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In all my life, and as much
as I can recollect, I have never strongly wished I were a
citizen of the very God's Own Country any more than I have
found myself irresistibly doing now. And the authorities of
the land of my birth, Nigeria, should have no choice but
forgive my strong wishful but “unpatriotic” tendency. After
all, I reckon I have tried all these years to stick around
and join hands to salvage the land with the rest of us, like
the proverbial Andrew as I chose not to go the way of my
peers who frantically had to dispose of all they could lay
their hands on if only to escape the nation's biting
economic recession of the 90's.
Let me say that my present longing is born out of the
current political development in the Uncle Sam that has
attracted much envy and admiration from world spectators; an
exercise that has reflected all elements of democratic
ideals; and the yet undying applause that hollers from
across the world's races and colours, which are a perfect
demonstration of the simple fact that, uniquely, America has
something that the rest of the world, or most part of the
world does not have; and that in the core of every man lie
the ideals of liberty, opportunity and democracy that
struggle continuously to find expression, even though
enshrouded by the thick layers of human ego and
self-interest, especially in black and coloured nations of
the world.
Never mind Iwu's devil's philosophy oh jare. All we know is
that a million of such off beam theories can never make a
right election. In other lands, academicians are the
injectors of moral panacea for many societal ills and
issues. But in ours, it must be the acadas in the likes of
Iwu who, after playing the perfect hand tool with which the
sacrosanct nature of democratic process of leadership choice
was made a mere farcical display to the admiration of the
manipulators, the power that be, will today find the
audacity to lecture the Americans on how to and how not to
conduct their elections, to the extent of modeling Nigeria's
electoral process, as if he does not know that we know that
cardinal in any process of choice-making are the honesty and
sincerity of purpose which will always tell in the end
result.
Iwu's problem goes beyond barefacedness; he simply has no
fear of God in him. For how can a man of his character ever
come in the open to utter anything close to condemning an
election which process and results were enthusiastically
watched and monitored live across the globe, and which
outcome has defied the least criticism by pundits and lay
people alike, even in the face of screaming impediments that
would made nonsense of Obama's political ambition had it
been in Nigeria?
Were it in Nigeria, Barack Obama with his ostensible racial
disadvantage, even with a million dreams of an old God-sent
sage, would have only been dreaming away his political
career without ever getting close to the Senate, talk less
of assuming the highly exalted position of the country's
number one citizen. Here, it's not just possible that the
President-elect would have had such overwhelming victory
with his candidature outside the ruling party. The country's
political cabal which instrument Iwu had always remained
would have stoutly stood in the way of his political
success.
How many dreams did out founding fathers not have? Of
course, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Sir
Ahmadu Bello, Dr. Udo Udoma and the like, all had them. But
they all died and were buried with their dreams.
So you see, the crystallization of any dream is solely
dependent on the environment and also the generation for
which the dream was had. That is to say that if this
generation of Americans had no solid foundation upon which
true democracy could thrive, if today's America had no
fertile ground for liberty, opportunity and hope for all to
take root and grow, there is no way that the dreams, visions
and the sacrifices of the black heroes of the New World who
had to pay dearly for their struggles would have been
justified.
I therefore task the Prof. to look closely enough and he
will find nothing in the post-election speeches of the two
presidential contestants, Barack Obama of the Democratic
Party and John McCain of the Republican, suggestive of any
manipulation, dishonesty and insincerity that usually
characterize our elections, and the disagreement, acrimony
and rancour that trail such exercises. Rather both men's
addresses complimented each other, showing that whatever
they had done in the course of electioneering through the
election proper, one thing had remained paramount in their
focus: the LOVE for their fatherland and its people.
And in the end, we in Nigeria, and indeed the entire world,
have this to learn from America: that there is beauty in a
people's inward resolve to uphold the democratic values
which the nation's founding fathers established through
blood, sweat and tears in a land with arrays of races and
rainbow of colours; and that rather than settling for just
being known as the world's best democracy, they have to act
it out and be seen as one.
Today, the success story of the 47 year-old pure
African-American, the 44th American President come Jan. 20,
2009, may mean different things to different people as the
Kenyan blood stood tall rhapsodizing his acceptance speech
amid ecstatic ovation and cheers from around the world with
the following thought-provoking posers in the end: “…So
tonight, let us ask ourselves if our children should live to
see the next century, if my daughters should be so lucky to
live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper [the 106 year-old voter],
what change will they see? What progress will we have made?”
To the rest of us it means an unyielding hope for the
hopeless and the down-trodden, and that for us to have a
change tomorrow for our children and posterity yet unborn,
we have to start to lay the foundation for change here and
now.  |
