By Hon (Amb) Stanford Arinze Nwokedi.
I just woke up this morning with this inspirational insight dropped inside my mind. The more I tried to search through my head to think out another issue of public interest to write on, the more I got reminded the need to write on these introductory lines of our National Anthem. I gave up on the search for another topic when I was reminded by the same inspirator that most, if not all my friends online have either lost hope in our Nigerian State or are at the point of doing so. Indeed, a far more than half of my dear friends are living the last line of our National Pledge :
"So help me God!"
The Nigerian State may really have done nothing against us the Nationals. By far, and in contrast, we as Nationals are the ones who have rather done so much wickedness to our country, NIGERIA. We have been so preoccupied with selfdom that we have estranged ourselves from our freedoms. Where we assert our freedom, we do so without any care in the world. We leave our country in the doubt of what to offer to us as Nationals. Nigeria is ourselves and we are Nigeria and become Nigerians too.
Yes our Country gives us identity. Our identity as Nigerians is our Country's favour we ought to reciprocate by patriotism. We fail to reciprocate the gesture of our identity as Nigerians and in each turn, desire another identities. We choose by our actions and inactions to be another people, hating whom our nature has so graciously made us to be.
Nigerians Arise, wake up and give a fair hand of justice to Nigeria, our Country. We need all the penitence now, especially as we see ourselves inside a turbulent sea, ferried frantically in decrepit canoe and tossed side by side in desperate unfriendly storms, especially of hardships which we inflicted on ourselves.
Arise, great fellow Nationals and heed the clarion call of service, not as of old, but as we urgently need anew to save Nigeria from a fatal fall into a ditch of no good prospects. We risk our existence thinking our prospects are not in our hands to change.
The vast arable lands of our Country offer to us self-sufficiency on a platter. That we have had to resort to food importation with all the natural positives we have from our climate, is wickedness to ourselves. Self hate is an understatement. How much do we get from our natural gifts of abundance? Not of oil, not of gas. No, these are in the exclusive list.
From our traditional Ahiajioku culture of yam cultivation, to cassava, to maize, to groundnuts, to mere vegetables that our gardens can sustain, we are drifted far-off to dependencies and at huge costs, too.
Rather than the other way round, we depend on those who must innovate their natural circumstances, for food cultivation. They use irrigation but nature blessed us with a temperate, fairly humid and seasonally perfect climate, with adequate rainfall and just enough dry season, each year, that can keep us in self -sufficiency in food and fruits.
Arise Oh Compatriots, yes, we have leaders. They are the ones we blame. These are ourselves too. But, please, are these leaders not the few whom we have not followed well? They lead us from the frontline but we pull them off their tracks by deliberate mischiefs and such other tendencies. We condemn them without engaging them constructively. We do our little acts of unpatriotic followership and our leadership their own peculiar acts of greed, indifference and satanic materialism. No rules are obeyed. Nobody cares and we all are culpable.
Arise Oh Compatriots, the precipice we risk must be avoided. We must all seek a route out of the mess we are in. Nobody will come from Heaven, America, London, China, Russia, South Africa, Rwanda, etc to do this for us.
When and if we do all we need to do for not just ourselves, but for the next fellow, our brethren across creed and ethnicity, that other human person with whom we share our humanity, the friend and foe alike, we begin the belated journey back to our own eldorado - our haven and our rebirth comes.
No country gets to the junction we are currently and still continues to wander away from reasons; away from possibilities that are abundant within her shores; to raise values from her dustbins and find food within her natural endowments.
Nigerians Arise, it's soon another farming season. Our hoes, our machetes, our shovels and our tilling tools must all now be put to work. Let's feed ourselves and stop food importation. We can raise our yam barns again and farm out our veggies for us and within us. Not across States or regions but each region within itself and for themselves.
I stumbled over a touching clarion call also this morning and it looked as though the writer, Nze Elvis Agukwe and my humble self were in the thought line together, today, to sound out these notes of exhortations. He retorted as though also inspired to posit as follows;
"In these hard times, difficult times may feel like they last forever, but they are temporary. "You should not let your circumstances shape your relationship with people around you."
"Difficult circumstances feel all-consuming at times. It is really hard to see past them to other good things going on in your life".
"It gets overshadowed by other more complicated things. In the face of those difficulties, how you respond to them birth the outcome you get."
"Better things (are) ahead by the grace of God. Do have a great day." ---Nze Elvis Agukwe.
We can achieve better prospects when we chanel our anger, hunger, frustrations and disappointments intentionally and to the right direction. Yes, the hungry man is an angry man. We can intentionally and vehemently fight hunger by productive farming endeavours. Let's attack our arable farmlands, cultivate them and aggressively produce, each household their own food needs. This is farming season by the corner. The rains will soon start falling. Our fallowed lands can be made to vomit the corn, the yams, the cassava, the vegetables, etc with which we can become self-sufficient and really happy again.
It is possible to happen.
Let's go back to the farms.
©️ Stanford Arinze Nwokedi
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