Ex-governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, is crying. He does not want
to hide his tears for our beloved country. His tears signal a pure heart
bemoaning Nigeria as a country that is grieving, with deprived hopes of
citizens, with losses everywhere, with lost love, in pain, wearing sadness,
but trying to re-build strength.
Nonetheless, the comfort which is expected to come to a person crying may
be elusive, because the ineffective approach of government is to pretend as
if it is not hearing Kalu’s loud voice or seeing his tears, which he has
always shown on his Saturdays Column in the Sun. The unenthusiastic affairs
in the country are giving Kalu headache, much concern that he wonders where
selfless services have gone to. He would tell the crop of our current
leaders to re-enact the country to be abreast with realities in the areas
of justice, equity and fair play.
Kalu’s tears are of constant quantity; his heart is in pain of how the
country has been evolving from right to left, with monumental series of
problems and troubles that do not make a country so blessed as Nigeria, to
grow. The sea of Kalu’s tears is on how Nigeria could attain transparent
development and become the envy of many countries, devoid of ethnic and
religious biases; the later have been the bane of the country from 1914 of
its amalgamation.
Why many Nigerians are still struggling to make ends meet no matter how
hard they try to surmount debauchery is a case that Kalu says has grown out
of hand, because of the perilous times Nigerians have come to be suffering
and are enduring in the name of democracy. His angst is that Nigerians are
suffering dissipation 53years of the country’s independence and 100years of
the amalgam known as Nigeria today from the coined Northern and Southern
protectorates.
It is not clear outside the matrix that the problem with Nigeria is
leadership, the reason the problems with Nigeria grow in torrents and from
the state of threatening to the threshold of not resolving majority of her
woes. Kalu would say that tribes and the numerous languages that
characterise the country are far from the problems, but bad and dishonest
leadership. To him, the later have been the sledge hammer threatening the
fabrics of peace and stability of our cherished country.
But in the face of these multifaceted problems with Nigeria, Kalu is not
giving up on hope that the country would get it right. As a hope-builder in
the country, especially to the younger ones, he loves telling the story as
it is in the country and does not intend to place the country as a bad one.
All that he feels would help us are for truth to be re-enacted and taken as
a crest that everybody pins on his or her heart.
Kalu is not just saying that the lack of truth amongst the leaders is the
problem with Nigeria; many who have come in contact with him can easily
tell, that he is one man who doesn’t say that he is travelling to Abidjan,
when what is on his mind is really Abuja. He sees anybody into this kind of
practice as one of those who have held Nigeria down as a country for
decades.
Even though that Kalu sees the reformation of the country’s policies to
doing things as not a tea-party, he is of the belief that whatever positive
Nigerians are yearning to happen in Nigeria can only happen, when they
embrace team-work and the spirit of sportsmanship. Kalu’s tears are that
individualism has taken over the once revered spirit of communalism. The
later, being where everybody was his or her brother’s keeper, and not the
brother’s kidnapper, as could be experienced today.
This is why the dude is crying, but his tears may be mistaken by many as
sign of weakness, which is not true. Kalu’s tears are sign of a man with
the love and progress of Nigeria and Nigerians at heart. Therefore, it is
the duty of all and sundry to support Kalu in re-addressing those things
that make him cry for Nigeria. His tears are that we have to be maximizing
the country’s potentialities. We have to help Kalu and move from
retrogression to progressivism. No man or woman remains a kid at 53years.
His admonishment is that Nigerians have to eschew contributing in some
compute to the problems of Nigeria.
Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu says that nobody will develop Nigeria, except Nigerians
do. He believes that things have to be corrected in order to avoid the
recurring distasteful past experiences. It is his belief that the leaders
should learn from developed democracies and how they were able to develop
their economies to a global acceptance. These are what have been causing
Kalu to cry; hence he is calling on the leaders to diversify the generation
of income from crude oil. He regrets if Nigeria has any rational
elucidation to tender as to the reason Malaysia, which learned about palm
oil from Nigeria, should be far ahead in the production of palm oil than
Nigeria.
