Soccer With No Goal Post

AMBASSADOR EZEWELE ABIONANOJIE CYRIL

 

 

No matter how far the distance you covered in the wrong direction, you can never get to the right destination; for it takes the right direction to get to the right destination. The wrong tools can never midwife the right results. The load on your head can never be straight when one of your legs is bent. And for a system to function accordingly, the prerequisites to make it work must be in place.    

As far as leadership remains a relay race, there must be an independent incorruptible fiscal body to checkmate, regulate and obligate any leader that assumes power of authority to work towards a set goal for the benefit of the society. The fiscal body will be responsible for any unreported misappropriation of public funds. The fiscal body will serve as a custodian of our public funds, protect a standard of operation in executing public projects and serve as the protector of a tree’s life vision, by making sure that every government works towards the planting of trees while the succeeding government will be obligated by the same body to water and dress the trees for subsequent governments to keep reaping and replanting the seeds therein. Without an umpire fiscal body to make sure rules are not broken most of our leaders will only run things to satisfy their selfish desires at the detriment of the public. As the alpha and omega of the law, a bad leader will play tyrannically to force nature to obey his order and spend wastefully to purchase loyalty. On the contrary, if there is a body that obligates leaders to maintain focus and operate under the shield of dos and don’ts, the leaders will be left with Hobson’s choice to serve for public interest. In a relay race, every runner is obligated to run towards a direction for a crown price. It is the cooperation and determination of the team members that determine their success. No matter how good a runner you are, in a relay race you cannot win a price unless your successor succeeds. Imagine after mustering much effort to out-run your competitors, your successor will run backward after receiving the relay baton from you! In the same vein, most African leaders, especially when the new government is not of the same political party with his predecessor, the government will start a new journey afresh refusing to water the seeds of the past government. The unfinished projects of the past government will become abandoned projects. A project that had swallowed hard earned public funds will be abandoned to decay as a result of narrow minded selfish interest. We need an empowered independent fiscal body to challenge these excesses and to enforce multi partisan cooperation in this regards. Otherwise, new leaders may either choose to run against the direction of their predecessors or choose not to run at all. As I have stated supra, same as a relay race, the cooperation of one good government to another as they pass on the mantle of leadership periodically irrespective of their political party, tribal or religious differences, determines the success of an individual People or Nation. But in Africa, the executive rules over the judiciary and the legislature. The executive head can harass and intimidate any of the two other supposedly independent arms of government at will. This is why most of our democratic trees always produce fruits of dictatorship, where the masses are at the receiving end. Imagine a soccer game without a goal post and a referee! The players will play lawlessly and dangerously with no success at the end of the day. No rules, no penalty, no foul, no goal but just keep playing. They will play until they are exhausted, for anyone who walks aimlessly is known to be a wanderer.

As I took a close study of African leaders’ character philosophically, I came up with the view that Africa’s democracy is wooing for external praises while internally people are being set ablaze. It is making personal interest seem like zonal, tribal, religious or national interest. African governments grovel with sympathetic fallacies to titillate the imagination of the public. As we all know, UNITY is one of the major problems of our People. Till date no government has thought it wise to set up MINISTRY OF UNIFICATION to enlighten our people concerning our destiny that is tied together as we sit in the same boat of future; and also to have it engraved in their heart that we are from the same source but arrived at different periods; descendants of Nimrod, who is the first person to form government in the world.  The whole political operations in our society are run in bluff. We are running the most confused system of government on Earth, the government of the looters by the looters and for the looters. Where the buying of votes has been unconstitutionally legalized. Where those who looted public funds are made to pay a fraction from their looted funds and gain freedom, while some remain untouched as far as they remain loyal to the government of the day. The looting of public funds is an offence that should attract a prison sentence not less than fifty years. We have many people in jail that stole something less than three thousand Naira (less than $8) and those who stole millions and billions of dollars worth of public funds are walking freely on the streets, wooing for new public offices. We must take every garment of operation through the laundry of titration on the platform of the people first in order to produce a system that will guarantee a long lasting solution to deal with our collective predicaments.

It is high time we infuriated ourselves with the truth. The good people must arise to keep drumming tintinnabulation for good governance until Obi realizes that he is no longer a boy, for we have toddled enough. Bob Nester Marley said “How can you be sitting there, telling me that you care” while Martin Luther King Jr. asserts “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”. Every object is discovered to maintain a state of rest until a force is applied to it. We need to speak and act against unjust system to give it a chase. Otherwise, we will at best continue to teach and dance to it.

Please note this: It is our donation to Earth for the betterment of man that counts, not our duration on Earth. Be patriotic!

 

Ambassador Ezewele is the author of the book ‘The Enemy Called Corruption’ and writes from Lagos.