How To Go Down In History By Bayo Oluwasanmi

We’re living in a fast changing world.
New and strange things happen every
day. For this reason, before anyone
can lead he must learn something
about this strange new world.
Any leader who does not master this
mercurial context will be mastered by
it. A leader must know who he is,
what his strengths and weaknesses
are, and how to fully deploy his
strengths and compensate for his
weaknesses.
A leader must also know what he
wants, why he wants it, and how to
communicate what he wants to others
in order to gain their support and
cooperation.
Most importantly, a leader must know
how to achieve his goals.
History is full of leaders who rewrite
history in delivering their nation from
oppression. Similarly, we have
leaders who end their life in failure
and dishonor.
Their great potential with equally
great moral collapse mirror the
condition of the nation which
becomes so corrupt and degraded
that even shocking brutality and
immorality no longer cause the
people to blush.
Time flows like a river, history
repeats.
Many years of social, political, and
economic upheavals, and in particular
since Mr. Jonathan assumed the
leadership of our nation, has left us
with no place to hide.
Most if not all of our nation’s
progress and prosperity have become
breakdowns instead of
breakthroughs. Our freedom and
democracy have become a license to
practice anarchy.
As a people, we’re no more interested
in new ideas but in recipes and
slogans. We have replaced the public
good as the supreme object of our
republic with few elected rogues and
parasites.
The idea of public virtue has been
overrun by personal greed and
corruption. We have become a
permissive culture. And the nation
tethers on the brink.
The elected representatives of the all
powerful federal government with an
overflow of resources have refused to
acknowledge what is happening to
our people. And the cost of the
spectator leadership of President
Jonathan can better be imagined than
quantified.
A nation without public virtue and a
common vision cannot survive. Mr.
Jonathan is driving the vehicle of the
state with no national sense of
purpose by looking in the rear view
mirror.
Well then, it is fair to say that
President Jonathan so far is
incapable of taking control of his
domain – Nigeria. He has no guiding
principle or overarching vision for the
country.
One day, a man named Goodluck
Ebele Jonathan sat down at his desk,
pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote
across the top: “Goals for My
Presidency.” Then he began to
compile the goals of his presidency:
• To lose all sense of moral values.
• To forfeit all executive authority in
Nigeria.
• To strip and strap the poor to the
bones.
• To remove the oil subsidy in order
to make life more unbearable for the
poor.
• To create means and ways to
further enrich the robber barons.
• To squander the nations resources
on salaries/perks of a legion of
ministers and advisers.
• To strangle from the judiciary any
notion of fairness and justice.
• To turn Nigeria into a desert of
infrastructures.
• To decree corruption into law by
turning a blind eye to treasury
looters.
• To become tone-deaf to the cries
and agitations of Nigerians who
elected him.
• To become Africa’s newest
emperor and Nigeria’s bully.
• To exert no influence for good in
the community, town, country, and
the world.
• To lose everyone and everything
dear to Nigeria.
• And to grant pardon to criminals,
and thieves and other saboteurs of
our economy.
Ridiculous, strange, you say?
Then consider this: President
Jonathan accomplished everything on
that list.
His lack of integrity, foresight, will,
passion, and incompetence left a
leadership vacuum which daily
increases the misery of the people.
I have said it times without number in
this medium and elsewhere that a
leader is not a spectator. That’s not
just a glib maxim. Good leaders
engage the world. Bad leaders entrap
it, or try to.
I believe you don’t need to know
where you’re going, provided you
know whom you’re following.
Unfortunately, in our own case it is a
double whammy: we don’t know
where we’re going; neither do we
know whom we’re following.
Greed and violence, distrust and
spiritual apathy are eating out the
very heart of our nation.
The democratically elected president
now turned an autocratic acolyte of
Abacha and Babangida is unusually
getting the attention of the outside
world.
Previous ruthless and clueless
despots and now Jonathan have
taken Nigerians for granted and for a
long walk. Now, we’re being pushed
to the wall. It’s time to fight back.
Deranged by the false belief that
Nigerians are timid, lethargic,
apathetic, and easily coerced and
cowered, the present administration
believes it’s going to be business as
usual. Time will tell.
It is one of the great paradoxes of our
history that under a democratic
system of government the citizens are
being treated as sub humans.
It is safe to say that we’re better off
in the days of our ex-dictators. After
all, they were not elected.
It is also a cutting irony that an
eccentric, odd-looking president with
comical decisions with all intents and
purposes had successfully subverted
our democracy. In running the affairs
of the nation, we’re now witnessing
play by play comedy and tragedy to
the point of sublimity.
The president’s twisted morality
coupled with his unyielding
determination to set example of how
to go down in history qualifies him as
a failed and dishonorable leader.
We have chosen a president who
chained us to his car as captives,
bewildered and deceived, we’re
moving on in a gloomy procession
toward the ditch – in which there is
no hope of life, toward night to which
comes no morning!
Mr. Jonathan’s actions and inaction
should serve as the launching pad for
us to recapture and reclaim our
country and our future. We can’t wait
indefinitely, our patience is running
low!

Warning: Despots and tyrants do not
easily embrace reforms or surrender
to the general will of the people. It’s
going to be a prolonged battle. So
Nigerians, brace for the worst. Be
prepared to sacrifice the immediate
comfort and convenience.
History is on our side!

*** We cannot drive a car forward by
looking at the rear view mirror. We
cannot use shoes as hammers,
newspapers for umbrellas, and finger
nails to tighten a screw!

byolu@aol.com