Ribadu: A big compatriot with bigger challenges

Although Mallam Nuhu Ribadu’s Memoir, My Story: My Vision, is a radiant involvement with acts of recollection (popularly called storytelling) and futuristic postulates for Nigeria to exit from its messy challenges, the text is artfully laced with artistic and cognitive aspects of serious literature. The central concern of the text is to encapsulate the leaches eating at the sole of Nigeria and the positive way forward.

Narrowly arrowed between instinct and construct, Ribadu writes in a sufficient tone of passion to indirectly challenge our collective senses of wisdom and curiosity as regards issues of corruption, governance, integrity and transparency.

The text is as, thematically as long as Nelson Mandela’s ‘Long Walk to Freedom. Just as the tripartite themes of personal courage, self-sacrifice and spirit of collective diligence radiate in Mandela’s, Ribadu, thematically preoccupies his with loyalty and honesty, integrity and discipline.

In his characteristic nature of speaking phonier than words, Ribadu exposes the categorical facts that will blow up ever in the faces of the corrupt, convicted governors and others who abused the powers entrusted with them. In the same artistic similitude and mannerism of the German novelist and poet, Gunta Grass, winner of 1999 Nobel Prize in literature, who sardonically believes that literature must not lie and hide, Ribadu matter-of-factly bares his mindset, with conscientious sobriety, on personalities he admires in Nigeria and outside.

With flowing narrative panache, Ribadu laments to the point of widened yawning how Nigeria’s leaders wasted $400 billion between 1960-1999, as revealed by the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) and the Blacklisting of Nigeria by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on money laundering and terrorism.

Also, in a tone of rigorous abdication, Ribadu frowns at the political elite for persistently ignoring the link that should exist between transparency and democratic governance.

The vitiating Hurricane insecurity in the country has also drastically reduced since his assumption of duty as the National Security Adviser to Mr. President (NSA).

In recent times, it has become the concern of genuine patriots that the man, whose records are yet to be equalled or surpassed, who prosecuted and jailed many corruptible potentates should have put an end to banditry and kidnapping. His unspoken response to this are the specialized technicalities with which men and women of the armed forces tackle bandits with considerable successes.

With moderation and balance, which are character traits of hardened conservatives, he got his kith and kin convinced on the need to align with the progressives by joining the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) as a presidential aspirant. He believed it was through this party that he would be able to execute his ideas with ease and when his conservative but egalitarian ideals clashed with the political shocks and chokers of the progressives, he bore the consequences with rare calmness.

Ribadu’s effort with this textual exercise is an effective addition to world literature, which will be enduringly remembered by posterity. As the battle to reclaim the true identity of Nigeria continues, perhaps, his performances in his current posting may outsmart those of the police and E.F.C.C.His assignments have always been bigger than his ranks. Hear his optimistic tone: “I believe in Nigeria; that it is a country with potential for greatness; that it is a country where things can work if the leaders demonstrate the required discipline, focus and dedication”.

Sulaiman Ajibade sent this from Abuja FCT.

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