Honour in crisis

Around you, around me, everywhere we turn, virtue is in chains. Good is on trial while evil is free, toing and froing, in search of who next to devour. The abomination here is that this is not the main abomination. The unsavouriest part is the fact that only a very tiny minority see anything wrong with this monumental anomaly.

An alarming majority are guilty, either directly or as an accessory before or after the fact. People you think honourable more frequently than not descend into the arena or in many cases deploy gutter language, to prove what-I-do-not-know. Down there, they behave, carry on, do, react, and speak like, or sometimes even worse than, the worst of us. No, God, no: the best of us cannot be the worst of us; please, Father.

Class ought to remain exactly that. Honour is class: high up there, confident, loving, pure, selfless, simple; never demoted, never desperate, never hateful. Honour without class is not honour. Honour that is without class is dishonour posing for a photoshoot in borrowed Christmas attires.

Which is why an incumbent local government chairman, for instance, can sit on all that commonwealth but has no seat of honour in the eyes of their people. Ditto a state governor: because of honour or the lack of it, they end up with only dishonourable governance. And, the president? A nation ought to pray, 24/7, not to have a presidency without honour otherwise it is finished.

Honour is neither greedy nor stingy. Honour is neither desperate nor in haste to prove anything. Honour has nothing to prove because honour (all by itself) is the very proof. Honour that runs around like a headless chicken -for assurance, for support, for validation- is merely a bogus version of the virtue.

Honour is not, has never been and can never be chameleon. Being as constant as the northern star, honour changeth not -as King James would have put it. In good times and in bad times, provoked and unprovoked, watched and unwatched, honour is honourable. Honour that changes per situation is not honour, it is a pretender to the throne.

A friend who deals or thinks as an enemy has no honour. However, a so-called foe who is not so -both in front and behind- is a figure of honour. The same way we were taught that hard work is what the boss says it is, honour is what God says it is; honour is a word of God. Honour is not a word of man.

Honour is not achievement or age. Honour is not badge or bravura. Honour is not permissive or position. Honour is not wealth or weightless.

Honour is not anonymous, never was, never can be. Honour is known, far and near, feared and recognised and respected by all and sundry; even by those who do not have it. Honour is a known quantity whose place on the head table is marked, permanent, sacrosanct. Wise people never mess with honour because they know -and, it is true- that is the beginning of dishonour.

When it comes to conduct, honour is a code, an unbreakable code. Honour possesses the good graces of chivalry, compassion, honesty, humility, patience, peaceability, sacrifice, self-assurance, valour and value. Honour displays an uncanny sense of candour and restraint in action and in speech. You can never catch honour blabbing, napping.

Honour does not speak carelessly. Honour does not speak before engaging the brain. Honour employs motivative and respectful and tactful language, every time. Honour speaks to heal rather than to hurt, and to unite rather than to divide.

Furthermore, honour is courageous. Honour can never hide to dish out instructions, only to attempt ain incredible volte-face in public. Honour is a man, no pun intended. Honour is not timid, honour is unintimidatable.

Honour is generous in spirit and in character. Honour gives, and understands enough to grant legrooms to even the most dishonourable. Honour never holds back entitlements or rights or privileges just to attract or tempt or punish. That, by the way, is a dishonourable stratagem which almost always backfires.

Honour is value added. Honour is better given than taken or received. You feel special when you evince honour. Honour is capacity, measured, surefooted.

Honour is not hypocritical, never hides its head in the sand while its gaping bumbum opens to a cynical world. Honour never sues for peace and for war simultaneously, never blows hot at 5.59 and cold at 6 o’clock. Honour knows it is dishonourable to approbate and reprobate. In the face of the worst provocation, honour remains in its honour: God-fearing, long suffering, open, sincere, tolerant.

Honour never adds fuel to fire, never blackmails or gossips or plots, never feels inferior or superior or threatened, never instigates or scatters or snitches, never shames or spreads or weaponises poverty. Honour never betrays, never breaks a promise without prior notice or an apology, never gives and brags or shows off, never kisses and tells or mocks. The foregoing are examples of despicable dishonour. Sssh, stop trying to justify the misdemeanours. Simply jump and pass, you dishonourable bigot!

Honour never obeys useless instructions. Shameful honour is a dishonourable piece of nonsense. Most dishonourable felonies of conduct committed in the line of duty can never be forgiven by self or the other person(s). Beware, all you servants of the most low!

Honour stands at one place, dictated by conscience and integrity. Honour never bows or dances to the whims and caprices of ambition, pocket or stomach infrastructure. Honour is not worried about, let alone swayed by, what it will eat or drink or how it will survive. Because, honour -real honour- is covered on all sides.

You are a shameless, dishonourable nincompoop if you have served three political masters, moved on to latch on to the incumbent every time; deploying the exact same Neanderthal strategy of subterfuge. But, you know what, honour is coming to visit and sort you out. Honour fears no face, no name. Honour fears nobody, nothing.

And, there is no honour in sponsoring terrorism, physical or spoken or written. Like paying, cash or on credit, for a human being to transmogrify into and be unleashed as an attack dog. That chokes the conscience with pecuniary dishonour. Imagine the lifelong torment of living with the memory that at some point of your earthly journey, Mammon had you at its beck and call so badly?

Listen, there are many things that honour will not have you do for money. Like, from a certain age you must know that it is dishonourable for you to support someone hook, line and sinker while in the process attacking others just because of some miserable monthly stipend. You cannot be sixtyish and childish, for instance. Never think that you can get away with puerile dishonourable tendencies, because -indeed- you cannot and shall not.

To be sure, honour is about both the head and the tail. Filthy lucre dishonour indicts the payer and the payee. You cannot be insulated from dishonour once you throw caution to the wind, no matter how much honour you think you have. You cannot suddenly remember to claim honour when you did not all along forget to toy with dishonour.

See, honour does not demote or deprive or hate people. Honour never wants to be the only cock to crow. If you have used your place of honour to make others better or big or bigger or happy or happier, you are a person of honour. If you have made them small or smaller or depressed or hateful or timid, you are of all men most miserably dishonourable.

Just a little prophecy, for the road. No, the time for that has not come. Let us wait for next Monday. Keep a date with this space to read just a little prophecy for all dishonourable men and women and children of power.

Meanwhile, a little teaser should suffice. Only honour is eternal. Dishonour, on the other hand, is ephemeral, spasmodic: it all comes to an end too soon. You cannot shame honour and remain in honour for even a quarter thereafter!

Expect a virtual tsunami, rain is coming. It is a natural waterloo designed for pretenders to the throne of honour. Bad eggs cannot escape being flushed out of the system of honour. The world has had enough of dishonourable people going scot-free.

Semi-finally, honour is like humility: it does not need to be voiced. The people know what honour is and who among them can be called honourable. In its real sense, honour far transcends politics or office or title. A poor, illiterate person can be honourable, an educated man of means and power can be dishonourable.

Finally, honour never fights back; only corruption does. Honour only has to sit down and cross its legs and watch the salvation of the Lord. That is because honour suffers no ruption in spite of and despite what dishonour does or says. Plus, true honour has organic foot soldiers -people it may not know- who are available, ready and willing to do and undo, 25 hours daily.

God bless Nigeria!