Daniel Agbor|22 January 2016|6:07am
I love the lofty world of learning. Splitting the hair and picking the needle. May be I am lost in too many thoughts. Could it be the crux of my crimes? I ponder and wonder too many times. I harry and worry through many turns, yet I did not realize that there is trouble for the thoughtful.
Only paradoxes make sense; to close your eyes is to see well. To renounce all is to gain all. To descend low is to rise high. Ah yes! This life is a journey. Through a tunnel of night whose only light is faith.
I can figure out clearly that I am being offered a choice. The outcome of which may be the supreme test of my sanity. To become an animal or to become a saint. To descend to demonic depths or to ascend to angelic heights.
Cross River, what has become of us? Today, Ayade in trouble as the three wise men unite…, tomorrow, Ayade after this or that…, or Ayade tasks his 700 political appointees to tackle perceived irritants on his government etc. The story keeps changing.
The reason behind these headlines and realities is not far fetched. This is simply caused by the privatization of the state by a tiny oligarchy of political conquerors and their collaborators. It scatters the seed of injustice and secondary violence all over the land.
Leadership has now become absolutism and autocracy, an averse to due process and contemptuous of the rule of law.
Cross River is now a society run by political fiat and thus standing at the threshold of nihilism and gazing peremptorily at the abyss.
Cross River is now witnessing political dictatorship, whimsical appointments and removal of personnel from offices is now the order of the day. Cross Riverians deserve a better deal after the long suffering as they are ever patient and hopeful. We deserve a better deal and real change as it cannot be said that in an abundantly blessed land like ours there is none good enough to succeed and such we must accept whoever is imposed on us. Such thinking is not only self-serving, apologetic and sycophantic, but also retrogressive, defeatist and fatalistic. It amount to a concession or submission to rogue leadership which our successive rulers have been charged with.
It is naive to suggest that anyone can be coerced into any position of leadership in our state. Those who elect to rule and to assume leadership by whatever means and at whatever level are often propelled by individual motives, motives which are not always altruistic and patriotic, but are often in fact a veiled demonstration of the primitive lust for power and greed for money. There is something inherently immoral if not altogether absurd in the present leaders seeking, or bowing to pressures as it were from their praise singers, to succeed themselves no matter how good they think they are, and no matter what gains their arid supporters claim they have made for the state.
Daniel Agbor
Is a Public Affairs Analyst and Social Commentator
