18 Oct 2007 |
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Aminu Safana is dead we need not rehash the details of his death and the sycophants have been unleashed feeding the media with platitudes about the “great parliamentarian”, reading through the eulogies of our politicians it was business as usual even with death as our politicians sang his greatness and talked about his great contribution to our democracy. As usual, the usual suspects have flown to Kastina to bury him and pay homage, our president shall also perform his rites, they shall tell us what a great man he was and how he contributed to pulling the nation forward and then everyone shall return to their individual pursuits. No one speaks ill of the dead in Nigeria but no one also keeps mum about the dead, rather than hold our peace Nigerians would take our dishonesty even to the grave and heap false platitudes on the dead, giving the dead praise we never attributed to them when they were alive, just as it was with Enwerem, alive he was a leper but in death he immediately became the symbol of everything great. I refuse to join the band of sycophants, even at the risk of saying ill about the dead. Reading through some of the platitudes some House members heaped on the Late Safana I could not but recoil, one had the temerity to say Safana had greatly advanced health care in Nigeria, I asked myself which health care? Which health care I asked again? The comatose Nigerian health system? Does that member of the house know where Nigeria stands in infant mortality alone? That we rank 13th worldwide? That we loose 110 out of every 1000 Nigerian child at birth and we loose 188 out of every 1000 Nigerian child before the age of 5? That we are one of the factors responsible for polio resurgence worldwide when we chose to play religion against reason and sound judgment? That out community health system is at breakpoint? That healthcare delivery to rural areas is non-existent? That our teaching hospitals are shadows of what teaching hospitals should be and our doctors and nurses are fleeing in droves to Europe, America, South Africa and Saudi Arabia due to the stifling conditions here? I know Safana did not cause all these but I stand to be enlightened as to what ground breaking legislation the late parliamentarian was involved in that greatly impacted the health sector. The sycophants tell us that the late Safana was a peace broker, that he was a bridge builder, and I recoil at their blatant falsehood even in the eye of overwhelming evidence contrary to their claim. The last hours of the man tells us nothing about his “peace brokering” or “bridge building”, what we saw was Safana screaming on top of his lungs, shouting and backing a divisive horse in the house as part of the sordid politics played in the house. We can also conclude that if Safana had not died we would have seen another round of fist throwing, “gidigbo” and shameless display by men and women who are parents but lack every ounce of maturity. So when they tell us these bull about the late Safana being a peaceful man we beg to differ, because it is shocking that a man with his medical background knowing his medical condition would still put himself at risk by getting involved in a classless shouting match that would not have solved anything but added more chaos to a fast degenerating situation, we beg to differ because the ways of peacemakers are completely opposite to what Safana did on the day he died. Our culture fosters this re-invention of men at their death either because we seek favorable judgment of men when we die or out of our sheer dishonesty and by this we continue to add to the social decay plaguing our nation. From the politics of the late Safana, his politics leaves little to praise him for. We do not know him personally but from the platform of politics which is our platform to evaluate him we would rather not heap praise on him at death, rather we would be silent. For a man elected through democratic channels to be a vigorous defender of democratic ideals but supported the tenure extension of political office holders, an extension that bore no advantage to the suffering populace but would have entrenched dictatorship and benefited our ravaging political class does not compel us to give him laurels in death. Or a man educated in fine institutions as he was and could back an alleged thieving beautician, or saw no reason why she could not preside over the adjudication of a case against her and chose to ignore the state of his health and shouts himself to his death does not reckon in the books of good judgment as a wise man with integrity. Rather he can be aptly described as a true contemporary Nigerian politician, a true and devout PDP member and an adherent of the politics that stifles development in Nigeria. Death is the road every mortal must walk, it is the great leveler, it is the fate that joins the rich and the poor, the strong and the mighty, it is our eventual end and what we fail to reckon is that dying is as important as living because there is great wisdom in living everyday as if it were our last. Truth be told Safana did not die a good death, I refer not to the physical circumstance of his death rather that he died the way he lived- out of touch with those he was meant to serve. To bolster the fact that he died for nothing, hours after his death the PDP made a volte-face, coming to their senses that it was not politic for the speaker to have sat over judgment in her own case, it was sad that such realization came only after Safana’s death. He became a victim of the politics he played, a victim of the band he kept, even in death the stench of the fraud he belongs to is still alive in the platitudes his gang heaps over him in death. What shall he get- well a minute of silence here and there and the circus resumes, what has he lost- he leaves eight children fatherless and defenseless along with their mother and he has lost the opportunity to etch his name with greatness. One does not expect integrity from this crop of politicians, so I would be foolish to expect that there shall be lessons learned from the death of Safana. The crux of the matter still remains that the most honorable way is to pursue integrity at all times. One does not deny any individual the right to chose camps even if those camps oppose popular wishes, Safana had the right to choose his camp in the debate but with such blatant corruption evident to all it was certain he did not die defending the truth. The facts are set as death, we hope that the political class would see that at death just like Safana they shall not take away the spoils but they shall leave their name and actions to the evaluation of the living, that false platitudes do not change the facts and no epitaph can make a name brand new so the best course would be to engrave their names in actually changing positively the lives of others so that in the same vein when people say of Awolowo that he was a resourceful leader, of Zik that he was a true nationalist, of Aminu Kano that he was a true progressive, of Tai Solarin that he was a great educator, of Saro-Wiwa that he was a true activist for change and justice we would all nod our heads in agreement irrespective of their individual imperfections.
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