As at Yesterday, Certificates of Return were issued our elected representatives, we have handed over our rights to decide, to chose and invariably entrusted in the hands of our fellow humans the power to carve for us a collective destiny.
Make no mistake about it, do we have any real power?. We did not even chose those leaders, they chosed themselves, bought our mandate and forced themselves on us. In that shameful macabre dance we had emotions running through us, the beneficiaries and hopefuls are all singing the halleluyah of their Victories, for them and their families the WINDOWS OF HEAVEN is now open. Thanksgiving services and celebration rallies will now follow. It is now a time to reap the benefits of tireless campaigns, and sleepless nights, a time to raise status and buy new cars, a time to own more properties and marry new wives. For those who won the Windows of Heaven has turned open on them. Halleluyah!
The winner takes it all, so those who lost must lick their wound and prepare for the next four years, for them it was just a contest lost. Their political wit, conections and long standings will be exploited, somehow they will find themselves in the world wide web of national politics and life will go on.
But for that boy, man who lost his life in the battle of montgomery, under instructions of the gladiators, who sought to defend in the quest for a better life the interest of the masters, who in the cold battle for power were victims of bullet wounds and matchets, who were manipulated, exploited and became victims of circumstances not of their making, THE GATES OF HELL is dawn on them.
For the man whose life was cut short while the power blocks shamelessly threw their might, through the forces of inequality became pawn and pundits, no memorial will be organised, THE GATES OF HELL, will be thrown open for them.
Let us mourn, yet again for the loyalty cloaked youths who beared arms and shot their brothers, who proved their strength on the lives taken, properties destroyed and damaged done, for him who lives he shall yet be rewarded by the spoils, for him, ow such bravery! Yet without a medal he has turned open the GATES OF HELL, Upon the poor family and children whose destinies lied in the slain soldiers of war they neither initiated nor whose purpose they never contemplated. How sad.
Will this end? To this I share the sentiment of Carl Sagan in his classic, The Demon-hunted world.
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back"
Let the moralist talk, let the critic cry, let him wail, of what benefit will it be?
For the Winner, the end Justifies the means, for the next four years it is HEAVEN AT LAST, let us enjoy our open Heavens, they say. How sad we have come to be led by
"Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people*-- *they manipulate them*. *They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress*".
(Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed)
For thou dead soldier, dead has saved you from the knowledge that the course for which you were slain, how quickly you have been forgotten, and how little you matter, and thou killer of your fellow man, soon you shall meet your end, for he who kills by the gun, shall fall by the gun. As thou Opened the GATES OF HELL for another, so thou shall follow.
This are the midnight contemplations of the Critic!
Victor Egba!
No comments:
Post a Comment