whimperer.
In my contemplative thought and dispute with self, I enter, firstly, the orbit of literature. And I remember the English Romantic/Victorian poet laureate Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809- 92). I remember his deeply religious poem In Memoriam, which we can subject to diverse and diverse readings and interpretations. I remember these eternally-quoted lines:
“So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be.”
When will our political people, our political movers and shakers end our countrymen and countrywomen’s struggle for existence? When will they end our years of pain, sorrow, alienation, loneliness, poverty, hunger and gnashing of teeth? When will they end the masses and people’s hard work that has not fetched them the good life these fifty-six years? Which new world and worlds have they pictured for us as they engage every now and then in their politics of confusion that is quenching in us our flame of nationalism and patriotism? Will we not be correct to call our politicians Babel politicians, whose political and ethnical disagreements and quarrels in our parliaments and executive chambers that are places of “Hard words, jealousies and fears” where folks are set “together by the ears” offend and affect very badly our existence as a united nation? As I give attention to this thought and others, several text messages from some of the readers of this column stream into my ideological and religious consciousness. The texts relate to my last message in this column. Let me quote four.
Text one: “What a challenging treatise from your desk this morning…. It’s so appalling that “high chiefs” who must be called high thieves and men without honour have poisoned the land with their “ill-gotten wealth” mentality so much so that to be honest in Nigeria is to be stupid; so much so that to be moral is to be grossly immoral. However, the Nigerian factor may so seem to have enclosed everyone with practices of dishonesty, but I must sincerely say that there are still a few special species whose souls have not been hijacked by the tempting gripping dictate of Mammon…. As a honest father, continue to spread the gospel of honesty with your magical pen. So help us God.
Text two: Nigerians don’t want to hear you preach or talk about honour, conscience, morality or justice. A young lady left the church I attend here in Ogwashi-Ukwu just because the pastor preached about righteousness. This goes to show that we the citizens must bring back morality and sanity to our country.”
Text three: Hmmmm….. The preacher of morality and comrade of honour and justice in a “honour-less and conscience-less generation,” I greet you, I salute you, great columnist of stupendous thought.”
Text four: “Thank you for “A honour-less and conscience-less generation.” Unfortunately, the love for money in this country is extra-ordinary.”
These messages and others and telephone conversations relating to the subject and others pertaining to our historical and political discourses positively invade my contemplative heart and mind and the saplings and fruits flourishing therein. But it is the healthy tree of the bible dropping special ripe fruits for my intensely fascinating interior to consume that makes all the difference. Behold God’s light shine forth as I intone “Revelation” 21:4. A divine voice utters: “former things are passed away.” A new and mighty epoch is turned into our country as I am also told to announce to you all, our people, our people “Joel” 2:25: “And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great arrow which I sent among you.”
A new epoch is here as all tears are to be no more and “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, no crying, neither shall there be any more pain” (“Revelation” 21:4) as a new spirit that is not the spirit of mere poetry but poetry divine enters the land. It is the spirit of God the Son that henceforth shall be the Sun lighting and brightening the land and the heart of an un-eccentric change. Believe, or not believe, these words must come to pass – shortly and urgently in our country’s new epoch.
This is the un-failing Voice of voices – not the voice of Babel.
and then