SIMPLE ART OF LIVING TOGETHER

It was in Oslo, Norway when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was receiving his Nobel Prize for peace 1964, he said and I quote “modern man has built gigantic bridges to span the seas and gargantuan buildings to kiss the skies. Yet in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, there is a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. We learn to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.”

One of the banes of successful living in our world today is the inability of human race to see and embrace each other as brother and sisters. It was the same Martin Luther King Jr., who said to the Americans, ‘except we begin to live together as brothers and sisters we shall all perish together like beast.’ I think across the globe today, across the race and nationality, a new bond of love need to be developed so as not to put our beautiful world of pleasure, technology and advancement into chaos and disaster.

Segregation in America prior and during the time of Martin Luther King Jr., and apartheid in South Africa is inability of people of all colours and race to learn and embrace the simple art of living together as brothers.

The only difference between the former slaves and the slave masters was inability of the slave owners to see the slaves as human being like them and the slaves never had any good intention for the master than to wish him dead.

Even the slaves refused to let go of the influence of the past so they blame their present predicament on the havoc the slave master had done on them. I think someone needs to talk to the former slave that for us to progress in life the first thing to be done is to squeeze the slave out of ourselves.

It was Mohandas Gandhi who said “there was no dishonour in a slave, there was dishonour in a slave in being a slave holder.”

Those who kill Martin Luther King Jr., JF Kennedy, Malcolm X, Dele Giwa, MKO Abiola, Abraham Lincoln, Benezier  Bhuttos, etc, if they can just have a rethink that it is a life of a man like them they about to terminate, I think they would have desist from such act. If the terrorists that risk their lives by bombing world trade center in November 11 2001 can just sit and think over the act again that lives of people that can still be asset to your world is about to be terminated I think they not commit this great offence. But they did and throw the entire world into sadness, sorrow, tears and blood and the impact we still feel today.

We need a new bond of love in our world today, let all of us create an atmosphere of love and passion for each other so as to salvage the world from outer chaos and disaster.

The men who killed JF Kennedy did that because he stood out to uphold one of the pillars that can make the world stand and not collapse. JF Kennedy said to the millions of America on a national broadcast and I quote “And it ought to be possible for American citizen of any colour to register and to vote in a free election without fear of reprisal. But such is not the case. We say to the world and each other that we the land of the free. Does that mean it is a land of the free except for the Negroes? We are confronted primarily with a moral issues, as old as the scriptures and as the American constitution.”

He pointed out that segregation was wrong – should a man like that die?

Without love, unity, togetherness and accommodation of each other, you and I can not go far in life. Hitler killed 600,000 of European Jews, how on earth can a sane leader descend so low and wipe out the people he ought to protect? Our leaders in Africa killed and put behind bars anyone who criticizes their government. Our leader needs a re-orientation.

The land has swallowed up those who should have become the saviour of our world. Men and women across the length and breadth of the globe, we need each other than we can ever imagine. Think of a transit bus with passenger and no driver or think of the same transit bus with driver and no passenger. Think of a congregation without pastor, or pastor without a congregation, think of students who are ready to learn but there is no teacher to teach or teach who is ready to teach but no students in the class. Can any progress be recorded in an environment like this?

For how long will it take for prejudice to blind the vision of men? For how long will it take us seeing ourselves as brothers and sisters? We need to uphold the dignity of man and the destiny of humanity. At times history and fate meet at a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom, happiness, expression and serenity.

I have the feeling that this is the time. Let us start respecting each other and stop being in a collision course. The political leaders in Nigeria I have to plead with you; I want you to stop asking your people to burn down their own neighbours’ home, property and destroy lives.

Where is the bond of our brotherhood when the people of the same country started killing each other because of money, position, religion and cultural disposition?

Every election in Nigeria creates threats to life and property; I believe this nation need re-orientation, and re-thinking because we run down our future strength as long we continue to wreck down ourselves. You are my brother, you are my sister, together we are destined to live, work, and walk together so as to live a fulfill life on earth.

NIGERIA DILEMMA

Nigeria, a land of prosperity
Plundered and impoverished
Nigeria, a land of values
Desecrated and bastardized
Nigeria, a land of resilient people
Plunged into despair and hopelessness

Nigeria, constantly in dilemma
Constantly in search of an elusive hope
Nigeria, living in perpetual contradictions
Ugliness in the midst of beauty
Poverty in the midst of wealth
Death in the midst of life
Wars, Famine, Poverty adorn its landscape
Nigeria cries for help

Who will answer the call for help?

Who will help this wobbling giant?

Who will salvage her land from total destruction?

Who will stand to say enough is enough?

Who can understand by the hand of the clock?

That the time to rescue and save Nigeria is now

HISTORY

HISTORY! HISTORY!!

History: this is the word that enlightens us

This is the word that cannot be denied

This is the word that cannot be rubbished

It has its impact upon generations

The freedom movement was a product of history

It was conceived in the belly of history

Powered by history and limited by history

The independence of African nations

The voyage of Christopher Columbus

Was a by-product of history.

We can say by way of illustration

That there would not have been a Montgomery Bus Boycott

If Martin Luther King had never lived

But that the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Would not have become an icon without M. Luther King’s leadership

History provides opportunities for everyone to make up

And to made the world a better place than we met it

History is events of life that champion the cause of the good and the bad

All my actions today will become events in the history of life tomorrow.

For although Martin Luther King didn’t start the boycott

He was there and ready when the people called

And tell us today from the grave

That no greater tragedy can befall you or me

Than for the people to call and for you or me to be unready

As for the rest of us, there is nothing more to say except

Martin and Malcolm X did their historical duty

And now we historians and citizens of our nations must do what is needful

By breaking free of the fashionable and

False dichotomies that distort them both

History had favoured many men and women

Who pass through this world just one time

And changed the hand of the clock

Turn the tide and make a wave

Can America forget Martin Luther King?

Can America forget Henry Ford?

Can Nigeria forget Obafemi Awolowo?

Can the continent of Africa forget Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkruma?

Can the world forget Mohandas Gandhi?

No! No! The history of the present world cannot be completed

Without the historian making a big reference to Bill gate,

A man who champion the Information Technology Breakthrough.

The history of the church in the 20th and 21^st century,

Can not be completed without some notable men.

Men Gani Fawehinmi, Beko Ransome Kuti, Wole Soyinka and other freedom fighters and nation builders who left their comfort zone to make Nigeria a desirable place.

Men like Benson Idahosa, an evangelist and a reformer,

Men like Tunde Bakare, voice to our nation, radical opposition to corruption

An angry revolutionary, a man who choose to be different in all ramifications

A man who is passionate about a new Nigeria,

Prophet to the entire globe,

History will also favour me,

Because I intend to write one when am I alive,

I will do my best,

I will print my foot path on the sand of time,

In my days and time Nigeria will flourish,

History of the world is an open book,

I will write mine as long as I live

So that the generation coming after me can relate with and learn from.

All of us will be history book the world will read long after we have gone

When that book is open what will the world read about you

Will they read with disgust or with happiness

Will they thank God you came or curse the time you spent.

FELA AND THE DECLINE IN PROTEST MUSIC

FELA AND THE DECLINE IN PROTEST MUSIC

In the world of music, Fela Anikulapo Kuti is a legend, Number one musician in Africa, king and creator of Afro-beat, social critic, and activist. He happens to be my favourite musician, because all his production are impacting, scinllating, revolutionary and changing. When he was alive many thought Fela was crazy, unserious type and he never saw what was good in any government but now people who criticized him then now agreed that Fela served us very well.

Ten years after the death of Nigeria’s iconoclastic musician, fela Anikulapo Kuti, it is disappointing how music, which used to provide a weapon of social change, has greatly declined in Nigeria music landscape. No one need to look any further than the illicit liaison between musician and government functionaries as the reason for this depreciating artistic role.

It may be understandable that the August 2^nd Annniversary of Fela’s death has been stylishly hijacked by all kinds of events that appeal to no aim than the pecuniary. It may even be excusable that children, siblings and core claim of legendary composer and performer, who naturally ought to have led in a productive commemoration of that anniversary, have all seemingly moved on in their different lives. But today. It is disagreeable, disappointing and damaging so, that the core essence that Fela’s music developed in to the last of his carrer, which intrinsically is an integral function of the arts, has been left unattended. In a country where sleeze and malfensances have permeated all nooks and crannies of political, socio-economic and retrogressively hypocritical religious lives, the musical art as a potent weapon that can be used to achieve specific goals now does little other than sing praises of people of questionable valve or simply got consumed with the sensual sleaze that has become a monstrous, industrial past time.

People of every nationality are known to have been moved to speech or song by that which permeates the thoughts or appeals to the emotions in times of political turbulence. Music and the visionary musicians often performed their part in inciting lawful actions especially at time when deep commentaries are needed outside of government and soiled hands of the media.

It is for this type of valve that was inherently popular in Fela’s music that is now missing the Nigeria current all type, but little substance music industry. For who could disagree that for patriotic and even prophetic reasons, Fela’s reasonably revolutionary stance is described well in songs like Beast of No Nation, International Thief Thief, overtake Don Overtake, Big Blind Country, Perambulator, suffer Head and Unknown soldier. He might have constituted himself as a one-man riot squad and suffer the physical and mental consequences. But Nigeria has continue to be a luck beneficiary of Fela’s musical Legacy gloriously apt evergreen musical commentary that details the atrocities of military dictators in Nigeria, their collaborators in civilian garb and the villainous looting of the nation’s collective wealth. Evidently, it is because the social and political necessities of his music one considered expedient that Fela has continued to remain relevant and is serving as the benchmark till today. Beyond the recessional sparkles of traditional poetry that have attempted to name as Fela did without overtly flouting the ethical requirement in music production, it is almost impossible to find a musician of national reckoning in Nigeria today brave enough to rouse attention let alone devotion in the mould of Fela.

All over the country musician now rely on government patronage for survival. Those unable to sell records depend on government house wasteful dinners and functions to survive with their hands soiled, they sing praises of government and contractors and a dazed public looks on in disbelief. Desperately, the nation seamless in vain for popular music that can effectively function as a medium for messages at a time when alarmingly retrogressive developments have enveloped the nation.

It is only when the musical arts, like the ethical and conscientious media, hold a prominent place in the ideological nationalism of this country that Fela’s death would have been truly commemorated.