These are very interesting times, indeed. Everywhere you turn, all that stares back every time is empty fullness. All that stares back is illiterate education, mediocre excellence, small bigness. Suddenly, the greatest noise, the most sound now emanates from not empty but full vessels -purportedly full vessels, that is.
Pray, how is it that at a table of men, you find not even one man? Why, at the top all you see is the bottom complete with its accompaniment? How exactly did these so-called leaders achieve these giddy heights of leadership? How on earth did this classless lot qualify for front row seats and in first class?
See: men do not and should not gloat. Should not kiss and tell. Should not toy with see-finish and talebearing. A man who is a man does not and should not rant about how he fed another man, how that other man ate like a childish glutton, how another man he disagrees with is his boy, how he drove this or that car because his father was general this and that.
All of the foregoing is the pastime of boys, otherwise known as perpetual children. Boys are only future men. But, men are former boys. While boys can be men, precociously speaking, men should never be boys.
Because that type of comedown is too expensive. Because such men become ready characters in school dramas. Which makes their children the laughing stock, everywhere. Imagine being tagged the son or daughter of a father who acts or talks like a boy, like a child!
Men are supposed to be leaders, parents, models, teachers, mentors -in that order. These are bounden responsibilities. Men (all men) must necessarily -at all times- evince the virtues of character, long suffering and restraint. Men (all men) must necessarily -at all times- be men; never less let alone be children.
Are you a man? Has life favoured you? Did you once or twice or serially feed someone enough to live or help someone enough to stand through life? Look, listen up, my man, the day you brag about you being oxygen, that same day you lose your right to manhood.
Forgive me if you think I went overboard in making that last point. Really, when a man descends lower and lowlier than should just for purposes of shaming another man as well as to feed own ego, he in the process dismans and unmans himself. He loses the things that make him a man, the things that make him a real man. Without class, gender and respect, the man is naked.
A naked man is like naked cake. Exposed in sensitive places, incomplete, rustic. Not the real deal. Much more work required.
Men should never take their eyes off the ball nor their feet off the pedal. Ahead, ahead: forward ever, teaching good. No matter what happens, men should never forget that they were not, are not and shall never be called for self. Men should forever remember that they are called permanently for humanity: to lead, to multiply, to teach.
Men don’t lead or multiply or teach self. That is the reason we cannot afford to be selfish, stupid. It is unmanly to self-celebrate. Pride, childish pride, is not a man’s thing.
Men lead the world. But, there is a caveat. The men who lead the world cannot and should not turn around to unlead their family, their followers, their subordinates. That means, you cannot be a leader and show bad example.
Men multiply humanity or grow the world. Beyond the demographics, you see the indispensability or, if you like, the near-omnipotence, of man when it comes to growing the world in the numbers (per gender per crime.) 80% of criminals, even plus including those in jail, are male. Dear men, have we so far failed at home, in the street, and at work?
We shall come back to that question, presently. Meanwhile, let us get back to another unfinished business. Men teach or mentor the world. Any man who teaches nonsense or dementors humanity is not a man!
It is that simple. If you are called as a manager to solve our poverty but you instead worsen it because of diverting our commonwealth to sort out only your family and cronies, you are not called: you are cursed. You are no manager, you are a thief. This harsh analogy speaks to the fact that a man called, naturally, to be a leader, a model, a parent, a teacher, a mentor who fails in this calling is no man!
But, seriously, have men failed? In Nigeria, my country, it is difficult to prove that this answer is not yes. Men holding positions of authority have completely and totally forgotten their calling. They lead no one, they mentor no one, they teach no one; other than themselves.
Or, why do they never discuss issues or fight over people-centric causes and ideas? Why do they always bicker over self-centred puerile stuff and in public or in the media? Is that one a man who goes on live television to rant like a child over car makes, over food, over past glory, over qualification, over tomorrow? No, please: no man who is a man is desperate, at least publicly, to make another look small.
All these privileged, overgrown, spoiled (brats, sorry) boys should hide their balls complete with their faces and heads in shame. We know that all they care about is holding on to the same offices they have grossly abused. All they care about is that virtual, bragging rights passport so they continue to loot us silly. One day in 2027, monkey shall go to the market and never return!
Let men who have ears that hear hear. As for men who have eyes that see, I know we can see that our sons and daughters are coming in haste to take over from these and those men who have all along thought us fools. Nigeria is about to experience genuine fullness. This bogus fullness that has tantalisingly shamed us for a century and counting is about to become a valley.
Suddenly, our fatherland becomes like a lamp shining from the mountaintop. All of Africa shall see it, ditto all of the globe. The first step of a country’s thousand-mile journey begins with a leadership recruitment reawakening. Ours is taxiing.
Do not say you were not forewarned. This is it. Be a man in the true sense of it. Grow up in the mind, eschew childishness, and exercise maturity and restraint 25 hours daily.
Above all, no matter how it is doing you (as we say here at home); no matter the provocation, never play or talk like a small boy. You cannot be full but sound empty. Always show class, always show content, always show workings. The mountain should never carry on like a valley.
God bless Nigeria!