From Iyke Odo
I stumbled on a post where somebody took High Chief Mike Ozekhome to task for declaring that Nigerians are not resilient, they are cowards.
I have done this rejoinder to raise fundamental objections in the court of the people and set aside the groundless insinuations questioning his contributions to the liberty of Nigerians: What is impossible to one man is possible to the many. What is difficult for one man is simple for a group. What one man cannot do, a people will do.
The holy Bible did tell us that: a man will chase a thousand but two will chase ten thousand. The power of plurality is geometrically astronomical not arithmetical. The highest work done is not the greatest work done by one strong man but the little contributions by everybody in the many in time and purpose.
The reward of teamwork is beyond mathematical extrapolations. It is phenomenal. This is the sermon being preached by this chief priest. High Chief (Prof.) Mike Ozekhome’s antecedents as not just a lawyer but a human rights crusader, a free Nigerian, a humanist and conscience of equity are evident.
From his days in the trenches with the effervescent and indefatigable icon of humanity, Senior advocate of the masses and subsequently, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Gani Fawehinmi of blessed memory, to his ruffled journey through the contours of terror challenging every decadent government to date, he has remained consistent in defending justice and demanding equity not for himself, but for the people of Nigeria.
He has challenged military and civilian governments alike even at moments when Nigerians went into hiding out of fear for the forces of state coercion, demanding good governance and accountability at high risk to his life. Every man, no matter how powerful, is weak alone. The strength of a revolutionist is the solidarity of his men for the power he has derives from the collective strength of those behind him.
This man has sued the federal government of Nigeria to court for inept, selfish, corrupt and jaundiced leadership countless times in defence of the people. He has gone round this country delivering lectures and even taking on very controversial and delicate and sensitive topics fearlessly in defence of the truth. I have watched him on the television and read several of his newspaper publications echoing the desires of Nigerians.
He has written books championing the cause of a misled and downtrodden generation. One of such lectures demanding great courage was on the Igbo marginalisation and the Nzeogwu coup, an issue most men will not dare for their personal gains and safety. He did not have to be an Igbo to do this. This is how detribalised he is.
For him, injustice to one is injustice to all. At that lecture, he broke the ice, repositioning history on its legs. He put the records straight. He went down memory lane and excavated the suppressed facts about the Nzeogwu coup that has become mislabeled an Igbo coup by enemies of history and haters of Ndi Igbo. He clearly demonstrated the ideology, strategy and composition of the officers and how it was a coup by Nigerian military officers from the full spread of our geography.
In the days of the General Sani Abacha’s regime when Nigeria became one huge hunting ground for Nigerians who raised their voices for democracy and good governance, this man firmly took his position on the side of the people in solidarity with the NADECO struggle. He did this in that era even as irokos amongst men were felling to the bullets of Sergeant Rogers and Major Mustapha.
I can go on and on for like I have written: HISTORY IS NOT PENCIL WORK, IT HAS NO ERASER. HISTORY IS SACROSANCT TRUTH. IN ITS PURITY, HISTORY CANNOT BE DESTROYED OR RECREATED. HISTORY REMAINS WHAT IT IS THROUGH THE DISTORTIONS IN TIME AND THE VAGARIES OF HUMAN MEMORY FOR TRUTH DOES NOT DIMINISH. MORE THAN THE TRUTH THAT HISTORY IS, HISTORY IS THE MIRROR OF TOMORROW.
His position on RUGA and herders- farmers confrontation and migrant cattle rearing was unambiguous, and when in the Gen. Obasanjo’s time as president, somebody dared to reduce the nation to a collection of pawns aiming to elongate his tenure beyond the confines of the constitutional provision of two terms, this great Nigerian led from the front to demystify that evil masquerade.
His view that Nigerians are not resilient and that they are cowards is a mellowed expression of what we truly are as a people. To bring this mild expression closer to what the approximated truth is: Nigerians are docile, apathetic, confused, disunited, dismantled, disoriented, suppressed, subdued, cowed, compromised, hypnotised, dissociated, sabotaged, ideologically paralysed, mentally decapitated, physically disarmed, emotionally fragmented, directionally reversed and defeated. What is left?
If one man has done all that Chief Ozekhome has done, imagine what the outcome would have been if 50 million Nigerians added their voices and actions of support to the matters of our clamor for a sincere nation building. Once again, the only strong man is the man with the people behind him. No man alone has been able to bring about change or lead a revolution in any generation of man.
Mahatma Gandhi would have meant nothing without fellow Indians rallying around him. Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr. would have ended his career before he started if not for the massive support that he got from the teeming population of American negros. We as a people have created for ourselves through our indolence, a country where if you are not stealing, you are the thief. A country where things happen and nothing happens because consequence management is zero.
People get away with their actions and inactions. We now have a country where men are ashamed to tell the truth, a country where everybody wants to be rich, but many are unwilling to genuinely create wealth. Instead, they engage in diverse shades of objectionable sharp practices. We are now a country where people no longer apply for work, they apply for money.
Nigeria has drifted into a country where values, due process and accountability have been orphaned, and rule of law is in chains. It has become a country of impunity at all levels where everybody is blaming everybody for his problems and the problems of the country except himself. It is a country where to be dishonest is an infectious disease, an epidemic ravaging the country, bringing men down in their millions and only few have immunity against it.
We now have a country where our leaders see leadership as personal enterprise and we applaud them as they convert the people’s commonwealth to personal gains.
On account of our growing apathy, we have created a country where the average Nigerians have never known good governance and good life amid stupendous wealth. They clap for their leaders who lavishly dramatise renovating classroom blocks or buying an ambulance for a hospital or pay delayed statutory workers’ salaries.
Nigerians have become so used to poverty that it is now culture. They have become so adapted to lowly living that many resist the opportunity to relocate. In Nigeria, there is no dividing line between leadership and politics and power and so, leadership is appropriated to politics and power. Accordingly, everything is politics and everything is politicised.
In Nigeria, individuals are powerful, very powerful, so powerful that they have become above the law not because they are powerful, but because the law is powerless and the institutions are weak. No man is powerful before independent and powerful systems and a leveling legal system that does not select its victims.
Nations do not evolve on their own. The people create for themselves the kind of institutions and systems and nations they end up with and it does not come on a platter. We are complacent, divided by religion and ethnicity, given only to what divides us but shunning whatever binds us into a family. Nigerians are day dreamers. They wish for the best of everything but do nothing to actualise them.
We desire to wake up in the morning and find peace by our doorsteps. We expect transparency in government and good governance without sacrifice. Nigerians forget that things do not just happen. Men make things happen. This is the message of this great Nigerian, a prophet of liberation and a messenger of truth.
High Chief Mike Ozekhome is telling Nigerians that leaders can only take the people who know who they are and what they are to only where they are willing to go. He is also reminding us that no wise and courageous people who know their rights and are willing to demand them and defend them can be led to where they are not willing to go to no matter how powerful the government is, for there is no power in the world more powerful than a United and courageous people. Let us pray.
Iyke Odo, a medical practitioner, is the CMD/CEO of Meridian Hospitals Limited.