MANDELA IS LIVING AND NOT LEAVING!

By Joshua Oyero

“Successful leadership is not about long duration in Office, but the life-changing donation made to the led within the shortest period of leading.” –O.J.O

Petals Of Thought have been in hibernation recently. Bunch of thanks to the consistent followers of this blog who doused my doorstep with effusive inquiries as to know the cause of the pause of this cyber-weekly. The rationale for my staying indoors for a fourth-night now is nature-related. Guess that’s understandable? Anyways, it’s a welcome back with Petals Of Thought!

In honesty, I had wanted to shy away from commenting on the socio-political happenings in the land if not for my porous lips. Aside that, the ambush and abuse recently meted on pedophile can’t just prevent my emotional pen from scribbling in ink, the desecrative acts recorded on the tablet of my mind by the windows of my eyes and ears. From the macabre of genocidal killings of over twenty innocent promising students of Government Secondary School, Mamudo in Yobe State to the wide umbrage of the mysterious child marriage acts, one can savely conclude that this July will not go undocumented in the annals of children etymology in Nigeria. The mystery is just one that deserves to be embalmed in the negative side of the nation’s history.

As if the above is not enough, the crises rocking Rivers State house of Assembly also assumed a taut dimension when the floor of the state’s green house tentatively turned to a boxing ring. It was an immense outpouring of showers of blows! You need to imagine how overtly hardened the veins that lay beneath their clenched fists was at the time of the bout. It was a ‘we-no-go-gree’ kind of situation when the Amaechi-must-go small-but-mighty cabal of seven dealt mercilessly with the pro-Amaechi faction. To sound mocking, the eyesore reminisces one of the exuberant youthful years of the present Monarch of the great Oyo empire, Alaafin of Oyo, HRM, Oba Lamidi Adeshina, who history depicted as the Bash Ali of his youth days.

Without mincing words, the legislative rascality witnessed in post-military Nigeria particularly in the country’s upper and lower chambers whenever there is a bone of contention between legal umpires aptly necessitates that for a lawmaker to be successful in the floor of the green legislative deliberative crib, such a lawmaker must be a Mike Tyson. In fact, a career in boxing should be included as part of the requirements for the eligibility of candidates into the legislature.

Regrettably, the issue of gentility is considered an act of stupidity in the nation’s legislative arm of governance. This explains why an average Nigerian Law-maker is as swift as a cheetah when it comes to the act of molding iron-fist blows that is sturdy and destructive enough to uproot at a punch the entire sets of teeth planted on the pink fleshy gum of an opponent’s lower jaw. Also unarguable is it that, it’s no fallacy of legislative requirement that a Lawmaker needs more brawn that brain to survive the country’s legislative jungle. I wonder what the perception of the international community was like when the footage of legislative free-for-all in Rivers (not a new political phenomenon though) went viral on social sites, chief among which was You Tube. To me, a situation where by the symbolic gavel turned a ‘tentative whip’ and thus used to flog a member of the opposition is absurd a caricature!

Well aside commenting on the legislative pandemonium, Petals Of Thought will not forget to wish the iconic symbol of leadership that Africa ever had a belated Happy Birthday. A quintessential revolutionary who fought tenaciously against the stay of white domination and discrimination against the black in Apartheid South Africa! The integrity-conscious Moses of the South-Africans who refused to trail the part of sit-tight syndrome like his freedom-fighter counterpart in Zimbabwe: Africa’s oldest president at eighty-nine who clocked thirty-three years in office early this year. Petals of Thought congratulates a man who squirmed the severe fiery furnace of mosquito-infested prison for twenty-seven unbroken years of jail term, all to salvage his people from the taut noose of racial Whites. How can history forget the proponent of legacy and not policy whose article of Faith is: ‘Rule briefly and make the greatest maximum impact.’? And in case your mind grope in the dark as to know the recipient of these accolades and embellishments, be still! He’s none but Africa’s own proudest son, Nelson Mandela! Petals of thought wish him speedy recovery. Petals of thought share the optimism that he’s living and not leaving.

Well, let’s say the ‘grace in fellowship’ to the gall commentary on the civil war pervading Rivers State, and the bonfire of ‘child marriage’ fomented by the Bohemians in the legislature. An mild uprising which is still plausibly the most talked-about totem in the pantheon of national social issues. This is to say that Petals Of Thought better mind his business of  leveraging positive influence just as Pius Adesanmi recently said in one of his numerous ‘I-just-hear-with-one-ear’ posts on face-book that the business of minding one’s business is a thriving business anywhere anytime.

Again to the infirm South-African freedom-fighter of all times, Petals of thought says: you’re living and not leaving!

The world loves you!

Africa appreciates you!

South-Africans need you!

…Kip da Optimism Alive