In the Grandiose Parlor…

Why is it that Nigerian elected officials develop inertia when it’s needed most? This is a question that has become even more relevant given the Yar’Adua’s impasse.

The man is clearly incapacitated and not able to perform his duties are required under the law. In fact, it now appears the man is not even in the right state — physically and mentally, to make his situation known to the people who gave him his mandate! This is what the recent events strongly suggest since his return from Saudi Arabia about a week ago.

So why has it remained a Herculean task to the representatives of the Nigerian people to do the right thing and relieve the man of his burden?

Why is the conscience of our elected officials so dead to the expectations of the people whom they represent?

I doff my hat to the Nigerian information minister, Dora Akunyili, for her new-found courage and consciousness to the moral contract she has with the people. Her unilateral stance against the deceit and rascality of the Yar’Adua cabal is a refreshing breeze instead of the foul staleness of the Abuja obstructionists and status quo keepers.

“There is a political crisis,” Akunyili said. “We should not pretend about it because we are yet to get out of the woods. As soon as we hear from our president or the people around him are able to come out and tell us his true health status then things will gradually normalize. Even if they have lied for too long there is nothing wrong with coming out today to say the truth.” – Dora Akunyili.

To those hell bent on keeping the status quo in Nigeria: this is not the time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy, if I may borrow some language from the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Nigerian people have become tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression and insulted by the continual callousness and moral ineptitude in high places.

As Dr. King stated: “Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ And Vanity comes along and asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But Conscience asks the question ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.”

This is what Dora Akunyili has done, and God bless her heart!

Another interesting read on 234Next.com:
Man takes his protest to the National Assembly