THE MEMOIR OF A PEOPLE I often find it a great delight to return to Plateau, my beloved home, saddled with the responsibility I find most fulfilling in my life: a dive into the recesses of human intuition through the vibes of the written word. For a homecoming a month ago, I did stand before the large congregation at the retirement service of Rev. J.J. La-Nibetle to give an address. But deep down the slope of my inner core was an image of unmitigated tyranny: the cesspool of agony that cascades down the alleyway of generations unborn in the choice of the political leaders that are going to represent me and my peers at the villa of tales. Uthman Dan Fodio was right: conscience is an open wound, only the truth can heal it. What disservice will I be doing to those who trained me and my conscience if I do not draw out the lessons from the inevitable similarity of my intellectual expedition and that of the political demagogue? I wish to establish ab initio, that a biography to me is not a praise song or some hagiography meant to make a spotless saint of any mortal. A saint to me is the one who has come to the end of his wits. He has through self assessment, suffused in reflective meditation, accepted the limitation of mortal men and has through this same means, walked upon the thoroughfare of inner convictions of the Eternal and Supernatural, until illusions and the empty shenanigans of this present life have like scales, fallen off the sight of his soul; so much that he is able to see life from the viewpoint of a steward and not a master. It is of this insight that the Psalmist spoke when he came into the chambers of the truth: “Oh God, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! When I consider the works of thy hands, what is man that you should be mindful of him?” It was in this pious couch I reclined when I picked up my literary scalpel to exhume the fossils in the life and times of Justin La-Nibetle. Like I have said it again and again, you can find a goldmine in a trashcan. In the small book, J.J. La-Nibetle, ... a tale of grace and resilience, we are brought into the world of a man who for the love of truth in the church, became a horrible menace that had to be crushed before he ran wild. His story is replete with winnings and shortcomings common to any man born of woman. He saw the good, the bad and the ugly; in the midst of all – squashing odds and daunting challenges, crippling anguish and blinding tear falls, he stood resiliently in the special grace that the Lord made available to him in the forty years he served in the Christian ministry. The good news is that he could never have been so mightily used by the Lord had he not seen the hard times and torments he faced in the ministry. His bluntness in the church and his native Mupun land attracted a litany of enemies as well as a legion of admirers and trusted friends. For this man who has seen the special grace of God for more than six decades of a thoroughly busy and charmed life, there is a story. We can, with the sight of the informed, learn from his failings as well as his victories. A lot has been said in that small book of 189 pages. For the young historian in a university, there is something to learn about the history of our people long before the dawn of western education; for the young human rights activist, there is something to learn about the cost of selfless activism; for the clergyman at the altar, there is something to learn about those who are called of God and those who are battered by the winds of this life and are cold, so much that they are in search of some shelter in the church; for the Christian, there is something to learn about the perils of righteousness as conceived by God and the freedoom of carnal cravings as conceived by humanistic intellectualism. I did also find that hidden in the process of writing his story is my story as well. Whether written or not written, every man has a story. William Henley, in his poem, ‘Invictus’ gave a voice to something that I suggest you consider closely in connection to the unbridled hankering for power in our nation (a story also being written). He said: I am the master of my fate I am the captain of my soul. A twentieth-century theologian, Dr. A.C. Craig, gave us a very graphic illustration of this tendency when he changed the words of the Psalmist so it read as follows: ‘O Man, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! Who has set thy glory above the heavens? When I consider thy inventions, the work of thy fingers, the aeroplanes and atomic bombs which thou hast made, what is God that I should be mindful of Him, or the Son of God that I should reverence Him? Now, let me return to my analogy. Even if this were some common happenstance, I do not want to see it in that light. While I was presenting to the congregation, the footprints of a dogged clergyman, that same day, being 7th December, 2014, a collection of party delegates, strewn across the three senatorial districts on the Plateau, were deciding for the masses, as it was rife across the country, those to run for the senatorial seats come 2015. The primaries of those elections, whether we care to document them for posterity as we did in the case of La-Nibetle or not, have already formed part of our history as a people. It is no longer news that these elections by delegates have in many instances become the daily gates of our dirges, pains and sufferings as a nation, while the so-called winners sit comfortably in the luxury of their posh homes, squandering the tax payers’ money on frivolities and the many toys they have become slaves to. Whether we like it or not, a story is being written, which we will someday stand before an audience to present. The many actors in the political tale will in this present life reap what they are sowing. The delegate who has become the daily gate of that hydra-headed octopus called corruption, the political demagogue who from the largesse of stolen funds sponsors the accredited day light robbery of wills and destinies and the political godfather who sits on the kangaroo dynasty, all write a story we must someday read. Those of us who claim to be masses are not totally absolved from the cold-heartedness and the discomfiture that have been legalised in the polity of our nation. Through the polls, through the press, through our campaigns, we can do something. Let’s begin to think ahead of 2015 actively. Do not fold your arms and watch the drama. You are also a part of the show. Preach it everywhere, the denizens of hell have been released again, and if we do nothing at all, we will get nothing at all. The change we need is possible. When I speak of change here, I am not caging my standpoint under the political ideology of a party. In PDP and APC, the two major political parties in our nation are men of timber and calibre as well as unrepentant rogues whose cross-carpeting, from one party to the other, the celebrated political prostitution, is in search a safe haven for themselves. Their choice has nothing to do with our dwindling economy, their choice has nothing to do with the suffocation of corruption and it has nothing to do with the austere impoverishment hurled on the shoulders of the tax payer. Change is not about a political party, it is about the credibility of a candidate. Don’t sit there and tell me it is not possible when you too can add your voice to the clamour for change. Discuss the general elections, debate it, call for meetings, enlighten, and employ anything positive within your reach to help awaken the conscience of a nation gone comatose. The 2015 general elections is a memoir of a people, how are you going to fit in?
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 07:38:10 +0000