17.9.13

'He That Would Be Great..'


When The Last Becomes First

My Anambra state of Nigeria is agog with preparation and contention for the election into the office of governor in November. We are all people, so we must interact. Politics organizes society into structures of duties and responsibilities.

So many people have been stampeding themselves over the bid to be the one to hold that office next. And they are not just doing so for the love of the service. Actually, it has been let out through the utterances of some of them that they are actually preventing some from ever getting there to corner the resources apportioned for the development of the state from the federal purse.

When intending leaders buy their way into office they'll never do the land any good. Good men sit around while people whose agenda is clearly obvious buy their way into office to own the state and do as they please later on. Are we ever going to realize that when our lot is bettered in life it is to use it to emancipate the lowly lot of society and not to yoke them?

A mother once brought her two sons, followers of Jesus, to demand from him that they sit on his left and right in his glory. When the others heard of it, strife and anger ensued from them against the two brothers. Jesus made them realize that leaders in him are not to be overlords of the people. They were actually to be servants to the people.

Can we truly say that these people spending so much to contest the election are doing so to genuinely serve the land? Now, if we know, as 'am sure we do, that this is not going to happen; why are we letting this deception go on? How long is it going to take a society to find the courage to stand for what is right? To take a decision to permit only what is good for it? Have we all agreed to allow our collective good to be purchased by questionable people, notwithstanding that they are called money-bags?

We are slaves to whom we yield ourselves over to serve. If all the parties have given themselves over as platforms for all the unacceptable characters for leadership, then the people should boycott the election until people of integrity and character present themselves for candidacy. We should not just take whomever they push forward to us to vote for. If private candidature will not be allowed, the we must make the existing parties live up to expectation.

If good men would not stand to be numbered in Anambra, not to talk of Nigeria as a whole, then let us have a caretaker government until some find the boldness to raise their heads!

Politics has come of age in Nigeria. Let the good people come out and do something about this merry-go-rounding that only does good to the politicians in power. Today, it is implied that the party in power owns the land. They shut out everybody else and plug their people into everything. That should not be allowed to continue. We all belong here. The party is just a vehicle by which politicians get into power. Their win is not to be viewed by them as a conquest of others.
Jesus said that the first should be the last. Again, this meaning preferring all others over yourself. But our politicians in power look after their own first, and if anything, they pay lip-service to the welfare of the rest of us as an image laundering propaganda.

Let us follow our Lord Jesus truly in his teachings so that we would get the results that he got. Just because people do not know their rights is no reason to continue abusing them without remorse. The majority of the present crop of office holders in our land, and possibly the world over, have made themselves lord and master over the people they govern.

Will we never learn from history? Is it to be imagined that with all the information available to us about our mistakes in the past that we would still allow ourselves to go that same way all over again? Until the least in our land becomes first we would not have gotten it right. If we are a people under God, as we say we are, let us obey him; let us fear him with respect. 



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