Nigerians, Be Glad, The President Is Back From Jerusalem By Odusote Oluwakayode

First of all, I need to warmly welcome the president back to Nigeria. Even though he didn’t tell me before he left, I will be matured to ignore such short coming. His return calls for celebration. We need to celebrate because he must have arrived with good tidings from the birth land of Jesus Christ. He visited places of historical relevance and importance. He prayed, pictured to be humble and reflective. Though the man Jesus our president sought to consult had long departed this world to prepare a place for the righteous.

When Jesus left, he promised that a helper will come. The helper is the Holy Spirit, whom the father sent in the name of Jesus, ‘He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you’. At those moments, I imagined that the president would be sober to think of his mistakes and receive the divine inspiration to put things right.  The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him dwells with Mr. President to know the right things expected of him.

Now that the president had experienced pilgrimage, a journey of moral and spiritual significance, it is expected that he is back spiritually refined to dash out the good tidings of good governance. Good tidings because the President went to seek God’s face on behalf of the country. Although he didn’t need to travel that far to talk to the lord, the lord knows our needs as a country and understands why the nation is not progressing.

If our president has not been taking the Bible readings of the works of Jesus seriously, I want to believe he had seen great examples of a man that served the people even when he is proclaimed King. His life must, I expect, taught Mr. President that we should be modest and prudent in life, guard against arrogance and rashness, and serve the people heart and soul.

The capacity of leadership is to serve the people whole-heartedly and never for a moment divorce oneself from the masses, to cater for the interests of the people and not from one’s self-interest or from the interests of a small group of cabals. The organs of government are expected to rely on the governed and persons in position of authority must serve the people.

The Jesus’ spirit, his utter devotion to others without any thought of self, was shown in his boundless sense of responsibility amongst his disciples, in his works and teachings and his boundless warm-heartedness towards the people. Our leaders must all learn the spirit of absolute selflessness. With this spirit everyone can be very useful to the nation without tribal, religious and ethnic sentiments.

A man’s ability may be great or small, but if he has this spirit, he is already noble minded and pure. These were the characteristics that initially defined a shoeless Goodluck Jonathan to command massive followership.

Here, we are looking at the spiritual reflection our president must have had and questions must be asked now that he is back. Can a spiritually refined person, who is a politician, at the same time a President, be free from corruption and bad governance? I hold that he not only can be but must be.  What kind of spirit is this that makes a leader selflessly adopt the pains and sufferings of the people as his own? It is the spirit of selflessness, the spirit of humility, from which every leader and the led must learn. Our failures as individuals and as a nation is causing the afflictions of a deteriorating state as we painfully experience the menace of Terrorism, Educational collapse, Corruption, Infrastructural collapse e.t.c

For over three months, the Academic Staff Union of Universities has been on strike owing to non fulfilments of agreement reached by the government with the body. For some years now, ASUU has been struggling hard to get the government’s commitment to quality education in tertiary institutions. It’s a pity that in this struggle for a better education sector, the National Association of Nigerian Student has been snoring. Now that the president is back, I believe the good tidings of ASUU calling off the strike would imminent.

We’ve seen the heads Ministries, Agencies and Parastatal involved in corrupt cases. They are not just individual without political support, they are people that had sworn on oath to uphold the constitution; we’ve seen some of our most powerful leaders of both the PDP and APC under the now toothless EFCC investigation.

The recent scandal in the Aviation sector is just another out of the many cases of revealed corruption in this country without a justifiable end to such cases. Stories of these sorts, where billions of Naira is being wasted on selfish interest has over time shaken the foundation of the Nigerian people’s faith in a government that will look out for their interests.

These acts of corruption and self centeredness destroys the belief an average citizen should have in a country called its own, it defeats the moral belief that ‘You should think of what you can do for your country and not what your country will do for you. Now that our president is spiritually refined, should we expect an institutional purge?

It’s a rhyme talking about unemployment. The few employed are alarmingly under employed and the best a government would offer is for young Nigerian to learn how to be self reliant. I hope Mr. President would have be spiritually tuned to understand that a government must treasure her manpower and material resources, and must not take a short view and indulge in wastefulness and extravagance. It should be made clear to all government workers that corruption and waste are very great crimes. It is in Nigeria that a civil servant spends far above his income yet work free. If resources of state are well catered for and effective manpower employed, our nation will be an exporting nation rather than an importing one – the result will bring about massive employment.

As stated in my article ‘Combating the Whispering fears to a National Dialogue’ the history of mankind is one of continuous development from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. This process is never-ending. In any society in which classes exist class struggle will never end. In classless society the struggle between the new and the old and between truth and falsehood will never end. In the fields of the struggle for production and scientific experiment, mankind makes constant progress and nature undergoes constant change, they never remain at the same level. Therefore, man has constantly to sum up experience and go on discovering, inventing, creating and advancing. Ideas of stagnation, pessimism, inertia and complacency are all wrong. They are wrong because they agree neither with the historical facts of social development over the past million years, nor with the historical facts of nature so far known to us.

The process of the ongoing National Dialogue must however be transparent, sincere and genuine. It should not be seen as the usual parade of discussions which were held in the past without a logical conclusion. Sovereignty belongs to the people, therefore, the constituted government must be responsive to the people’s agitations.

It is man’s social being that determines his state of mind. So far the correct ideas of the power of sovereignty are grasped by the masses, these realization turn into a material force which changes the nation.

Now that the president is back and believed to have been spiritually fortified to lead the most populous black nation on earth positively and progressively, in resolving the challenges we are faced with, he must shun subjectivity, one-sidedness. He must look at problems with objectivity,

Nigerians should see from his actions that the tax payer’s money has not been wasted to jolly round historic sites of Israel without a positive result. Nigerian do not want to see a ASO rock occupied people who see themselves as being accountable only to the special interests that fund their campaigns, cater for their loots, slam their political enemies and disrupt peaceful co-existence.

Nigerians should be glad that you have been refined to lead as a man. Instead of meeting and wasting money on destroying the structures of the ‘New PDP’ and other opposition parties, it’s time to start meeting with millions of Nigerians with no good roads, no electricity, no infrastructure and no basic amenities to assure that you can lead effectively. Be that as it may, your stewardship so far nko?

Odusote Oluwakayode

Twitter:@Actionkay

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