Open your mind to follow this particular story. I have not written in this dimension for long.
There’s this man called Attai Aidoko. He used to be my Senator. For all the bad reasons in the world, he is celebrated (sic). For the good reasons, there is nothing to celebrate about him.
People don’t like him safe for few. It is not the societal hate that comes from witchcraft, envy and jealousy all the time. In his own case, he localized an office that should be for everyone to himself, family and few friends while occupying a public-centered place. For young people like myself, I felt he was irresponsible to have allowed himself into such place in life.
Then. Amazingly. Amazingly my people, with the baggage on his character- he has been in the Lawmaking organ of Nigeria for 16 good 1 and 6 years. He is rich. Formidably rich. I think he spends his money of plenty properties and booze. At his village, a place called Ugbamaka Igah, his people had no borehole to drink clean water. They would trek for 3km to get a drink from the last resort of nature- a stream.
I kept asking. Why does he keep winning? Some shouted, oh! He always got it from the courts! The courts? Is he the only one that goes to court?
Answers began questioning the very society I come from. How the people have been taught that mediocrity is education. They use counterbalances of tribe and religion to cover it up. For instance, it is difficult to call our erring elders that has eaten deep the future of the young without the experts of mediocrity shouting that the young has been “disrespectful”. These are the same people who are collective victims.
I think about this. I remember Prof. Pius, oh lord, rest his soul. He talks about the collective conformity and comfort Nigerians have settled into. A state where Stockholm syndrome has become the new awe. People find virtues as poverty to be morality. They see any type of wealth to be prosperity.
A society that has no fine lines. There is just an autocorrect. Boeing lost about $10B shares 48 hours after the ill fated crash that took his life, if it were in Nigeria, the shares would have soared on the annals of “Haters are after them”. In that colorative degeneration of our social psyche, we glorify the absurd on the collective vulnerabilities of our society.
Another vivid instance of this is that at Big Brother’s Reality show, a particular House mate called Cece was described by the followers to have mendacity of personality disorder. She was rude. She dropped all forms of social hostility as people described her on social media. She made others in the house cry. Some said she lied many times. These are character descriptions of what younger people should not be picking up, say if majority think it is wrong. On a reality show, that is a cynosure of our public behaviorism. A nomenclature of role modeling. Albeit, the retrograde is that Cece never left the house. Every week, she soared in votes. Infact, before she got out of the house, she had already bagged an endorsement deal to mock those who brought out those character ills. It was a show to “mock” her haters. She was the most disliked but liked by many brands. The others were relegated because the society would rather celebrate what is absurd to what should be the cool.
Take another instance, APC members are celebrating the return of one South Western Director General of Atiku Abubakar, PDP’s Presidential campaign flag bearer against the sitting President Muhammadu Buhari in the recently concluded 2019 elections. This man resigned from his party. Gave excuse of quitting politics. In less than 24 hours, he ports to the other party. In a sheer glees of no values, no public thinking, no social baptism of character, he is celebrated by some APCs. It would appear his carpeting into APC has changed his character.
Back to Attai Aidoko.
Each year after the elections, he studies the weak-variables of the processes. He goes to court. He wins. Nobody says anything. For 16 years, the people grumbled in silence. They bickered and did nothing. Exceptionally nothing.
Within the stratosphere of his followers, some celebrate him as a god.
Amazingly, I admire his political dexterity.
On one hand, how does he win all the court cases like an intelligent politician even without cards of tested intelligence? (2) How does he get the highest population with 9 Local Government Areas out of the 21 in Kogi to keep quiet in absolute obedience for 16 years? This man must have a hand behind him. No protests. Nothing. No activism against him.They just bicker and move on.
He wanted to come back for another tenure of 4 years to be added to his law making portfolio to be 20 years. Such audacity. Amazingly, he was able to garner above 40,000 votes. If there were no third ADC contender, he would have probably won even as the people openly rejected him- they voted him on the day of elections.
I began to think…
Could it had been the people or just his destiny? Attai is a necessary child of destiny. I have seen this with my own prophecy. He had to be there. He had to be like that. He had to hold the people captive and unaccountable for another force to stroll in. This things aren’t always rocket science and vigil routines.
Do you understand what I have been writing? Some people would not be needing your approval or validation to succeed in life. Many more would not be needing your rating. Some won’t even need your votes. Others won’t even have to care you exist.
Your tears, cries, emotions won’t stop them. In fact listen, your CURSES would be useless- it becomes a blessing.
Then in that same society, someone else comes. Edward Onoja. He puts a borehole in that community. He takes away the pains of 3km trek. If Africans were honest with their religion, that could have been written as a miracle. He has no portfolio besting that of Aidoko. He is less than 4 years in power. If we dashed him 4 years, Aidoko is still an elder with 12 years. You see? He brings a road. Something Faruk Adejoh-Audu described as never to have been possible in the next 40 years if people like Edward had not come into the scene.
He goes on. Picks younger people which Aidoko has neglected in responsibility of mentorship and educational grooming for years. He is hoisting them into pillars of his own society. Then the same youths who slept when Aidoko was alive came alive- they join the army of grieviant youths whose anger is a timebomb of years of wastefulness and deprivation by the same elders who have kept them where they are- to attack youths like them. The perfection they did not demand from the elders, they are demanding from the youths. You talk of Stockholm syndrome. You talk of that South Western Politician. You talk of Cece. You would now understand that we are in a mess as a society.
We have people who now ask questions with anger but asking the wrong people. We have people who do not even know what to do because mediocrity that is removed, they miss it.
But like Aidoko, they are many people who have been destined to succeed without opinions of others. Too many more on the path of destiny.
I read from what people say to me daily, I think. I hear that not a time in the history of Kogi State a young person is courageous with his pen. The same mouths say to me, you are “doom” and going into doom because of this same anger.
Then I look afar. To a society which works. They tell me, you have abilities that would take you far. In my own community, if those abilities does not align with their tribal bigotism, ethnic supremacy conquest, avarice and rapacious greed to own the lives of others- they begin to play god, predicting their own thoughts and witcraft for the destinies of others.
Today, I write. Not beautifully but with a landmark to die empty. I am awaking that giant in you, if you have a message, drop it. Empty it all. You don’t need the permission of anyone to succeed in destiny if your gaze is upon the morning hill. The rock of ages. The God whose ways are not aligned with the oath of man.
He embarrasses the society at his own leisure. He is that kind of God.
Like Attai Aidoko, like Edward Onoja, like Kogi Rebel. It is a move of destiny.
From Olamaboro, the land of Igalas would be healed. It needs no approval of man.
I have written. Come back here in the next 5 years.
– Promise Emmanuel (Kogi Rebel)
