By UCHE DIALA
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
What bind us together are still greater than what separate us.
Yes. This statement still holds true in spite of the fact that politics and religion have really messed up a lot of Nigerians’ heads.
People who think that life begins and ends with politics and religion in Nigeria and that Nigeria which to them is the ‘world’ will end in 2023. Not true, the world like the beat goes on and all over the world, nations have dealt with and continue to deal with issues as complex and even worse that Nigeria’s.
I am from the south and personally I say, with every sincerity that some of my best and most trusted friends (not just trade partners) are Northerners. Even as my kith and kin that I equally love to bits are domiciled in the eastern heartland where the bones of my forefathers and ancestors lay resting. Which makes me a full blooded, proud and confident Igbo man.
We Igbos say, ‘nwanne di na mba’ (there are brethren in foreign climes) and the Holy Book says: “Love your neighbour as you love yourself”. It did not qualify your “neighbour” as your kinsman or one you share the same creed and tongue with.
In Nigeria today, there are numerous inter tribal and inter religious marriages across all parts of, tribes and religions in Nigeria. Indeed, there are millions of Nigerian children who do not know any one tribe as father and mother come from different tribes. Yet they live together in love without poisoning each other and contribute to developing each of their individual tribes and homelands together.
Interestingly, majority of these marriages and unions happened after the bitter Nigeria civil war and in spite of it. Does that not send a deep message?
As a matter of fact, we have become more inter-twined and inter-connected since that war, simply because ordinary Nigerians who are the real Nigeria and Nigerians understand that we are one and that God put us together for a purpose beyond fleeting politics and self serving religiosity.
A lot of Nigerians reside and comfortably live their lives and earn their livelihood outside their own tribe and region. The greatest of all being people from my own Igbo tribe.
Don’t those coming for something?
Why do we not reflect and replicate these in our collective dealings with one another as a nation?
Yet the individual parts which we are make up the whole which is Nigeria.
I do not want to go religious. But as a people who claim to know God more than anyone one else created by God, we think God made a mistake by allowing us to be together as a nation? Well, No! He did not. He could not and He can not.
It is tragically funny when some people think that Nigeria can be bad and useless without us who are actually the Nigeria being bad and useless. Nigeria is just the name of a nation. It is us the people that make up the nation that are actually Nigeria. Such thinking only amount to self deceit, self delusion and sanctimonious grandstanding which are taboos before God and Godly people.
So when we diss and abuse Nigeria and wish it ill, we actually are dissing, abusing and wishing ourselves ill. A land you curse and do not wish well can never bless and protect you. FACT!
Some its-not-me and finger pointing experts will quickly say it is the leaders and I quickly ask: Are the leaders from Mars? Are they not part of and from amongst us?
The earlier we all realise and appreciate all these above and stop the sanctimonious finger pointing, hatred, bigotry, self deceit, selfishness and hurting ourselves by ourselves because that is essentially what we are doing, the earlier our collective emancipation will start.
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
#GodBlessYou
#GodBlessNigeria
@Uche Diala
