20/03/2023
PEN 🖊 IS MIGHTIER THAN SWORD 🗡
How are you using your own pen?
There is festering bad blood generated by the outcomes of the recent elections in Nigeria. And, LIKE A FULLY LOADED PETROL TANKER, our virtual platforms have become laden with HIGHLY INFLAMMABLE personal and forwarded posts, each of which serves to reveal the mindset of each poster.
Deliberately or inadvertently, in apparent exercise of our individual right to speak freely here, these platforms are gradually being turned into a virtual war zones that could eventually get physical, evident in the overt and subtle inflammatory _personally prepared_ and _imported_ posts renting these platforms, especially since just before the general elections.
Depending on which side of the evidently controversial elections' outcomes you belong, there are those who are heavily pained and those who yet feel good about the outcomes.
This is a period that we must willy-nilly exercise evident caution and sensitivity in our virtual posts and physical interactions. Even making jokes at this time about the undeniably testy situation at hand would hardly make any joker guiltless in view of the present undeniable heightened sense of loss by many. Any section would ignore this fact only to our collective detriment! If we lost our cool and turned physical, it would not really matter who was on the right or on the wrong: war treats the right people and the wrong people caught in it alike, sadly!
Please let everyone begin to exercise demonstrable restraint in our posts.
Before we submit our positions or forward copied statements of others, let's care enough to ask what kind of feeling our posts could elicit in our potential readers.
*Whoever chooses to care less about how his actions or inactions could affect his fellow citizens would not be adjudged guiltless.*
"If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn't do it, it is sin for them." James 4:17
If we continue as we presently are, we might highly regrettably be paving the way for unintended consequences.
Let's be mindful of the saying that goes thus:
"It's the start of a war we may know with precision, we don't know how it would end."
Many are highly disappointed now because, all these years, we had thought we had a semblance of cohesion even though we knew we've never had a country of Nigerians.
This current (real or perceived) sad turnout of the elections may not be altogether bad if we would think more deeply thus:
This period has made us become better self-aware by debunking our previous belief that we had at least some things going on well for all the tribes when we actually had none!
So, yes, this present outcome may seem both quite shocking and highly regrettable indeed, but isn't it okay that the veil is finally removed and we now know where or how we truly stand?
It's with this stark realisation we could now choose how we want to relate with ourselves henceforth- whether to now build together or continue to live the lie. Personally, I remain a strong believer in our continued coexistence because there's much more to gain together if we remain as one.
Who doesn't love the beautiful display we all observe in the rainbow? Even nature preaches diversity and how unlike things could be married or harmonised to produce a beautiful whole 👌🏿as exemplified in the rainbow... if only our fruitlessly ethnic prejudices could be vacated!
How I love the fluidity in our transitioning from one song to another as we all sing in different languages during our African Praise in our various churches!
Oh, what such beautiful renditions in various and varied tongues that often make the different tribes and tongues congregating under one God experience a whiff of heavenly bliss just as God intends it here on earth!🕺 💃!
*Or, is this phenomenon that strew our worship places also part of our national lie?! 🤔*
Well, we have a choice to make and any option that'd result in our maiming and killing ourselves wouldn't augur well for anyone.
*The way forward is quite tortuous and very difficult because the prejudices and selfishness that divide us are already entrenched,* and (now) we have become incapable of engaging in any decent, honest and selfless talks that'd be fair to all concerned.
Every tribe ought to have a say and their interests should also be considered in our collective choices. We must do away with "You cannot have you say," or even if you do, "You cannot have your way even to the slightest degree!" Such arrant stance amounts to grave intolerance that'd eventually destroy us all!
No tribe should claim superiority to, choke, or alienate the other anywhere in Nigeria.
Our diversity ought to be recognised and encouraged within the context of our general good and not in the current misguided fashion of denigrating one another to the detriment of our collective good 🙄 .
OLABOBO
