The former Aviation minister said this in a new article he published this morning on his social media page. Read below
On August 3rd 1857, in what can only be described as one of the most profound, moving, passionate and inspiring speeches in human history, Frederick Douglas, the former black slave and the great freedom fighter and philosopher said, inter alia, the following:
“Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle.
The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical.
Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal.
We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others”.
These powerful and insightful words are as true and as relevant today as they were 150 years ago when they were first spoken.
They are words that have universal application to humanity and that have been recited and repeatedly chanted like a haunting and inspiring mantra by virtually every notable prisoner of conscience, freedom fighter and agitator for equity, liberty and human rights over the last one hundred and fifty years.
They are particularly relevant in the Nigeria of today where tyranny and injustice runs deep, where any form of resistance or opposition is regarded as subversion and is met with brutality and lethal force and where any telling criticism of the ruling APC party, government officials or the President is regarded as “hate speech” that must be supressed.
Permit me to give just one example of the latter in this contribution which, in my view, clearly reflects the nervous and obsessive disposition, the sheer madness and the sociopathic narcissism of the Buhari administration.
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A few days ago I had a revealing, probing and in-depth interview with a leading television station about President Muhammedu Buhari, his record in office over the last two years, his health and his governent.
Lai Mohammed, our notoriously excitable and mendatious Minister of Information, was so upset and disturbed by the contents of that discussion that he personally called the television station that recorded it and told them that the government would close them down if they dared to air it.
His call was followed by an equally threatening one from the chief executive of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation who issued the same threat.
Yet it did not stop there. Femi Adesina, the President’s spokesman, almost defecated in his pants when he got a whisper of some of the things that I had revealed and he wondered out loud how I managed to get all the facts and information that I shared during the interview.
He begged the station not to air it as well and also threatened them with dire consequences if they did so. Sadly the station in question got cold feet, succumbed to the threats and fell for the blackmail.
I am not surprised by this and neither do I blame them for doing so. I say this because they, more than any other, have been subjected to all manner of harrasment over the years yet despite that they remain one of the most balanced, professional, forthright and courageous media outfits in the country till today.
They are indeed the first amongst equals but they also know the
