TRAGEDY OF BROTHERHOOD

Growing up in the ancient city of Abeokuta “rock city’ the capital of Ogun state, Nigeria. A sage, statesman, politician, a lawyer and a nationalist by the name ‘Obafemi Awolowo’ came to the palace of Alake of Egba land to declare his manifesto as a presidential candidate of Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN). I asked the older ones around me, who he was, what he was up to and everything about him was unveiled to me. I noticed that everything about his manifesto was about Nigeria, how to re-engineer and reposition the nation Nigeria. I fell in love with him and the nation Nigeria he projected in his manifesto. In my days in school I took quality time to study this man and his entire contemporary that worked together to attained independence for Nigeria, they have a goal, purpose, aspiration and vision for Nigeria.

Since then, I never recovered from that revelation of the man who loves Nigeria and about Nigeria he loved.

Everything about Nigeria is good and okay at the inception; people therein lived together in love, peace and harmony except few who decided to be an instrument of deception and destruction.

Nigerians are happy people, hardworking, resilient, hopeful and belief so much in the prosperity of their nation. But now I am a grown up man, that Nigeria that I knew is no more existing and this create a serious ache in my body and in my mental faculty.

Today, we have more yorubas, Hausas, igbos, ijaws, fulanis, ogonis, etc than Nigerians which is tearing our unity and coexistence apart, instead of Nigeria the founding fathers paid a great prize to build. Each promotes her interest, sentiment, and reservation instead of Nigeria.

The Nigerians who are happy, loving, caring and hardworking people before are no more identify with such good things. When I walk around I see anger, sadness, sorrow and hatred for their lives, the government and the state of the nation on their faces.

What a tragedy, seeing brothers of the same nation killing themselves like animals because of religion, politics and many other issues that cripple her ones. Things we can resolve without shouting, fighting and killing each other.

What a tragedy that people who dwell together in unity before now live suspiciously. We have people in the leadership that is deaf, dump, irresponsible and not active to the yearnings of the people. For this nation to survive any crisis, storms or problem we might be facing, we need to revisit the kind of brotherhood our founding fathers envisage at the beginning.

The message of brotherhood was contained in the old national anthem.

Nigeria we hail thee

Our own dear (native land)

Though tribe and tongue may differ

In brotherhood we stand

Nigerians all are proud to serve

Our sovereign motherland

Let us hail Nigeria again because she is our dear (native land),

Though we might have different tribe and tongue let all of us embrace this principle of brotherhood and stand in it.

Brotherhood talks about unity, agreement to live and survive together, it talks about oneness of goal, vision, purpose, value and belief system. Our founding father resound brotherhood, “in brotherhood we stand” failure to stand in unity and love we can’t have a nation that will stand all its challenges. Today the emblem and flag of our brotherhood that ought to be our symbol of nationhood has been stained with blood of violence, killing, bombing, corruption, nepotism, tribalism and what have you. Except we begin to learn how to live together like brother and sister we will all end up perish like a beast without hope, there is hope for Nigeria and the survival of this once upon a time giant of Africa can be guaranteed if we work together and put our destiny into our hand, push all the enemies of Nigeria out of their power base and rebuild a nation we can all be proud of.