REMEMBERING JUNE 12 AND NIGERIAN POLITICIANS IN THE BOOK OF LIFE.
By Taiye Olaniyi
Every day we are privileged to live on Mother Earth, our thoughts, words, and actions become equally replicated in the Akashik record, the Book of Life if we are on the positive or/ and credit part of it, we enjoy the heavenly bliss, otherwise, ” eternal perdition to our souls” quoting our beloved late Gani Fawehimi, a renowned barometer of sane democracy encapsulated in civil activism.
Gani Fawehimi felt so disgusted about the political despondency during and after military eras and fought for its sanitation till his last days on earth.
The labours of heroes of democracy in Nigeria seem to be getting dim and dimmer as the so-called bottom of the democratic process keeps moving from one flock of politicians and another.
I remembered as if it were yesterday, my first physical encounter with Bashorun Mashood Kashimowo Abiola at the commissioning of the then-new Telephone Exchange in Akure in 1986 or thereabout and how I was privileged to partake in picking a few snacks from the same tray when we were all being served inside the Telephone Exchange.
The second encounter remains more significant and impactful to me when on June 12th, 1990 I wrote a handwritten letter that was later typed to him to please address the issue of an Islamic program he sponsored on either the NTA or Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State, B.C.O.S, and which an Islamic Scholar, boastful as he was, notorious for always disrobing the masquerades but damn more egoistic than promoting the glorious messages and soul inspiring religion which Islam is to me and people of like minds represent.
Thanks to M.K.O Abiola for stopping the program abruptly.
When in 1993 the first free and fair election allegedly won by MKO was annulled by General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida’s military regime, politics and polity in Nigeria have been full of lethal radiation, creating one problem or the other but most areas of trust and distrust of politicians, their regimes and bundles of clog to the wheels of our national progress and advancement.
Promises upon promises, laws made, laws violated, constitutions reviewed, constitutions rebuked, personalities ego boosting, personalities making money as rewards of being tagged honorable, classing and clapping as excellences while the people swim in an agony of tettetterd penury.
What fame but still what a shame! What a congratulation and why the conflagration and now the constipation in hope for change?
As we all desire to occupy the right side of heavenly realms one day and days of judgment, what assurance do we have that money made, positions acquired legally or/ and illegally would vindicate us in the presence of the One and only One incorruptible Judge, the only Just and unbribable God whose eyes permeate every heart of man and in whose Book of Life are thoughts, words, and actions galvanize into our destiny here now and the hereafter?
When will our politicians learn to live a life of good character, a legacy worth emulating, and actions that are hope-building for building an exalted Nation, or a beloved nation Nigeria?
On character, good ones for that matter, Bonaro W. Overstreet requests us in our hearts recession to peruse a submission,
” People of good character are not all going to come down on the same side of difficult political and social issues.
Good people – people of character and moral literacy can be conservative, and good people can be liberal.
We must not permit our disputes over thorny political questions to obscure the obligation we have to offer instruction to all our young people in the area in which we have, as a society, reached a consensus:namely, on the importance of good character, and some of its pervasive particulars.”
God Bless Nigeria.
(vitalnewsngr.com)
