I am in the age bracket with Comrade Omoyele Sowore; a little bit older than him. Though I am not comfortable with Sowore’s tactic and strategy for the emancipation of the Nigerian people, I am solidly inspirited and inspired by Sowore’s doggedness and vision for Nigeria. Take or leave it, Omoyele Sowore will be one of the courageous forces to reckon with when our true story as Nigerians will be written. It will be truly written not by this hypothesis of hypocrisy and “wasted generation” but the next generation, and the ones yet unborn. Posterity will then asked us or our children and children’s children the roles we individually played in the revival of a troubled nation. Omoyele Sowore is a recalcitrant, audacious and dogged fighter!
Unbeknownst to some of us, Sowore represents the necessary trouble or what the late U.S. Senator called “good trouble” in a society bedeviled with ethnic jingoism, religious hypocrisy, deliberate ignorance, and sociopolitical problems. It takes two to tangle. It takes careful mindfulness to discern Omoyele Sowore’s vision and intention for Nigeria. And man shall be judged according to his intentions. When a man is not motivated by greed, avarice, selfishness, hate, resentment, hedonism, and other existential ephemeral that characterize the characters of most Nigerians, you are sure of unfettered and unconditional love for a man like Omoyele Sowore. Abuja and its security operatives should be careful in handling and castigating Sowore. Omoyele Sowore is one of the quintessential and audacious individuals helping to wake us all from our collective deep slumbers.
In a jiffy, some of you the natural haters and resenters can call this writer Asunrárà (a poet), it is a moniker I will gladly accept as I am one by His (God’s) grace! As an inquisitor, and a worshipper of the Muse, I don’t care if you are my enemy or friend, the moment I see or discern the goodness of man to humanity in you with no semblances of deceit or pretense, you are sure to count me inclusive in your muse. Also, I wouldn’t spare myself or anyone when erred in the process of playing our role in the development of humanity. Sowore is a good man, a quintessential human rights activist. We all need to encourage the best ones in us; not the self-serving, garrulous, and grandstanding ones among us.
Meanwhile, as Sowore celebrates his birthday, let’s admonish him to tread it softly, softly! Let’s tell him to go back to the drawing board to rejig and recalibrate his strategy to disrupting our foiled and dangerous political climate and terrains. Let’s prod him to correct his sociopolitical mistakes and fall in favorably. While Sowore is fighting a just cause, let him remember his family back home in his residency or habitation in New Jersey, the United States of America.
Omoyele Sowore deserves our moral support and ethical reprimand any time he errs or needs our patriotic scrutiny. He is one of us in the race to “take back” our beloved country from these men of yesterday. Sowore is a “disruptor” in our disruptive and failed political environment. To err is human, and to forgive and correct the one we love is not only divine, but it’s also brotherly and morally loving and instructive. Join me with other well-wishers to celebrate the indefatigable strongman—Omoyele Sowore as he clocks half of a century (50). Let’s wish Sho a gracious birthday and long life, and prosperity.
Again, Happy Birthday, Comrade Sho!
