Letter to Oby Ezekwesili
PDear Oby, lease, permit the easy familiarity and by way of introduction suffice it to say that I am older in natural age than your illustrious self and hence my sense of entitlement. This letter has been prompted in part by online posts I stumbled upon wherein one of the numerous anonymous online regime supporters labelled you as ‘ewu Hausa’ and yet another wondered why you were carrying the Chibok ‘ abduction thing’, ‘on your head’ as if you were Hausa. I also get a feeling that this sentiment is gaining some currency in Nigeria’s increasingly polarized atmosphere. Ordinarily, these kinds of comments, being so inane, ought not to elicit any other reaction but disgust, indignation and pity for the authors’ small minded inhumanity. However, we live in strange but by no means uncharted times. Times where reason appears to be taking flight from the souls of otherwise presumed reasonable people and where those who take directions from them have shut their eyes and rely only on their ears to follow a direction, which if only they opened their eyes, will discover is headed to an approaching cliff edge.
Unknown to the small minded lot, by highlighting your involvement in an endeavour you could have easily ‘siddon look’, they are ensuring your place in the hallowed chamber reserved for those whose worldview and consequent actions are guided by an understanding of the true essence of humanity. A hallowed chamber where greatness is a prerequisite – the greatness that is measured not in figures or plaques but in the enduring and sincere appreciation of humanity and including those not present at the time of your actions. In short, character and actions that will stand the test of time.
In these times, especially given the atmosphere of orchestrated dehumanization, it is tempting to feel discouraged for many reasons. Like me, you must sometimes wonder, how it is that it is so easy to fool people. At times you may even in confusion self-debate whether you are the one fooling yourself because how can so many people be so foolish, so myopic and hence so easy to beguile with self-serving and insincere partisan rhetoric. All sorts of inanities and yet there are willing ears to listen but sadly there is little appetite to allow the brain in between to process the plethora of ‘information’ and perhaps worst of all, the seemingly easy ability of people to subdue their conscience on the altar of foisted partisan sentiments.
Please, do not be discouraged and I will go into history to furnish examples that will hopefully hearten you in these trying times. You will, of course, know that in the heyday of racial segregation in America, some white folks stood with the blacks in condemning segregation and fighting for its abolition. Other whites sneeringly and malevolently derided them as ‘blacks lovers’ and other ‘abusive’ names. In the meantime, there were several blacks who did not see the need to confront the system, especially those who felt well-adjusted or those not living in the American south and indeed many saw segregation as a southern problem which did not really affect them directly ‘unbearably’. In the long run, though, good will always be good and even the white people today are thankful that some of their number actually fought against what everybody now agrees was evil.
They are thankful because you cannot, on account of racial segregation of the past, classify white people generally as evil since some white people also opposed that evil at that time. So tomorrow, those lots castigating you today will thank you for saving them from a general classification as condoners of evil because you are fighting evil on their behalf! I say condoners of evil because I also take the view that failure to recognize evil as evil and fight it with every might and conviction is tantamount to condoning same, which only emboldens evil.
If you were a white woman in that bus with Rosa Parks, you would have risen to her support and protested against your fellow whites who sought to oppress her. If there was a white woman like that in that bus, what do you think humanity in general will make of her today? Will we have known her name? YES, and for the right reasons. The others in that bus have since been consigned to the dustbin of history, a fate that undoubtedly awaits your persecutors.
The struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa was not only fought by blacks. Neither was the apartheid system sustained by whites only. The bitter truth is that blacks participated actively in enforcing apartheid.
Today we acknowledge the whites who fought the apartheid system as superior human beings. Superior in the sense that many of us know that while we abhor apartheid because we are blacks, we are thankful that we were not put to that test of exhibiting superior humanity if roles were reversed. Paradoxically, we recognize that those who support or fight causes on objective moral basis are cut from a different cloth. A cloth we all can have but which the promoters of divisiveness use every trick available to muddy its colour and make it unappealing to the weak in mind to adorn. The seeming ‘success’ of the promoters of hate, division and evil is, however, a pyrrhic one because when tomorrow comes, the truth will subdue propaganda. That tomorrow cannot be impeached or chased away – it must and will come, and it is irrespective of whether you or myself or indeed the ‘other guys’ will be there.
My Comrade, when tomorrow comes, by which time all the propaganda and abuse will have faded, humanity will recognize that putting pressure on a government to do its job or pointing out the many failings of that government in other areas has nothing to do with religion, section or seeking to tarnish a regime’s image, it is about answering NO to that famous question posed by Ursula K LeGuin – ‘if you know that the beautiful manner of living you yourself enjoy is built on the foundation of misery deliberately imposed on innocents, can you in conscience do nothing?’ Those who persecute and harass you for following your conscience only do so today and unknowingly or not caring demean their humanity for tomorrow. When ‘they’ accuse you of all sorts of ulterior motives, ‘we’ know it is only a reflection of their worldview and disposition. So, please, remain steadfast, we are not all fooled! And long may you live!
Ukpong is a legal practitioner