Reflections with Olu Obafemi
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THE Christendom just ended the festivity known as Easter, the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the humiliating and agony-suffused death inflicted on Him by those He came to save and for the redemption of His followers. This festivity carries with it diverse symbolism— spiritual and physical, all of which leave the world with great instructions. Beyond the festivity, therefore, we must return to the meaning, the expectations and symbolism of Easter, not only for the Christians, but for the entirety of society, our nation and the human community. There is hardly any moment of our nation’s history more apt and rife for reflecting on the instruction of Easter—the whole essence of the humiliation, punishment, suffering and the death of Christ; the crown of thorns on his head, the laceration of his skin with bastard whips; the assault on his person, even the preference of a murderer to Christ for pardon and reprieve. The replacement of ‘Hallelujah’ shouts for ‘Crucify him’ by those he came to save and redeem, and so on. The hostility of the Roman authorities to even let him go when they found no sin or guilt in him is also very instructive. How many of our heroes, whom we ought to be grateful to have as our leaders, have we discarded and shunned through greed, myopia and vision-less-ness?
The critical lesson here is one of humility, compassion and indescribable love. That Christ fulfilled His mission of salvation and redemption of man, through unmatchable love of mankind, self sacrifice and self-martyrization—the main message of the life death and resurrection of Christ to the Christendom– should teach the world a lesson, especially those in leadership positions.
Those that must benefit from the message and symbolism of Easter as iconized in the life of Christ are those who lead or seek to lead society through politics today. Our national leadership should flee, like from a plague , from arrogance of power, founded mostly on ignorance and naiveté, such as displayed recently by Ike Kachikwu, our Minister of State for Petroleum, when he in utter contempt and crass insensitivity, informed Nigerians that he did not train as a magician and thus could not be expected to cure the excruciating pain inflicted on the masses of the people by the protracted fuel crisis and the soaring pump price of petrol. with the inflationary outcome it imposes on the people in the midst of the crash in the price of crude oil. Nigerians should not expect any relief of this situation until May, and they should be grateful if that palliative comes by or before then! It is a great relief that an important and strategic leader of his party, Senator Ahmed Tinubu, came to the rescue of the government by his courageous intervention of calling Kachikwu to order from that unspeakable display of insensitivity in power. It is also a welcome show of awareness of the creeping despondency and anguish on the Nigerian people who massively voted in a government that promised change when the President himself offered the promise that the people will soon begin to witness improvement from his governance strategies! The likes of Kachikwu dampen morale, kill passion and drown hope. They do not know it is Easter season—they bring less bliss and more blight to a nation in the clutch of growing disillusion. Committed and passionate leadership is built on the enthronement of extraordinary feats and governance performance that seems to transcend the planes of imagination. That is what magic in power means and that is what great leaders aim, should aim, to achieve for their principals—the electorate who put them in power! The leader who transformed Singapore from a Third to a First World did so in the mould of magicians. The leader who produced many Firsts in Western Nigeria in the late fifties performed wondrous acts of magic. The leader who held the northern Nigeria spell-bound such that has never been replicated in that region needed no training in the talismanic art of magic. They were driven and impelled by vision and compassion to make a difference in power.
Leadership founded on rapacious materialism and loveless-ness brought us this far back from achieving our national goals. Christ led the world by example. He did unto others what he would they did to him. Self-sacrifice, self denial, including mortal self- surrender that boon may be the lot of the world after his departure are the critical indices of leadership that Christ bequeathed to the world. What does this say to the leaders of our nation today? Our leaders in all tiers of governance are in the eye of the storm today because they are yet to truly imbibe the lesson of leadership by example, humility, self-sacrifice and love that the heroes of our important religions—Christianity, Islam ad our traditional religions– exemplified. Any reason why, in spite of the human and natural endowments of our nation (never mind the critical fall in oil revenue), the majority of our people hunger, roam the streets seeking unavailable employment, uneducated and unhealthy? Our streets and alleys lay in perpetual darkness, our homes and industries receive energy and electricity only when they buy generators. Our streets are ruled by armed-robbers, kidnappers, peopled by adolescents-young men and women who are out of school without jobs or because of lack of funds to get education.
True, we need to be patient as a people as Buhari makes fresh pledges over the change he and his Party promised us on the eve of election but they better begin to show plans and strategies for fulfilling that promise before the people’s patience runs out. No doubt, the people are willing to give government a chance. After all, they voted it into power believing it can perform magic. But arrogance in/of power and lack of patriotism in leadership produce insensitive, uncaring and dim-witted leadership. The power of prophecy, of vision and the spirit of commitment and self-martyrization, which the life of Christ radiated, must be freshly embraced by leaders of our nation. So also the followership. It is commonly said that a people gets the kind of leadership they deserve. Those who followed Christ, with total commitment, doggedness and steadfastness, at mortal risks, are the reasons for the survival of Christianity as a world religion today. Almost all the Disciples of Christ died as martyrs. We have a hapless, uncommitted followership in the name of electorate who will not raise a finger or a voice in condemnation of the dysfunctional leadership doled out to them perennially. And the leaders ride rough-shod in the face of passive majority followership.
We must, therefore, return to the meaning, the expectations and symbolism of Easter, not only for the Christians, but for the entirety of society and the human community. There is hardly any moment of our nation’s history more apt and rife for reflecting on the instruction of Easter. The critical lesson here is one of humility and compassion. That Christ fulfilled his mission of salvation and redemption of mankind—the main message of the life of Christ to the Christendom– should teach the world a lesson. No question, many Nigerians find in Buhari such qualities of integrity, selflessness and accountability. The crusade he is waging against corruption and lootage of or national wealth and patrimony has been supported by the Nigerian people, across parties and religious persuasions. Many Christians see this crusade as manifest in Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem and the way he chased out the thieves and vagabonds from the House of worship. What needs to be done by the Buhari government is to take the act of governance beyond the anti-corruption crusade. The war against terrorism is also salutary. But you cannot fully win these wars with any enduring success unless you grow the economy, grow employment, and embark on a clear-cut, unmistakable programme of economic recovery. The government must find a solution, systematically, to the darkness that pervades and gallops on our land. The fuel scarcity must be a thing of the past in an oil-producing nation like our own. The magic, which is achievable through vision, strategy, compassion and commitment, is to turn the resources that this nation is massively endowed with around.