Are we learning anything at all from all the foolery, from all the politicking, from all the posturing in the polity? Are you learning? Are they learning? Are Nigerians learning anything at all?
Like politics Nigeriana, life is not a straight line. Like politics Nigeriana, life is a circle, a cycle really. Like politics Nigeriana, life goes around and then comes around. Like politics Nigeriana, life never goes and goes.
Like politics Nigeriana, life always goes and comes around. Like politics Nigeriana, life always goes and comes back. Like politics Nigeriana, life is best lived via experiential learning. This is exactly how and where and why most people miss it.
They are not mindful enough to learn from either the past or the process, or both. That is about the only other reason they fail so abysmally in and with politics, and even life. They are bad students. They don’t pay enough attention to the great teacher that life is.
Around them, around us, around you, around me, the great teacher makes things so easy with relatable deja vus but they/we/you/I together are either too blind or too greedy, or both. Alas, the question remains: how did the blindness and the greed of yesterday and yesteryear end? Because, indeed, it is exactly how those of today and tomorrow shall. Foolishness, selfishness and all such ungodlinesses always end in total failure or total regret, or both.
Do you feel betrayed? Or you know you have been lied to? Or you think you have been or are being used? Or you have suddenly awoken to the reality that the serial dehumanisation you have endured over the years has brought you to a dangerous precipice of a cul-de-sac?
The answer you seek is in your hands. Your answer is not the prerogative of your tormentor(s) or user(s). Oppressors don’t give freedom. The oppressed take it, and by force.
So, rather than sit around all day bickering and whining, take your fate in your hands. Say no, if you must and stand by it. The low-hanging fruit of that resistance is that it instantly not only restores your childhood or manhood or mindhood or womanhood or youthhood or all, but it also offers you a mental freedom and restoration that can heal you beyond imagination. Be warned though, the oppressors, the tormentors, the users never take no for an answer.
They may coax you. Then, they may engage their second gear: enticement. Since they abhor failure in whatever guise, they may ignore you but later try to deploy force tactically. If you didn’t already know, their chief or final tactic -which comes from Satan himself- is the weaponisation of deprivation -or, of poverty.
Please, don’t try saying no to any oppressor, any tormentor, any user if deprivation bends you or twists your mind. That is, if anything in this empty dream called life can get you running back to your puke. Otherwise, your new testament shall be worse than your old. Those guys do not smile; those guys take no prisoners.
Learn to want out, to walk away and to never look back. Stop suffering and smiling. Stop smiling in public but crying in private. The truth is that, yes, your oppressor may take offence and do you dirty more upon learning you want out but chances are they may -on a good day- also offer you a better deal.
We all get what we want, if we believe and show that we want it. Most oppressors believe the oppressed like the treatment since they never complain. Most oppressors are not oppressors in the true sense of that word. Because fear forces the oppressed to fake loyalty orgasms, via false public applause and praise-singing, many masters and mistresses almost always get away with the impression that all is well.
But, seriously, why does man find it difficult to speak his mind when all is not well? Granted, one of the many failings of most leaders is deafness but some of them would perform better, if their people spoke truth to power in an honest, humble way. At least, let us say our own and allow them to do theirs. We should not all die in this deafening silence.
We should learn to speak up. And, we should never engage in doublespeak or double-acting, especially in matters of life and politics in the name of being politically correct. Saying or doing one thing when you mean another is evil. The fact that it is the grundnorm of politics Nigeriana makes it the more troubling.
It should trouble you enough to never accept let alone practise it. We should realise that no good can come from something which has evil as its hallmark. We can all not live a lie but expect truth to show up out of the blue to rescue us. We can -and we are all going to- fix our politics.
The first step, going forward, is to do and say only what we mean and mean only what we do and say. It is an indictment and a stain on both our personality and our humanity to celebrate publicly over the way someone treats us but lament privately about the same stuff. It is not the way to go. It is not the way to live.
I understand the point about being as wise as the serpent, per time. Yes, I understand all that rigmarole about survival. But, I am saying that if you publicly and with joy in your heart and on your face allow them to dishonour, to humilate, to ridicule you publicly, you must never resort to our private space to whine or to pity-shop that it is because you have no other alternative. Shut up, and vamoose!
We all know what and who this is about. We all know it is not about them. We all know it is about you. We all know that it is your avarice plus your insatiable penchant for power plus your forever joblessness that connive to force you -all the time- to laugh when you should weep.
Learn, my dear, learn from the rolling dice that politics and indeed life are. It all comes back, or rolls back in due season. Help whoever, however and whenever you can but as soon as you are done, move; flee. Never hang around for compensation; never allow humiliation in the hope of gain.
Let me repeat that. In, especially, politics Nigeriana, never hang around for reward. In fact, even if impossible, die during that tenure by simply disappearing after having played whatever fundamental role you think you did. The shock can be damning.
Furthermore, curse or swear at or write off nobody no matter what you think you know. The way politics Nigeriana is wired, the people you curse or swear at or write off on your way down are waiting for you on your way up. Politics Nigeriana flows inwardly, never outwardly. That is why some Nigerians can be APCish today, PDPish tomorrow, APCish again overmorrow and the beat goes on.
Gov. Umo Eno, Ph.D., of Akwa Ibom state, has rubbished all the political ceilings we built in our mind, all the political fears we nursed against our ego, against our brothers and sisters, all the political impossibilies we thought existed. He has shocked the world of politics and politicians and indeed all of us. By everything he has done in two years and plans to do in the remaining two, we now know that everything is nothing and nothing is anything. I, Michael BUSH Mbaba, can now go home and rest, assured that the race is not for the swift nor is life a straight line.
That is another monumental lesson. Politics, like life, has too many twists and turns. You either twist and turn along or run away to live to fight another day. Whatever you do though, never in the process lose yourself nor your essence nor your peace -or you are finished.
Finally, remember tomorrow travels backwardly and sometimes even waits for you to meet up. The future is coming to or waiting for you, surely. Challenge is: when you eventually meet her, shall you be adequately clean and proud and therefore qualified to receive her prize or would it be said that greed and impatience had so messed you up that only with your eyes should you behold your missed glory; the way Moses only saw but not enjoy Canaan? Be warned!
God bless Nigeria!