Beware of the ‘people’

The country, Nigeria, is a wonderful land of unique people. It is where many things not yet within the realm of creative imagination of God are produced with ease, and some evil acts yet un-invented by Lucifer himself are commonplace. A Nigerian is made of a sterner staff and what tickles him mostly falls on the negative side of decency. But they also rank among the best in the world, displaying superlative qualities in any field of human endeavour. However, Nigeria is arguably the freest country on planet earth with more churches where the Bible is preached than business firms.

The Bible, on the other hand, is a great book of fundamental teaching. References are made to it, but it does not refer you to any book for update. There are many mysteries to be discovered in the bible and there is no aspect of life that cannot profit from it.

The first group of people to exploit the Bible is the poets who have quoted copious from it and in most cases changed the wording to suit their creative ingenuity. The one that interests me for now says that ‘a rich man-neighbour is a cousin, but the brother of the poor hardly remembers his name.’

That is precisely the situation in Nigeria today. A Nigerian will tell you that success has many brothers. At the moment, Mohammadu Buhari is the success.  Everybody identifies with the retired army general, president elect, waiting to take over from Goodluck Ebele Jonathan on May 29, 2015. Buhari is reigning and nobody is begrudging him. We can only caution that he should beware of the people. Under two weeks of his victory at the polls, the people are gathering to identify with him. By today, Buhari has an array of cousins from Sokoto, Maiduguri, Ayetoro gbede, Aba, Oshogbo and Warri. Most of them are politicians in APC, PDP, APGA, LP and even SDP.

These politicians have almost collapsed their parties, emptying themselves into All Progressives Congress (APC) to affirm their loyalty to the cousinship. Some of them are Osarhemen Osunbor, Ex-Edo state Governor, Charles Arhiavbere, PDP governorship candidate, Gbemi Saraki, younger sister of Bukola Saraki, Olusola Oke, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate in the 2012 governorship election in Ondo and others. It is a tall list.

Currently anywhere one turns the people supply comments, suggestions, advice and agenda unsolicited for the president-elect, and in Nigeria, knowledge of what to do is never in short supply. But ‘these people,’ you must watch. They are hardly altruistic. Their personal agenda are embedded in the one they deliver to the success and if not checked, they can derail and pull down the success.

Most of these PEOPLE are wolves clad in sheep’s wools and their actions are propelled by vaulting ambition.

The people’s capacity to pull down a leader has an example in the bible. In 1Samuel 15: 1-30, God ordered Saul, the king of Israel at the time, to make utter destruction of the Amalekites (CORRUPTION), including Agag the king, but he did not. Why?  Because “the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal and because I feared the people, I obeyed their voice. Now therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin,” pleaded Saul.

But Samuel the prophet of God told him, “The Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine, that is better than thou.” That appears to be a harsh verdict and so is the reality of life. This is a lesson on the people.

Painfully, Buhari is not a Christian, and if these verses are not enshrined in the Quran, he may never take a lesson from it. However, there are other examples that could whet his knowledge.

If he scratches the surface of the nations recent history, he will find one Mashood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, who won  a presidential election in this land, but took flight when he discovered that the then maximum ruler, General Abacha, had ordered his arrest.

‘The people’ harried him back from the United Kingdom to fight and reclaim his mandate. He died in the process and his business empire was decimated. The people benefitted.

Dr. Jonathan Zwingina who had just defected to the APC, was Abiola’s campaign director and Babagana Kengibe who had kept low profile for some time now, but not before he told the world that he was not in politics to please or feather  Abiola’s nest, was the running mate. The people shall never finish from the land and we cannot be too careful of them. So let us be mindful of the people.

Charles Ike-Okoh