By Paul Onomuakpokpo
WE now live in a
country where if our moral sensibilities are not assaulted by the cases of
corruption of our political leaders which are unearthed with shocking
regularity, our attempts at every critical moment to live down the
jarring consciousness of a dearth of exemplars of a singular
commitment to the collective good are often mocked by a stark
reminder that this national malaise has besmirched us almost
irrevocably .
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| *Obasanjo |
It may be tolerable if
we elect in a sombre moment of reflection on our seemingly intractable
national challenges to grieve over the absence of men and women who
ought to effectively hold the reins of the nation. But it is unbearable
when we are reminded of this national affliction by attempts by some
people to project themselves as the ultimate answers to our problems.
What makes this situation doubly unbearable is that those who recommend
themselves as solutions are part of the problems the nation has contended with
in decades.
What really riles one
is not the villains’ vacuous attempts at self-deification. What is more
alarming is the danger of the obliteration of national memory which ultimately
ought to guard us against the endorsement of such self-valourisation. With the
national memory being overtaken by amnesia, the urgent national
challenge is not how to rein in the villain who is obsessed with
a quest to transform himself into a hero but the citizens’
rapturous approval of him as the hero the nation has unfairly
treated by not properly appreciating his place.
It is this search for
national heroes that makes us to applaud former President Olusegun
Obasanjo whenever he rails at the excesses of the leaders of the day,
especially through highly envenomed epistolary media. Of course, there
are many excesses of our leaders that should rightly provoke umbrage from
someone who is sufficiently aware that the nation is on the brink. Here, we
need not split hair. But as a people who are scarred by the decades
of misdirection, pillage and remorseless mismanagement of the
nation’s bounteous resources by past leaders, we must not applaud those who are
part of the malaise of the warped governance when they attempt
to regain socio-political relevance by reminding us of our
problems and blaming others as their vitalising forces.
Rather than encouraging
Obasanjo as he struts around, self-deluded with the notion of being festooned
with diadems for rare governmental insights and an unbreakable record
of giant strides in government, the question we should ask is what
are the institutions he established to check the excesses of the members of the
National Assembly whom he excoriated in his letter to them last week? For if
Obasanjo had established such institutions that nurture moral rectitude, he
would not be complaining that the lawmakers are preoccupied with how to
cater to their selfish lifestyles at a time the nation is faced with an
economic crisis that requires that they forget their personal comfort for now.
