In-family pull him down syndrome

Pull him down syndrome is a Nigerian and Ghanaian malaise. It is not known to be suffered by other Africans let alone nationals on the other six continents. Probably why the English language dictionary doesn’t have much on the term nor on the phrase, pull someone down. Those people only pull something, not someone, down.

In Nigeria, and especially in some of its subnational components, the syndrome is worse in-family. You see malicious envy making blood to rise against blood, as if water is thicker. You watch religious monkey shit fights all too often as worshippers who purportedly believe in the same deity engage in deadly rivalries. You witness firsthand how adherents of one party go to every length to subvert their political family in the name of hurting a co-member.

Yes, there are people who don’t pull strangers or outsiders down. Their fickle strength, strangely, is in pulling down only people close to them. Call them the in-house devil. They are legion, these family haters and plotters.

Three Fridays ago, my friend, Dr Pat Akpabio, who is jack of all trade and master of them all, caused a stir within the Akwa Ibom online community. She had posted a video in which she spoke truth to power and also to those without. Characteristically, she spared no one. The seven minute thirty second video, delivered in a mixture of dialect and English, harped on the need for a certain people to reengineer their mindset and in particular learn to not only stop “self hate” but also to start loving and supporting themselves.

Exactly what this writer had three midweeks ago decided to serve in this space, today. Every people should listen to and internalise Mrs. Akpabio’s preachment. However, there’s no denying that her (or rather, our) people need it the most. Let’s break that down.

Why is man man’s greatest enemy? Why is an animal man’s greatest friend? Why is it impossible for man to love and support man every step of the way? Why is man always seeking to block, to stop, to make life difficult for man?

Where I come from, man wants man down 25 hours daily. Man keeps man down permanently, the in-thing being to make sure promotion or success isn’t credited to the account of one’s person or people. It is witchcraft, pure and simple. When you ensure your people make no progress, you are a wintch.

You find loads of them in government and such other right places. They take lousy decisions which result in even lousier public policies. They manipulate and misappropriate budgets. They are far more dangerous than armed robbers, these pen thieves.

Only with a pen, they can kill a whole community; something no robber can do with just one gun. Only with a signature, they can divert funds meant to build or equip a school or a hospital or both. Most public institutions are a shadow of themselves because idiots whom we trusted with power stole the ad hoc budgets. We know the truth -all of us- but we won’t say it; which is the reason we remain in chains.

I have never seen anything like this. Man knows the truth. Man knows only the truth shall set him free. But, man prefers death to saying that one truth!

Just what manner of creature is man? He knows right is the way. Yet, he chooses and stays left all the way to perdition. Is man under a curse that the death of Jesus was not enough to undo?

Please, don’t preach to me. Who is not under a curse who deliberately and persistently sets out to hurt own family? Or are there more than one human family? Why then is man perpetually at war with man?

Take the Hamas-instigated ongoing senselessness in Gaza, for instance. All those killings: all those bombs, all those guns, all those rockets. To imagine the target is man. To imagine the target is not animals.

Everywhere you turn, you see and feel and hear man’s animalness to man. You hear about humongous figures in allocation but you neither feel nor hear let alone see the impact on life or the polity. Well, apart, from the big houses and cars that belong to men and women who have never done or achieved anything except political office. Dear God, who did we offend?

Worse, it is not only powerful people who mastermind this untold havoc. Powerless people flaunt this negative power more. They are in the business of rendering themselves and others like them even more powerless. They support the powerful rather foolishly by helping to perpetuate both their reign and evil agenda.

If you know about the wickedness embedded in our leadership recruitment process, then surely you understand why the oppressed or the poor may never make it to the top or out alive. The poor constantly sell what they have. And they sell it all for nothing. Or, how much do those priceless, decisive votes go for on election day?

How much do the poor sell own children? How much do they sell own kidney and sundry body parts? How much do they sell own ancestral land? How much more can the poor take before they come to their senses and rise to save themselves from themselves?

Consider prices of basic needs in our villages. Traders who themselves are poor take advantage of own people, selling even groceries at cut-throat rates. Poor people are poor human photocopiers of our rich dealers in, say, petroleum products and allied classes of essential needs. There’s always a reason to either hoard stuff or inflate prices.

Man constantly wants man to suffer, to cry, to beg. Only a tiny few ever applaud or joy genuinely and sincerely when another goes up or records a feat. An alarming number, on the other hand, plot or wait or are desperate for bad news to come to others. We know all of them by their sadistic, cynical and gloating tendencies as seen around us, or heard or read in the media.

Where we come from, where we live, where we work, we encounter people who love to keep or pull others down. They don’t know God. They are selfish, they are hateful, they are possessed by the spirits of inferiority and superiority complex. They never want things easy or good or sweet for others.

They are evil, all of them.  The traders who want Shylock profits. The lecturers who prefer failure. The leaders who spread hardship.

The priests who preach other than the truth. The players who play other than the ball. The followers who follow other than their master. The drivers who drive other than to God.

Of course, from the foregoing, we see that it is not only the hands that keep or pull people down. The mouth too, complete with the eyes, the head and the heart. And, as already mentioned, it is not just outsiders and enemies who pull people down. The most painful culprits are insiders and so-called friends.

Satan employs even people related by blood (family members) or protégés to pull their benefactor or their own down. I know someone who has been in politics for just nine years and in that time has sought to pull down tens of quality people. Those who know call him a permanent pull him down legislator, since he has tended to pull down far more than he has developed. Are you like him?

Today is your last chance. Change or you’d perish even alive. See: when you pull down everyone, who shall help your children or you tomorrow? Plus, those who pull down others are not only small, they remain small forever. All that they get at the end is loneliness or sadness or regret or all.

Is that the choice you want? To die alone, sad and full of regrets? Change, apologise and henceforth, work and walk in love. Only encourage and support all you can.

Your life shall glow. You shall be happy, beyond understanding. Your children and you shall reap a good harvest of appreciation, joy and help. You shall have and know people at the top.

Yes, that’s the truest truth. The person who builds people is double sure of a future of positive returns. Some of those people shall come in handy, in future. Gratitude and blessings not curses shall follow your family and your name forever.

Above all, your Father (instead of the devil) shall rejoice over you. What a joy to be different from those who keep or pull others down. This is the word of the Lord. God bless Nigeria -and Ghana et al!