By Collins Obibi
There are two fundamental reasons many people oppose Chief Hope Uzodimma as governor in Imo State. Some others including Uzodimma know these reasons but would prefer to wish them away, and that makes the difference.
Since people know this but for different reasons make preferences to accept and support Uzodimma, some to repudiate and distance themselves, and yet some others to be indifferent or are helpless, why bother writing? Give politicians benefit of the doubt, how for instance, should Imo professionals, the clergy, real elders and statesmen relate with events surrounding the 2019 governorship elections in Imo and the Supreme Court ruling that brought Uzodimma to power?
Some of us who have worked as gatekeepers in the mainstream media in the country continually ponder on the words introspection, circumspection and discretion. Sometimes you can’t but adopt Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s slogan “I dey laugh” or “sidon look.” But when people who should know better and who others look up to to give direction undertake to confuse the people, you can’t but worry. William Shakespeare stated it clearly that “we but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor.”
For the avoidance of doubt, Uzodimma is as qualified to be governor of Imo State as any of the former governors or many others in the State. Imo is a galaxy of stars at whatever level. He was in the Senate of the federal republic, and had made marks in other spheres of life too.
First, there are many classics, and other books of all times. Nicole Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ written in the early 16th century based on its acceptance is one of them. In the modern world, it at least re-enforces the seemingly age-long practiced principle of ‘the end justifies the means’ germane to goal accomplishment, and antithetical to pretensions and sluggishness in the journey of life.
But we all know that there are deeper, more relevant, more appropriate and truer compasses of life and pursuits. Example the Bible.
The end ensconced by Machiavelli does not exist in humanity. It’s all about thesis, antithesis and synthesis, then back to thesis. It is therefore easily seen why Machiaveli warned that though in his estimation his proposition was very valuable, it remained an advice, a gift to the Medici following their return to power at the time. I give two examples with current events in the world to explain this.
The Corona Virus, just one virus of all the viruses and afflictions, and humanity is made to bow. All the pursuits, accomplishments and boastings by nations obliterated. Rapacious acquisitions deflated like balloon. The high and mighty including those at the corridor of power proven less valuable than chicken.
Consider also the eruption in America today. Once it was fashionable to coarse, waylay, kidnap, conscript blacks to advance the economic course of America and Europe. The people cried, wailed, got heart-broken as they, in fact, their most ebullient and effervescent, were being separated from their kith and kin with no consolation from anywhere. Many of them died, rather were killed, provided that helped in achieving the goal.
They tilled the soil, made the nations and continents rich and empires; a glorious ‘end’ you may say, and according to Machiavelli too. But today, America wishes that that era never existed. What do you do with the blacks you willingly, fashionably and forcefully imported into the continent whether in the state of their subservient progenitors or the daring young men of today? Nothing, in fact, America is helpless and I tell you why.
They must share the heritage, the accumulated riches, for they are now common patrimony. The cost of repatriation is unquantifiable and unaffordable. Period. Secondly, where do the blacks return to? Africa that you have wasted through centuries of dislocation, disorientation, despoiling, slavish manipulation, strangulation, whatever. Africa that you have taken its heart away from the body? Sorry.
If those nations knew, they would have instead followed the Biblical injunction on right and wrong, patience and perseverance; after all, it was not too long before the era of industrial revolution.
Let me explain the second reason for the opposition to Uzodimma with the example of land, that resource of contention in Nigeria today. You have heard a statement like “your land or your life ”from the highest office in the land. Whatever level of despair and despondency that causes you is your business. Ab-initio, does your faith in the country count?
You are dragging the family land with your elder brother. Then you go and make alliance with an outsider who gives you conditions for his support to make you outwit your brother and take the land. He asks you to use your money to transport, feed and pay him honorarium to come and degrade your brother so that you can take over the land, wait a minute, just for you to use for some years, yes many years, after which he will then take over the land from you and your brother and own it. You accepted.
Meanwhile, you do not have desperate need for the land; there are other lands you can use; that prime land is just the one your brother is holding as the head of the family which will pass on to you when you become the oldest. Let us worry about today, tomorrow will take care of itself, you say.
Well, time will unravel the wisdom of the present.
Obibi is a Lagos based media practitioner