Of Political Appointees' Appointments And Public Disappointments In Nigeria
By Taiye Olaniyi
We thank God for being exceedingly privileged to have been created and born in this part of Mother Earth in general and the world in particular.
Mother Earth provides the soul personalities to gain both spiritual and physical experiences, the world is an atlas and conglomerate of nations and countries therein with similarities and peculiarities.
In this world of ours and the part we are privileged to originate, it is human for human beings to render one service or the other with or without the intentions of profit, gain, or even profiteering. Service is,
" The only rent we pay for occupying God's territory," invariably Mother Earth.
Service is a volitional effort(s) of man if the heart, is both divine in content and context especially if inclined to God, our Creator, and fellowman, our earthly acquaintances.
To God we proclaim and to a man, we either promise or render.
Promises of service are very rampant in campaigns amongst politicians but utmost to such promises is the yearning and aspiration to become something, somewhere cool, juicy, and succulent in all ramifications.
Political appointments in Nigeria are colored by the how of getting slated, getting the appointment, and if gotten proving a pact with the people whose yearnings and aspirations are to be served so creditably and meritoriously by the appointees that have been appointed by those in positions of rulership and leadership.
To get appointed at all often requires ambitions, qualifications, political clout, high wired connection, and at times, spiritism that usually and equally accompany those with inordinate ambitions in particular.
In Nigeria, many appointees can go any length to be appointed in politics. Sliding tackles, insinuations, maligning of names, death threats, and other inimical moves are traded as barters in banters.
To one's dismay, when appointees are appointed for political offices, in particular, associates and family members, political associates come on around to celebrate, host in congratulatory manifold and class the new arrivals in the mould of superior species of humans to be deified and hero-worshipped and revered as deities and sacredcows infallible and beyond laws that govern humans.
To one's dismay again, appointees in Nigeria usually go beyond their human gauge thinking, though wrongly too, they are superhumans that need no sanity as they make and mar, thus making society which ordinarily should depict of humans but degenerating into a colonnade of monkeys and market place of baboons who are ready to harm at the tiniest speck of provocation.
A truism arises in the glaring fact that:" Condition in the society must be very bad before men in their large numbers could call for its violent overthrow. No man would like to lose everything for nothing."
We are today being bombarded by the abject poverty of the masses but yet the stinking affluence of one-time appointees, of those politically powerful but using their spheres of influence to create religious commotions and tribal sentiments.
Nigerians are today troubled as we wobble in perils of all sorts, the hearts are aching as the ground below is tremoring. No more trust because of unending betrayals in the assemblages of those that rule because in most instances Nigeria is ruined, wrecked, and reels in corruption.
That just as everywhere," Man", again according to Kenneth Idiodi, "Is the problem, man is the solution," Nigerians and Nigeria appointees must realize that the:
"Present generation of Nigerians and even the upcoming ones have no other country to call their home. Nigeria belongs to all and we must all remain here to salvage it together," quoting General Muhammad Buhari's nationalistic message during his military era.
Can we still build a virile nation in the state, you and I, all of us consciously or/and unconsciously have put the Nigeria nation?
In one of the axioms on man posited by our one and only" President Nigeria never had," late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, a mystic philosopher and renowned sage,
"Man is the micro alpha and omega, the only dynamic means and the sole end, of all earthly human activities; and that any development plans are a failure when it falls short of benefiting every member of society by his deed or need as the case may be."
Are you ready for the clarion call " To be faithful, loyal and honest? To serve Nigeria with all our hearts, to defend her unity and uphold her honor and glory? " If so, "So Help Me God.
Taiye Olaniyi, a retired Postman of the Nigeria Postal Service, is based in Lagos.