Ekweremadu’s Attack

THE travail of the former Deputy Senate President, Mr. Ike Ekweremadu, in far away Nuremberg, Germany, where the Igbos there were supposed to have their annual New Yam festival is no doubt a bad omen for the political class and the entire nation as whole.

Things were said to have gone awry, at least for the former Senator who was even one of the two people who stood as sureties for the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu, when his kinsmen allegedly assaulted him at a function he was properly invited to attend. Senator  Ekweremadu was harassed, to be mild, by some of the people for various reasons and rationalizations, depending from which angle one views it.

THE  Hope is of the opinion that we can devise a better mechanism of venting our angers in a more decent manner than to portray ourselves in front of other races who had all along been looking down on us as disorderly people who are unable to manage themselves properly and do things with decorum. Some are claiming that Senator Ekweremadu stirred the hornets’ nest by wearing a dress that bore Nigerian national symbol in a provocative manner to a gathering which he knew would be peopled mostly by pro Biafran nationalists.

FOR long, it will not be an exaggeration to say that Nigerians are being shortchanged by our leaders who not only feel larger than life when they get the mantle of leadership and take the master-slave domination over the citizens, in contrast to the servant postures that they profess while canvassing for votes. This unpalatable situation and the inclement socio/ economic condition of the country that is making life harder by the day must have, to some extent, contributed to the venting of bottled anger of Nigerians on their leaders.

THE Hope believes that much as one would have preferred that Nigerians wash their dirty linens in our home, Nigeria, one may see such argument as puerile and weak because the world is now a global village where virtually nothing is hidden for long again. One of the ethnic groups in Nigeria believes that, “A child who refuses to imbibe and display good home training and decency would be taught the harder way from outside”.  Maybe if our politicians had performed well at home they would have been accorded a better respect around the world. Thus, the treatment Ekweremadu got in Germany was a reflection of anger and outbursts from citizens in protest to collective failure of succeeding administrations.

ONE of the lessons from this ugly situation is that at least the Nigerian leaders now know that the ruled had been pushed to the wall and they have exceeded their threshold and thus can no more be taken for granted.  Maybe their perceived aura of invincibility and “untouchability” in Nigeria will now be seen as illusion as the IPOB attack had shown that they are equally vulnerable as other normal human beings they were supposed to lead.  This attack, if any, will probably lead our leaders to have a rethink that if such attack could happen to them, their children and close relations, who they, the leaders are feeding fat daily from the common wealth of the nation at the detriment of the poor masses, are not necessarily insulated from such unpleasant visits. Our leaders should learn not to always take their followers for granted or assume that they can always play upon their intelligence.

IT is unfortunate that our leaders tend not to learn from the mistakes of others and take a cue from the ripples of their misrule. Many of them must have read or seen the assault on a former President of a Francophone country that was publicly disgraced in one of the foreign nations where he was once being welcomed with red carpet. The harassment President Buhari faced when he once went on a foreign medical tourism in Europe must have been a warning signal to those who will learn that they need to put the people first above their own selfish interests like their jumbo pay which is not in consonance with the pittance their fellow Nigerians take home.

THE Hope  feels that much as such physical attack on our leaders are not ideal, our leaders should make and implement laws that will make life better for Nigerians that are hungry and thus angry. Our teeming youths who graduate from higher institutions yearly must be gainfully employed as lack of adequate job opportunities makes their idle hands to engage in many social vices like banditry, kidnapping, robbery , advanced fraud syndrome and internet fraud amongst many others. Still, our nation should make avenues for easier mechanism to recall indolent and unproductive lawmakers.