INDEPENDENCE THOUGHTS

I received this on the 1st of Oct when Nigeria clocked 52... quite touching you'll well agree.
The thoughts of  BABAJIDE OLOWOKERE

My THOUGHT AS NIGERIA MARKS ANOTHER YEAR.

I will say, you would had been around during the first civil war (A story I read with tears), be a family to those killed in bomb blasts across the country, plane crash, live in poverty, sleep on the street, or lose someone who just finished his/her NYSC.

As I watch the coverage and read the news of death, illness, poverty, oppression, murder et.c every passing week. I remember so well the happy faces of parents, friends, and kin—faces like yours. These memories came rushing back as I watch coverage of the bomb blast, effect of unemployment, and rejection.

The country I thought will be safe and will be so hospitable for us is becoming scary. So I have been asking myself what it would have been like to give relief, before Millions of Nigerians whose fear lies in the tomorrow of this nation, stricken with grief for survival and position left empty for people to occupy.

I have pored over the few recent happening in the country, not from some morbid fascination but because I want you to understand what we have lost, and to try and grasp how fathers and mothers and grandparents and brothers and sisters would be coping with profound personal loss when a ceremony of life has turned to mourning.

I am not trying to spoil your day with dark portraits from another place. But as one of Nigeria's youth at this moment, this time together is to be more hallowed by the remembrance of how precious life is, and how fragile and fleeting, how negligence on our path as youths has created a lot of agony for leaders who have fought their way to the top through hard work. Take hold of this day…pull it close…squeeze from it every drop of joy and friendship — for we are taking charge and building a better Nigeria.
Trust me: The Black Swans in our life will come soon enough—“the dark birds of history”—dramatic, unpredictable events that break across our assumptions and ambitions and force us to reckon with the extreme, the wicked, the unknown, and the impossible. I speak as one who was born without a silver spoon, who as walked in the rain with tubers of yam across many road bends, sleep nights without food, work hard for months without being paid, as I continually think of / the days of wine and roses/Out of a misty dream/Our path emerges for a while/then closes/Within a dream.

If I am to live to be 100years and in the great procession of time, my life is no more than the blink of an eye. It is not how long we live that determines the quality of your presence here but what you see with that eye and do with your hand. So once again: Seize the day, pull it close (and with it the people you love), squeeze the juices from it—and savour every sweet drop. I say this for the benefit of all of us here today, myself included. But I have something more to say just to the growing minds that are ready to make a difference in every stage of their life.

Asking myself what will I do to make my life happier? I thought: Dear Lord, let me be looking in the face of some young men or women like me who is going to transcend the normal arc of life, who is going to break through, inspire, challenge, and call forth from the just leaders the greatness of spirit that in our best moments that will afire the country's imagination. You know the spirit of which I speak. Memorable ideas sprang from it: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”…“created equal”… “government of, by, and for the people”…“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”…“the right mindset.” Those will be the transformational period in our country leadership, brought forth by the founding patriots who stood on their ground to fight oppression.
These moments can’t be if leadership will be on —the traditional politics of “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” But moral leadership will transcend the realities at hand and we will change the course of our history in Nigeria.

Never have we been more in need of transformational leadership.
It’s not right that we are entering our fifty second year with hatred, agony, oppression and we are not putting our mind at it that most of us were born more than 20years ago. Leaders and aspiring Leaders in Nigeria, no country ever grow with bad leadership or survival two civil wars, for how long are we going to make errors. We cannot win if we as aspiring leaders don't have an incubator of right values. When you don't have the will or courage to ask everyone to sacrifice, when some are fighting, some are in the mall.
Nigeria needs Leaders than are credible. Our Leadership system of government is badly broken.

I believe this to be the heart of democracy. I know it to be a profoundly religious truth. Here in Akure where I grew up, my father’s greatest honour, as he saw it, was to serve as a trustworthy man in face shut down of is working place. In those days He thought me things that matters, faith, persistence, hard work, consistency, soul freedom. But time and again, as my dad prayed the Lord’s Prayers at every family devotion, I realized that it was never in the first person singular. It was always: “Give us this day our daily bread.” We’re all in this together; one person’s hunger is another’s duty.
Generations were linked together by mutual obligation. Through the years, he went on; we human beings have advanced more from collaboration than competition—“Leave me alone”—didn’t work. We had to move from the philosophy of “Live and let live” to “Live and help live.” You see, civilization is not a natural act. Civilization is an appearance of courtesy stretched across original human hunger. Like democracy, Leadership has to be willed, practiced, and constantly repaired, or society becomes a war of all against all, which we are experiencing today.

Few institutions have done more to shape Nigeria’s moral imagination, but they get tired along the way because of personal interest. If our leadership system is going to be fixed, I believe someone with this DNA will be needed to do it. It’s possible. So as you leave today, take with you this counsel “to assume our existence as broadly as we can, in any way we can. Everything, even the unheard of, must be possible in this life. The only courage demanded of us is courage for the most singular and the most curious that we may encounter.”

We need to live to be a symbol of a freedom where people of all tribe, religion, and nationalities could live together as a nation under credible Leadership.

Not as a kingdom. Or a superpower. Not a place where the strong take what they can and the weak what they must. But a Beloved Nation, It’s the core of civilization through credible Leadership, the core of democracy, and a profound religious truth.

But don’t go searching for the Beloved Nigeria on a map. It’s not a place. It exists in the hearts and minds—our hearts and minds—or not at all.

GOD BLESS NIGERIA @ 52.

I AM BABAJIDE OLOWOOKERE