My thoughts on Nuremberg
Orji Uzor Kalu
For a long time I have decided to hang my pen, perhaps politics has taken over, especially since 2015 until it was possible to serve my people once again from the corridor of the senate when I won to become a senator from Abia North senatorial district.
Before the victory and after it, I have not failed to allow my mind wonder on the happenings around the country, especially in the area of politics. Atimes my thoughts on this particular subject had made me to laugh and at other times, just sheer wonderment. There is no doubt that a country as great as Nigeria with its many dimensional facets and the different mentalities that make it up, there is sure going to be a full dose of comprehending the various happenings around the country.
To say I do not know and understand the political burdens that bother on the polity, let alone other areas of the country, is telling an unforgiveable lie, which I cannot forgive myself nor allow others to forgive me of.
Nigeria right from its political inception, without mincing words has gone through lot of political sorrows, and some of these sorrows are still there hanging on every one of us, especially on the shoulders of the leaders.
There is hunger in the country, there is anger, frustration, insecurity and many more ills, and whatever suggestions or attempts in dealing with all these seem to fall to the sandy soil and washed away by the slightest rainfall or wind. This is quite understandable; trust is dead, hope is lost and love has become some emotional feeling that has no place in our hearts.
But how have I been dealing with all these? Silence and quiet to allow things roll by and deal with themselves, nevertheless coming out, as I just did by going to pick up my pen where it has been resting all these years. Because the country where I have served as a governor, now its senator and a country which has provided me with the opportunities to become what and who I am must move forward, and move forward in the right direction, irrespective of the many and different knocks I have got for some of my actions and utterances, which of course are based on misunderstanding and people not having the time to pause to read between the lines.
Are we bad losers? There are times when I think many of us politicians have lowered ourselves to that basement, not for any reason but what I want to think is political competitiveness where somebody thinks he or she has the right to take the glory of any deed that would benefit the people. Wrong politics and politicking I think. Because in the process politicians have become gods and those who are to be served have lost faith in themselves and the aftermath is dealing in violence and the most un-called-for aggression.
Was the incident at Nuremberg, Germany against Distinguished Senator Ike Ekweramadu, the former Deputy Senate President of the country called for?
Germany is a country I visit all the time for one thing all the other; it is a peaceful country with laws in place that do not give room for violence and damning aggression of whatever height. But that peaceful atmosphere seemed to have been dented not by what I would describe as original Germans but by resident Nigerians, on one of their own.
I am not going to start talking about cultures and traditions here because everything in existence is subject to evolvement, but the core of every culture and tradition has its stipulations, and no doubt these stipulations in their evolvement is directed at making our humanity better and when these stipulations and its core are wished away, can we dare say we are humans?
Nigerians from every part of the country are aggrieved. The grievances are not regional, the angers and frustrations experienced from one locality is the same everywhere because they are the consequences of bad leadership which I have not stopped talking about right from the moment I went into business and found myself in politics.
I am a religious man and I have read lot of religious stories and tried many a time to understand the allegories, illustrations and pictures they try to paint and convey. One especially is that of creation. God and Lucifer. Where there are differences in thoughts and idealism, where interests vary; where there are no balances in swinging, decisions will have to be made.
But these decisions, how are they made and carried out? How we do this will go a long way to determining the growth of our thoughts and the expanse of our reasoning and how we have allowed the cultures and traditions that have shaped us to evolve.
What happened at Nuremberg showed we are still in search of that growth and evolvement. You do not force an idea or supposition on people; you do not say because you believe a particular discourse is right then you must proceed to force it upon all to accept or adapt into their thinking and life. Maturity must come to play, and in this maturity, there must be a place for romantic discourse that tend to show and prove to all concerned why that idea should be incorporated without shoving it down every throat.
Biafra has grown into an idea-a philosophy. A philosophical idea that speaks to everything negative ranging from hunger, anger deprivation, marginalization, pain, anguish, illiteracies, insecurities, the right to unity or not, the right to self-determination; separatism, bad leadership, political arrogance and political double-speak, etc.; all these which I think form the conceptualized philosophical idea of Biafra I strongly believe in, but how do you push this philosophical idea forward to be accepted by all and convince those who are in doubt to believe and find passionate acceptance of it?
This is a question I think only IPOB can answer. And in finding an answer to this question the organization and those who control it must bear it in mind that a belief can only become conviction when people can only find reason and thinking in displayed actions and words and not by the violence or attack on either the like of Ike or any other person.
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