By Sylvester Udemezue
Your Excellency, sir, it’s time to focus on working hard to carry all Nigerians along towards restoring hope for progress and advancement of the country.
I enjoin you to take deliberate/positive steps to implement the federal character principle, as enshrined on the Constitution of the Federal Republic; in my opinion sir, there may never be any hope of progress for Nigeria in the absence of pragmatic and all-inclusive governance.
Leaders that aim to succeed must adopt all-inclusiveness as their motto, so as to be able to create an environment in which all individuals and sections feel empowered to express their opinions freely.
Diversity of thinking is critical to effective collaboration and management. A leader may not have begun delivering true leadership until the leader has learned to rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic, sectional or parochial concerns to the broader concerns of all members of the society he leads, and in fact the whole of humanity.
In Jesse Jackson’s words, “inclusiveness is not a matter of political correctness. It is the key to growth. When everyone is included, everyone wins.”
Let me repeat that no leader or group of leaders can get it right in Nigeria unless and until they carry all Nigerians along. No one is more Nigerian than anyone, and no region or state has a monopoly of good leaders.
Unless we honestly recognize that all and every part of Nigeria has something to offer, we would continue to move backward.
In this regard, I advise President Tinubu to learn from the errors of the Former President Muhammadu Buhari, to learn by observation, from the self-imposed failings of the former President Muhammadu Buhari, rather than waiting to learn from experience.
Please, dear Mr President Tinubu, I think you need to see this opinion: “Warning alert to political leaders: compliance with the federal character provisions of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria is not dependent on voting patterns during elections” By Sylvester Udemezue. Published on 19 March 2019 by BarristerNG.
On behalf of myself, I congratulate you, Mr. President Ahmed Bola Tinubu on your victory at the Supreme Court on 26 October 2023, in the election petitions filed by Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and his political party, People’s Democratic Party (PDP), and Mr. Peter Gregory Obi and his party, Labour Party (LP).
I enjoin all the parties at the Supreme Court to accept the Court’s verdict since the Supreme Court is Nigeria’s final court of appeal. The Supreme Court is final but not because it’s infallible; it’s infallible because it’s final.
In conclusion, I respectfully suggest that what we need now is reconciliation with one another, reparation of damaged relations and society, not bullying of a section of it, reconstruction of devasted hopes, not persecution of those who dared to raise their voices legitimately; repentance and reengineering, not exacerbation and heightening of tension.
“Conscience is an open wound; only the truth can heal it (per Sheikh Usman Dan Fodio: 1754-1816).
Rebecca REBECCA WEST wrote in the book, THE HARSH VOICE, that “nobody likes having salt rubbed into his wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.”
The reason is quite simple: ‘you can’t patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid’. The problem with the band-aid (to wounds) is that the band-aid would slowly rip off, and the wound would remain unhealed; so, of what use is such temporary measure that brings no permanent solutions.
Besides, as experience has shown, certain wounds can’t heal if you keep touching them. And, as Sue Fitzmaurice said, “Our wounds can so easily turn us into people we don’t want to be.”
The future of Nigeria depends squarely on our present choices, decisions, actions, and inactions.
In the book, Lanthe, published in 2015, author Cathlin Shahriary observed that, “all choices are made with great risks.”
So, we must decide for ourselves, individually, collectively, whether the consequences are worth the action we take, whether as individuals, as governments or government officials. We always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it; yet doing the right thing is always the right thing to do.
May God help and bless Nigeria and Nigerians. Amen.
Respectfully,
Sylvester Udemezue (Udems).
08109024556.
mrudems@yahoo.com.
