Enough of the Dribbling, we need Goals -By Francis Ojima Akoji Esq.

With its millions of supporters the world over, football is in recent times the most loved sporting activity. The thrills and excitement that accompanies it has made it won the heart of its lovers. The joy of the fans and team mates is the result, and playing “Champaign” football without goals in the end only makes the club keep a dry museum. A player can be so prolific and dribble the pitch, but until he can work with team mates, and score the goals, he is just but a selfish and self-centred enemy of the fans. A swift shift to the focus of this work now is apt, the political culture we have been faced with over time can be likened to the above illustration of a dribbler on the pitch who does not score the goals to bring about desired victory. The current dispensation with its campaign of change has not in any way changed this sphere of our political system, as it is still business as usual. It has being a long time coming, different successive administration with mouth-watering manifestoes delivered to the easily buy-off majority by the most eloquent sugar coated tongues. For the poor masses believing and hoping for the best, it is an unending hope placed on hopelessness.

We fail to understand our wrongs, hence the difficulty in finding solutions to our problems. Successive administrations have dribbled us with political gimmicks and we always get to a point where we feel the messiah has come, not seeing the deadly blow that is imminent and the illumine darkness standing next to us.
Our messiah is not just here yet, we have as a people install deceit as the order of the day in our various routines. The joy, peace and love that should be a bond of our coexistence has been sacrificed on the rickety altar of political mismanagement, self-aggrandisement, favouritism, and nepotism. Political misinformation has been used to de-sacred Gods favoured land. Nigerians have being subjected to one form of deceit or the other. Chunk of lies are well packaged and thrown at the mostly not so innocent citizens without any qualms of conscience. Like the dribbler on the pitch, Nigerians have being dribbled from one point to the other, our supposed representatives have become our major enemies, who speak in different languages and in different tone away from the campaign rally. We have accepted and are comfortable with representatives who will trek, walk and pretend to live among us and feel the pain of every common Nigeria during campaigns but in contrast they live in high fences, walk with sophisticated guards some of whom should even in ideal society protect the poor masses, and attempt to drive at a speed of light, chastising the electorates to leave the road for their dark tinted career acquired from looted treasury of same poor tax payers who have mostly been cowed by what is better referred to as stomach infrastructure.

The economy of Nigeria is a sham, from been over bloated to be the best in the last administration to its continuous down turn in the recent administration. The hardship and hunger which the citizenry are subjected to is visible to the blind and audible to the deaf. The change mantra propounded and propagated by the messiahs expected has become a burden we must bear and expect some thing positive from if the continuous promise is something to rely on. We are at the mercy of two parties raising a lot of controversial dust and accusing each other in the name of rescuing a nation they have dragged to the mud. All we are served with are old wines by the two “ushers” who have taken permanent stand in the affairs of the nation and its leadership. The only difference we can notice between the twosomes is the difference in slogan, the ideologies are never changing.

The big question is whether there is a future for the supposed youths who are the future leaders. It seems that future will never come, because in the future the youths today will still want to take the stage from the next generation of youths, how long are we going to keep hoping and waiting for the youth’s future? The most talked about leadership we were told in our nursery school days is now but a future that never will see the light of day. Our fore parents and parents don’t see us as capable hands because they have failed to imbibe in us what true leadership is all about. They have rather remained the youths we were told in the days they manned the nations affairs. And then the question is whether the future is in the old age of these youths. The youths on their part do not seem ready to hijack their future from the hands of the daddies. They have suddenly become ready tools in the hands of the old wines, used as instruments of chaos, anarchy and brigandry by the leaders and political never do good for the nation politicians, who will prefer to have their own in the best of schools abroad and within. The conscience of many are so dead beyond rethink, what are the kinds of leaders we look forward to in our great nation, the recycled instrument of chaos or the children of the failed deceivers who they have decorated to look like the only saviours the future has, and make governance revolve around their lineage in a multi ethnic nation like ours. the slums and shanties have the nation’s wealth of experience and brilliance but yet forgotten individuals, because we have made their environment look bad to the level of nothing good can come out of Jerusalem.

This is a wakeup call to the youths as leaders of tomorrow, to be vigilante and recognise our real problems. In the end our politicians do not mean well for us, they will only use us to achieve their selfish interests. Let us begin to build ourselves into goal oriented leaders, ask questions and make greatness out of ourselves. It’s time to brace up, wash our eyes and notice that the penny we gain from assisting in crimes is nothing compared to the blessings and fruits of a good nation with minimal crime rate.

The time is ripe for our leaders at all level to have a rethink and realise that the word politics is been mistaken for a game of the treacherous. As observed in the last general elections, Nigerians are becoming wiser in choosing leaders, it’s about the time we will start demanding high values on the negotiation table for a promise to be voted into leadership positions. Our legislatures should focus on laws that will impart the nation positively, rather than trying to hide the turkeys anus. If we have failed to realise from the moral angle that we are but marketers striving to build treasure for ourselves in an everlasting kingdom, the time has come, for your people to demand your report sheet. The task of rebuilding a great nation rest on the shoulders of all and sundry, we make our little contributions and from the drops from each, the nation of our dream is born. Party affiliations should not take the place of the general good of the nation. We bear the brunt for failure by any Nigerian in making their contribution. The president you wish to fail to enable you drive home your point, will not be in the mud alone when it is created. It takes two to tangle, let us start living by our conscience and not jettison conscience in a dive for selfish and sordid gain.

God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.