WHAT ARE THE GOOD MEN DOING OUTSIDE THE POLITICS?
Sometimes ago during my undergraduate days, late Alawaye, Olakitan and I being secretary Vice President and President respectfully of Human Right Chambers, Unilorin (faculty of law) paid a courtesy visit to Festus Keyamo SAN among other activist lawyers in Lagos. During our interactive section in his chambers, I asked him to tell us what he was doing in politics when the role of activists is to show government the right way and ensure interests of masses are well protected at all time. In his response, he came down to our level and asked; what are the activists doing outside the politics if they are knowledgeable enough to know what are to be done in politics? I couldn’t respond to the question.
He asked me to mention a single impact we have made outside the politics aside being in the news at all time. Again, I couldn’t answer the second question. He said we made no sense to the government who treat us as nuisance and we are deviants to the masses we all claimed to represent. In all these sacrifices, no known activist is comfortable enough to be described as a rich person. What are the activists doing outside politics? The best way to direct successfully is to lead. These were the reasons why Chief Fawehinmi joined politics. This were his responses to my questions. Sincerely, he made no sense to me then, until recently after spending over Twenty years in active undiluted activism.
Recently after one of the edition of Analyst Roundtable at SBS FM; a program coordinated by Abdulateef Ishowo, the anchor, Olanrewaju Ishowo, Alhaji Muse, Sidiq Bola and I evaluated our efforts to have egalitarian society in this country and in our state in particular but we couldn’t identify a way forward. Sidiq Bola suggested sensitization and intellectual revolution to see how far we could gather the like-minds. We objected to the concept based on the underlined word: “like-minds”. Ishowos believe in third-force since we believe that we are better off the leaders we have in power.
We objected to the view too for fear of possible highjack. Such an highjacks is not impossible since the initiators may not be capable of financing the agenda. Alhaji Muse and I didn’t see prospect in any political movement at all.
We condemned both the joining of the status quo political movement and the idea of floating new one. We never concluded the discussions as always. We didn’t conclude because we didn’t have a strong wills to implement our lofty ideas and trusted wheels to pilot our concept.
When I added the experiences of the activists like Late Fawehinmi SAN, Falana SAN, Late Aturu, Keyamo SAN, Baiyeshea SAN and more that I have learnt from with mine, activisms outside political caucus have yielded insignificant result to actualize our dream of having egalitarianism. No matter how fast we run, the rate at which the political misfit politicians fly is in thousand fold. How much noise would we have to make to beat the megaphones of these oppressors?
Coupled with these phenomena, I don’t see any justification for any good man to stay out of politics at any point in time. Depending on the prevailing circumstance, we may fish out good administrators wherever life hide them and back them up for our good missions.
If we have good administrators in minority, we may support them to make them majority to pilot our missions. If we have them in power, let us support and motivate them to continue their worthwhile strides for the betterment of our missions. We should be mindful of our egos and not allowing selfishness to take better part of us.
In Nigeria of over 200,000.000 people, over 500 Ethnics groups, over 300 languages and a single person can only be president. As big as we are in this state, two person can not be the governor at the same time. With these efforts, we would scare misfit political office holders out of our space and we would have the government of our dream devoid of corruption, manipulation, rigging and marginalization enthroned .
When ways are paved for good people in politics, peace harmony and unity will prevail ever after. In every misbehavior discharged by bad leaders, ninety percent of the blame goes to the good people who feel too big to lead their people alright.
SAMBO MURITALA ESQ.
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