THERE is no gainsaying the fact that vision and determination are necessary ingredients to success in life. The world over, these two virtues are celebrated and adopted, for they work with surefire efficacy and are responsible for a host of developments from one human society to the other. In Africa, our cultural heritage attests articulately to the primacy µof these two primordial values. It is in the bid to drive home this salient human reality that one of our African proverbs affirms sententiously, “it is not only the fox racing in leaps and bounds that arrives at its destination, but also the snail, ultimately, despite its slow speed.”
What matters here is the vision and determination to arrive home in the end, in spite of the inbuilt strength of the individuals involved. In affirmation of this, the Judeo-Christian Scriptures confirm that “the race is not for the swift nor the battle to the strong … but time and chance happen to them all.”
Certainly, the above rang true in the celebrated political case of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States of America. He was one of the greatest men in the land in his time. It is on record that he lost out in almost all the elections he contested in his life and, as if that was not traumatically castrating enough, even in his business and personal dealings as a result of which, not surprisingly, though, the famous word of wisdom and inspiration arose that “the dignity of man is not in never falling, but rising each time he falls.”
Undoubtedly, the two virtues rang true for Bill Gates, the world’s richest man after Solomon who had to drop out of Harvard University due to low grasp of academic rigours. Unspeakably stigmatising as it sounds, he went to continue in pursuit of his personal vision and determination of researching to produce, configuring and patenting ground-breaking software for the personal computer to be at the beck and call of every man.
Same was the case for William John Shakespeare, the iconic and iconoclastic Bard of Avon, who, at the inception of his creative artistry, did not enjoy the cult following of a Christopher Marlowe, the rage and celebrity of the pre-Shakespearean dramatic renaissance, who mockingly carpeted and burlesqued Shakespeare, pejoratively lampooning his name, when he referred to him as perhaps the greatest “Shakescene” in the country. It was certainly a concession to vision and determination, not least of all to the dynamic vagaries of human nature and achievement that Shakespeare rose to become easily the world’s greatest writer and playwright, infinitely greater in fact than Marlowe himself who had been treating the young playwright with insufferable condescension and scorn.
Coming closer home to our own Muhammadu Buhari, our avuncular dear President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who, despite losing out in three previous elections, kept faith with his vision and determination to become the President. Vision and determination are the composite ingredients that are bound to chart the opposite trajectory for Buhari’s second term bid for the prime citizenship bestriding Aso Rock Villa like a colossus. Buhari is certainly on fire imbued with the desire to wire the nation higher and badger the liars and sharers of our collective patrimony into the mire to retrieve and redistribute our workmen’s hire more equitably. This is the liberation to the next level of meaningful and positive change.
In comparison, it is mostly instructive that the salient duo of vision and its attendant determination should, will and must work for Great Ogboru in his long-running strategic enterprise to call the shots at the Delta State Government House this year. To start with, the visionary man, Chief Ovedje Ogboru, has come too long a time to miss out on his noble quest. Besides and certainly more relevantly, he is a beloved son of his people and too connected to the political power grid to be shoved aside, being a bona fide member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), apart from the germane propitiousness of having successfully proved himself a capable manager of both human and material resources. Going by exemplifying precedents, there is a Buhari in Ogboru in the sense of an ardent capacity builder and revolutionary who bluntly refuses to say die until he has lovingly cradled the object of his perennial quest and personal revolution. The simple justification lies in the fact that humanity and human experiences are the same everywhere. The same natural and human laws apply everywhere on the globe.
One of such laws is that of sacrifice or paying the price. It is a philosophical fact that life is ready to give those who know exactly what they want, provided they are ready to insist and pay the price. To say that Ogboru has paid the price is to strive to systematically discover the obvious. The Holy Bible, the inevitable word of God, puts it a little rather differently, declaring that those who strive for the mastery are not crowned except they strive lawfully; that is playing by the rules or paying the price.
The vision and determination of Great Ogboru to come on board has never waned, and now is the time to liberate Delta State from the grip of political hawks hovering over the heartbeat of the nation. Like Buhari, Great Ogboru, with the power of the masses, will achieve this long-sought feat this time for the good of his people.
•Ejuwa wrote from Lagos