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Life is dead. Those who think that is too harsh are in good company. We can together bring down the temperature by saying instead that life can be so unalive. Life can be so evil, so hard, so insensitive, so precarious, so unfeeling.
Life does not really care. Not about itself let alone about how clean or connected you come, how educated or exposed you get, how hard you work or worship, how selfless or sincere you are, nor how deep or dirty the injustice or treatment. Life is dead to man’s expectations. Life is autonomous, life is sovereign; life lives in its own world: a lifedom!
To succeed in, over and with life, you must be smart enough to understand that you can never ever outsmart life. Never ever seek to understand it. At best you shall die trying. Life is chameleonic, like a … .
The foregoing elliptical expression is life in its full glory. It does and says as if not. It is both instigative and suggestive. Life starts a fire, fuels it but -if you foolishly jump on board the bandwagon- life never helps you if consequences go south.
Life is like a bipolar, mischievous African king. Too much power applied sadistically. American ping-pong that soon becomes British ding-dong. Style in the West, crime in the so-called Third World.
Life is so unfair. It does not give a hoot how you do it, how you get there. Life supports only the strong, and the-haves. Left to life alone, the wicked would live forever to torment the world: thank you, dear death!
Alas, everything said all the way to this point is a digression. Well, the everything all adds up. But, here is the real deal. Life allows far too many unsung heroes.
Today, we look at a number of them. They live unsung. They die unsung. They get buried unsung. Their memory is unsung, forever.
Life is so wicked. Life is the king of inequality. Life is the priest of injustice. Life is the sickest rewarder.
Life has an annoying way of ignoring excellence that shows up daily from so-called small people. You make nothing after giving all to the country for years, even from the country but for a monthlong entertainment they go home with “thousands of millions”. Worse: from the same country that has been preaching no money to you. A country peopled by an alarming majority of unsung heroes.
Imagine the speechwriter. The dunce with power hired the brightest mind who throughout the tenure downloaded sense on to record.
For eternity, every time that sense is quoted, the ad hoc copyright and credit are unduly offered to the dunce. Can any injustice or misplaced praise be greater than that?
Imagine those who make the broadcaster tick. Oh no, now we have a sweeter even if euphemistic sobriquet -On Air Personality (OAP). Forget how sweet we cast that news, others you hardly hear or see wrote or edited it. Our programmes -which force you into our fandom- are arranged, produced, or edited by anonymous fundamental hands who may never become stars or even known.
Imagine the backup singer and the instrumentalist. Without them, the music -in fact, the album- will be mere solo or a cappella but where is the accolade? Nothing for them, except they break away. Sssh, do not tell them how “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force”.
Unsung heroes suffer untold violence that the world calls deprivation, or ingratitude, or the lack of appreciation. Too many unsung heroes, everywhere you turn. We always have a way to outright ignore or downplay the value of their sacrifice. That is the reason that one Nigerian soldier in Sambisa forest wrote an SOS open letter begging his sons to play football even with their blood!
Imagine the Nigerian soldier, the Nigerian policeman, the Nigerian medic. You may add to that unenviable shortlist (single) parents and priests. Along with one or two others, they qualify to be honoured as the very prototype of unsung heroes. The problem with that statement though, is the word -honoured.
It is a taboo in Nigeria for unsung heroes to be honoured. And, I know you know, honour is not that hollow ritual of a celebration that the country mouths every January 15 for our soldiers who died completely and totally in vain during the senseless civil war and even now. Honour, that is dishonour, brings tears of sorrow. And, it attracts eternal damnation to the brainless brains behind it; but who cares?
Above all, as we make to round this off, imagine the leader of the pack -our teacher. What a human being: such long-suffering nurturer. Such uncanny dedication. Such uncanny selflessness.
At the beginning, at the middle and to the very end, life rubs it in with the nonsense assurance that their reward is in heaven. I want to say reward is in heaven my foot, but my church mind will not let me. Such blatant deceit! Such empty trickery!
Let life go on having a ball to the detriment of us all. One day, one fine day, monkey will go to the market and not come back. 99 days might be for the thief, one day is surely for the owner. Life might think it is king Trebor (read Hulk Hogan) but it should never ever forget its ultimate nemesis.
And, you, dear unsung heroes, nobody and nothing should dissuade you. Stay the course. Play your part. And, enjoy it.
God bless Nigeria!
•Next Monday, do not miss: Help! The future is late
