This world is not a very good place. The world is not even a good place. The world is a bad place. In fact, the world is a very bad place.
Everywhere, worldtizens mouth godliness and righteousness. We are long on how God is this and that. We say the right things, creating the impression per time that we are five and six with God. But we are short on doing good; that is, our heart is too evil.
Is there another planet doublespeak walks on all fours? Where they claim to love righteousness, but hate it? Where they also hate those who try to do righteousness? Where people are sidelined or targeted because they love God?
On own planet, many are being disqualified, just because they are good. There’s a governor in the deep south of Nigeria maligned publicly by a tiny minority of his people for -wait for it- talking ‘too much’ about God and prayer. Witches and wizards even converged and sued him to stop him building a worship centre for God. In the chronic face-off between right and wrong, between light and darkness, there can be no better effrontery.
The world must be the worst of the planets. Only here is it commonplace for darkness to always challenge light to a duel of justice -or is it injustice? You never hear of priests suing herbalists, always the other way round. We scale fences or break gates and doors or windows to steal from the church but never ever try that at a shrine even though it has no wall, no gate.
The world is a strange place. Worldtizens preach respect and courage, complete with why we must stand (up) to speak truth to power, all the time. Yet, we neither are able to practise that preachment nor to support another who does. Ad hoc applause grows thinner and thinner until it thins out, as we soon begin to see the hero as a villain.
This must remind you of another governor in the deep south of this country. He’s caught up currently in the foregoing scenario. He’s starting to look like troublemaker, when he’s only a troubleshooter who wants things done properly. Alas, some of those he fights for have begun to call him names; they want him to fear people who don’t respect us.
The world is a horrible place. If demand for justice persists longer than lily-livered onlookers deem necessary, the demander becomes an offender. We start to see such a one as the guilty party. Nnamdi Kanu is in prison today, not that he introduced trouble; no, just that he raised both a finger and his voice against national and -if you like- international trouble against his people who, unfortunately, have now taken to mowing down innocent people in the name of fighting a cause that tends to make everyone an enemy.
The world is a silly place. We hate injustice, or so we say, but we cannot stand it when someone stands up against it for too long. We see white and without blinking say it’s another colour but carry on as if we hadn’t just birthed abomination. Are we sick or insane without knowing it?
The world is a terrible place. Right is not right, forever. Right is not right, long enough. Suddenly, right is wrong because it is the only way to keep the peace of the world.
The number three man of a state narrated recently how haters are uncomfortable that they lose every time they come against me. I have been ruminating on that statement, wondering what is expected of me in the circumstance. Clearly, hate and haters expect love to bow to them. I understand and empathise; without conceding, though.
Love and lovers should love hate and company but should never ever submit or kowtow to them. Love and lovers must always stand up to hate and its offspring. The kingdom of love must every time confront the hate clan with love. Love must never ever keep quiet or condone hate otherwise hate will keep growing exponentially.
It is all right to ask the reactor to tame their reaction. However, it is more all right and honourable -first of all- to get the instigator to undo the action, which touched off the crisis in the first place. From the foregoing, second of all, it is ball-less to call out Academic Staff Union of Universities over the prolonged industrial action without equal or even worse anger at the Federal Government for its vehement nonchalance towards education. Similarly, and third of all, it is useless time-wasting to advise Gov. Nyesom Wike without having ensured that Candidate Atiku Abubakar and Chairman Iyorchia Ayu balanced the equation.
I know the world is a shameless place but we can at least try to aim at winning both the war and the peace, instead of always posturing hypocritically. Apart from sermonising about excellence and how it is the way to go, we should also start rewarding or celebrating it when the chips are down. Furthermore, we must circumvent our inherent envy and pettiness and stop preferring mediocrity all too often. We must, forthwith, stop calling excellence such names as arrogant, ‘over-sabi,’ etc.
The world is a nonsense place that must be fixed. It is not the way to go calling excellence pride when it vaunts but when mediocrity brags in anticipation, we euphemise it as motivational speech; as merely to boost self-confidence. How more unfair can the world get? If the achiever cannot boast of what is in hand, failure too should not hope-brag about what is in the bush!
Where’s the justice? Please, relocate me to Jupiter or Mars or Neptune or any other planet where you are sure sense prevails: I am sick and tired of this planet where we all suffer moral osmosis in silence. How can you treat human beings like lower animals but turn the world against them simply because they resisted or raised the alarm or fought back or revenged or sought redress? I mean, who does that?
‘Upon on top of it all,’ (apologies Chief Zebrudaya Okoroigwe Nwogbo alias four taaty) the very law that should give everyone their place is soft where it should be hard but blind when it should be soft. Two people planned and executed killings the same day, under the same circumstances. The law charged one for manslaughter and the other for murder.
Now, you see why evil thrives in this world.
It is the cowardice or mindlessness for me. We say we treasure virtue but we are too afraid to stand up for it in public and to the end. We stay quiet or concoct a few sweet-nothings to humour vice only to grumble ceaselessly after retreating home or to such other comfort zones. Like Nigerian politicians, the drama kings of life.
By the way, I don’t know who created those guys -I swear. They don’t only hate good they also accuse its doer of the bad they themselves do. Those accusing others of anti-party activities are the very executors of the political evil. They target the innocent to divert attention or as we say in Nigeria -to clear road- for them to do their thing.
Perhaps, what makes the whole thing troubling is the way the system rights wrong and wrongs right. The system pooh-poohs excellence, loyalty, patriotism, peace and sacrifice but rewards mediocrity, hate, lawlessness. Nationwide, the juiciest contracts, the plumest jobs and the trustworthiest integration all go to the violent; those who always wanted to take it by force. Tompolo is now an Abuja billionaire contractor (because he once was a militant in the creeks) while haters of militancy languish among thousandaires!
Don’t get it twisted. This writer is not preaching anti-clockwise. One is just alarmed that our country has yet rewarded neither celebrated nor mentioned any of our preachers or doers of peace. How do we all keep silent when right is transmogrified to wrong and wrong is transformed into the new right?
Let government at every level, the civil society and the citizenry rally round right and against the new normal. Let’s stand for right no matter how long its fruitage might take in coming. Let’s never yield the rights of right to wrong no matter how old or powerful or rich or dreadful or commandeering the latter might be. God bless Nigeria!