07/05/2022
WHY DOUBTS IN TRUTH?
Truth is the conformity to fact or reality. It's the conformity to rule, standard, model, pattern,or ideal. It's faithfulness to the facts of nature, history or life.
Truth when said shouldn't provoke doubts on its own but for the fact that this truth has been slaughtered on the altar of falsehood, made it a point of an endless scepticism and compelling many people to dispute truth as unattainable reality especially in this country. Betrayal of trust has descended in all walks of life and entrenches scepticism as the only ground for survival or the vehicle to get to the ultimate veritas. The society has gone down due to mistrust and most times conceived and realized even before going into bargaining. This attitude which the government of our time applies these days as an official arsenal to hocus-pocusly, callously, and racketly deal with us and ravish our economy. This has built a strong bridge that so many right thinking Members of this society have resigned to fate that whatever they see in this country any time, any day they embrace it. This mutual suspicion across board is evidence of acatalectic failure to uphold and build on the positive cultural values of our people. Everything in this country is politics, if you are not politically connected or allied with, you have nothing to gain from this country no matter how highly qualify you are for what you are seeking for. The time when people are considered for merits and accorded some accolades on the same basis is turning mirageous histories and point of inexorable reality. Why are our positive values battled dead? There can be a way forward if our positive cultural values are sincerely entrenched into our mystical minds and guided jealously to reflect the art of glory that remains the only one way possible of speaking the truth and repositioning our dear society. It's worriesome and regrettable that truth has flew away from us and our society has resolved to nurture the inverse because it's profitable to the beasts. It's a deliberate attempt to install or enthrone and market falsehood as a core societal standard or value / measuring apparatus of who fits in or out of the enclave.
Justice Oputa of the blessed memory said, " Nothing will happen in our nation, in our society which didn't first happen in our minds. If wrong is rampant, if indiscipline is rife,if corruption is the order of the day, we have to search our individual minds for that is where it all starts..."
Gen. Ojukwu added that "... Nigeria is crippled by four fears: fear of change, fear of truth, fear of unity and fear of man... the second explains our inability to accommodate criticism both at home and abroad...the fourth explains the amorphous and all pervasive sycophancy that chokes every incipient leadership in our body politic."
So, the greatest fear for me is not really to say the truth but the consequence because it's overbearing. This truth is blunt and stand the opposite of our cherished values. It lets the cat out of the bag and present issues as they appear. Truth breeds friction as not everyone nods to its arrival and the truth bearers hang and sword with the sharpness of falsehood. Therefore, the unfortunate thing is that "if the truth hurts most of us so badly that we don't want it told, it hurts even more grievously those who dare to tell it. It's a two-edged sword often deadly dangerous to the user" Justice Ben Lindsey.
However, if you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through, it will blow up everything in its way. And this explains to every truth killer that truth is immortal and infallible and the earliest we embrace it the better and safer for us all.
According to an extract from Captain Orsig by Edwin Arlington Robinson explains thus:
We know the truth has been
Told over to the world a thousand times;
For more than fragments of it we have heard
A murmur now and then, an echo here
And there.
The effect of this is that we are on an unyielding dialogue with the deaf. As soon as one gets into position of trust, he turns too arrogant and arrogates all powers to himself, that to listen to the truth takes a great deal and if leant ears those who propagate the truth become victims of argumentum ad bacculum emanating from animus sovereign which negates all argument of right reasonings and justifications. An evidence that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.---- Acton.
We have been unfairly treated in this country, blessed with huge human and material resources. We found ourselves in this pitiful state because truth is not the leading principle. We are slaves in our land today because truth has been subverted and falsehood reigns supreme. The worry is that it has turned counter productive because nobody believes or takes serious what comes from the hegemonistic command of our dear state because the leaders find it difficult to put straight issues to us from the abinitio.
Today, Madagascar, Senegal, South Africa, leading our continent in science and technology. Where comes the giant of Africa? A country with no confidence in her researchers and medical practitioners, just to keep us backward imported Chinese doctors. What a shame to the acclaimed African giant?People joke over the reality of COVID-19 pandemic because of the attitude of our leaders. Nobody knows when they are saying the truth because of the beautiful eyes of our money--box and they're greedy dogs which can never have enough. This pandemic claimed the lives of over 200, 000 people in the world and Nigeria with death record of 98 as at today but doubt enough is still generated amongst Nigerians as to the reality of this dreadful virus. You can imagine the dangers this insincerity of the leaders imposes on our lives. When do we begin to have confidence in the leadership of this country? What should be the approach towards cleaning up our subconsciousness the incurred mistrust? What are the ways towards reconciling the led and the leaders?
It's now that we put this nation first (us) and I on the second consideration.
For us to rebuild firm confidence on the leadership of this country, we shall all take it as a marching order to be truthful and transparent in dealing with one another. And leadership should be a thing of all as obtains in a true democratic society not of a few that reflect only the interests and opinions of the privileged few.
On the second issue, only the results-oriented biddings can fill the depth and heal the wounds of mistrust or better still mutual mistrust which is the bane to our national progress and greatness.
The defence of the truth is far and over reaching on the bearers or advocates. This defence caused the lone voice of the wilderness had his head in the palm of Tetrarchic-Herodian Princess.
Martin Luther King dropped dead at Washington DC in 1963 in the defence of the truth; and Mahatma Ghandhi of India was put away because he stood for the truth;
Nelson Mandela of South Africa denied his comforts and incarcerated for decades because he spoke against evils; for injustice to one is injustice to all and to no one shall justice be denied captured as justicia nemini negenda est.
Prof. Wole Soyinka incarcerated and expatriated because he said the people's will should be made sacrosanct.
A legal erudite Gani Fawehinmi imprisoned because he advocated for an egalitarian society;
Dele Giwa destroyed by Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida military Junta because he was an advocate of positive changes;
Rev. Fr. John Odeh humiliated, relegated to the background and compulsorily transferred from the metropolis because he was against the inordinate attitudes of a political order and many more of the Apostles of the truth who suffered and still suffering different degrees of pains and isolated lives.
Defending the truth is a journey to the calvary. It's not palatable and of course not convenience. It takes only the strong minds to profess the truth in the face of adversities. Peter could not hold on because the pressure and fear of death was steering on his face. It's only in De Sancti Spiritus that we can be made strong, fearless to defend the truth coupled with the fact that it works better and easier if it's the path of one's destiny.
We doff our caps in the honour of those who have paid and still paying the price to establish the realities of today even though still with the same thorns that they fought or fighting against. They still remain in our minds the beacons of hope to the oppressed and thorns in the fleshes of bumbling authorities.
Finally, it's possible that the led and leaders can dine on the same table without scrimmage only with understanding that one thing bound them together which is leadership. Leadership emanates from the led to the leader (s) and where no led no leadership. This agrees with the Latin legalis Maxim that sovereignta la' tact de popo which the leaders most times undermined leading to political cm economic squabbles and quagmires. When this understanding is rooted, mutual suspicion will be eroded naturally and Nigeria will become habitable for all; because only in truth our emancipation lies and the truth co-ordinates all virtues and in truth breeds all goodness as love, integrity, justice, discipline, unity and their kinds. As such any effort directed towards breaching the free flow of truth among the people will become the greatest setback we will be bound to suffer. Therefore, nurture, grow and propagate the truth heavens will not fall rather stand in defence of the very lone voice in the wilderness.
Long live Ebonyi State!!!
Stay safe!!
P. S. Nwokwu Esq
