by Edmund Obilo on Monday, November 28, 2011 at 2:10pm
LEADERSHIP PROBLEM IN NIGERIA – A CHALLENGE TO THE YOUTHA LECTURE DELIVERED BY EDMUND OBILO ON THE OCCASION OF THE IBADAN YOUTH EMPOWERMENT SUMMIT, ORGANISED BY THE FEDERATION OF IBADAN STUDENTS’ UNION (FISSU)
An old man once said that “the chicken has come home to roost” and I said “No the seven point agenda and due process have come to stay’’. The old man looked at me sternly and asked “of what essence is due process when the common man cannot put three square meals on his table?’’
I reminded him that; man shall not leave by bread alone, he told me to go and sit down that that was in the wilderness long time ago. That in the wilderness was only one man who was not interested in food and that the issue of man not eating bread does not arise here.
I looked at him as he walked away. After walking a distance he turned and smiled at me and said “son, go and get some bread” swiftly I reply again “No, man shall not leave by bread alone”
“Then go and fast for forty days and forty night” he replied and walked away.
What an old man, he has seen so many years and many disappointments. He did not understand why things went so bad.
That old man died in tears for his country.
Conscience is an open wound only truth can heal it.
When Obama won the election of 2008, some of my friends wanted to know my position on the impact the Obama government will have on Africa. This was my position;
What we see in other climes if emulated will heal our wounds, the wind of change that is blowing through the American continent, did not come as a wishful bliss, but derived from the conscience of the struggle. The man behind the movement was born into a perplex circumstances but lessons from the struggle helped shaped the horizon from which he defined the new American dream.
The applause of today is a victory for themselves, but a lesson for the timid people of the black continent, who have allowed weeds to grow on their heads.
It is not a lesson for leadership here, for they do not understand fairness in the distribution of resources. Leadership here will apply the negative and install the looser as the winner in other to continually bury the notion of good governance. So, you can see why, I did not pour champagne or roll out the drums to celebrate the new American dream.
It seems our conscience have been so debased that followership have lost track of the point where the journey started. Obama is for the American people not for Africans.
I don’t know the last time you walked on a lonely road with many curves, with trees standing on both sides. A road where birds render their songs with the passion of a music maker. That kind of road that reminds you of stories of ancient times. Walking on the road is walking on the womb of nature. The trees and their leaves smell like the Amanda in the heart of a snowy weather.
On this road I saw a young child walking warily with his eyes searching for the place she would find her desire. From her tired look it was obvious she had walked many miles before coming into the lonely road.
The lonely road was a, I saw her in the middle. I was shocked to see a child on that lonely road. She was relieved when she saw me. I took her hands and asked her where she thought she was going. She told me there was market on the road where she would get the things her parents could not provide for her. I told her there was no market where she was going. She said she if didn’t fine one, she would build one and start a trade.
I told her that no one will buy from her because no one comes to the road except those who have planted seeds in the heart of nature. I told her to follow me back to her parents so that we can negotiate a better path for her. She looked at me angrily and continued her journey. Then I screamed at her “you are going towards a violent river, it is dangerous”
She turned back and yelled at me “look, leave me alone, I need to go to that river and learn how to fish’’. “You might be drowned’’ “I will not be drowned, when the river rises, I will learn to swim” she replied. Whether I allowed her to continue her journey is not the issue, the issue is that the child wants to fend for herself because her parents cannot provide for her.
The issue is that the child has taken her destiny on palm.
This is frightening. Children are scattered round the country fighting for survival in the midst of plenty while men with bloated tummies sit there articulating policies that have made poverty a dominant factor in our pitiable economy.
The topic offers me an opportunity to express my mind on issues relating to the youths of Nigeria. Over the years the bench marks to monitor the development of Nigeria have not shown empirical evidences that the blinking tomorrow that many have talked about will not eventually go blind.
Nigeria is an aggregate of about 250 ethic nationalities with the supposed agenda of pushing for life abundance for the different groups.
Aggressive as the push has become, its benefits are channel through individual lines making it a survival of the fittest. In such an individualistic society, collective good becomes a tertiary issue having no link to the secondary that is meant for the different cartels or caucuses.
In any case the masses have found themselves on the bottom of the agenda of the leadership class, meaning that consideration for what goes to that class is by chance or absolute pity.
This is one of the ways to explain the gap between the political class and the governed.
Under this climate what will a budding mind do?
The child is born to grow. Growth under the burden of a nagging society creates confusion in the mind of the young one. He or she grows to realise that the country has not provided a platform to act as spring board for him.
Many come from families where the lamentations of Papa and Mama douse the feeling of a better tomorrow. Survival is the name of the game.
It must be played with adequate skills. As in games you have the best players and the worst of them. Some score points others don’t. When it becomes a game of sorrow, everybody kicks harder not minding the safety of the next man. That is where Nigeria has found itself.
Young Nigerians have plunged into the swampy water. Many are being submerged in the ensuing congestion, those still standing are waiting to take their pound of flesh. There are few of those who feel that fresh water should take the place of the swampy water. They have resolved to go all out for the sake of others, but the probability that of half of them will consumed by the well entrenched leadership class is 90%
There the fear lies!
Where then do you hinge the survival of the future, when a group has the power to incapacitate the goodness in the other classes of the society? This is a palpable fear, it is genuine!
In my country a youth can be the man that is 50 or 45 or even 40. If a 50years man is a youth in Nigeria, then he should wait till the age of 80 to choose a wife. Anyway, youth is the time of life between childhood and adulthood. An individual’s actual maturity may not correspond to their chronological age as immature individuals could exist at all ages. Probably the reason a 50years old man can be referred to as a youth.
Robert Kennedy defines the parameters to measure youthfulness:
- Not a time of life but a state of mind
- A temper of the will
- A quality of imagination
- A predominance of courage over timidity
- Appetite for adventure over life of ease.
According to the United Nations General Assembly, Youth are those persons between the ages of 15 and 24years. The World Bank is in agreement with the UN as regard the age range. The Commonwealth youth programme works with young people aged 15 – 29.
The qualities seen in youths as suggested by Kennedy lend credence to the wholesome and unwholesome attitudes of the class.
Most of the criminal acts in the society are carried out by young men and women who as a result of their imagination, appetite for adventure, and pre-dominance of courage have laid siege to the society. Youthful attributes have also triggered youthful positives as seen in our sport men and women, our brilliant students in the different institutions, in the many young professionals in our organizations.
I wake up in the morning, and walk along the part of struggle. I see always the Africa child with the heart of gold sleeping by the fire side wasting away.
The land has poured ice water on the child and the cold will kill her before the future opens it eyes. I can see the prison warder escorting the child to his permanent home in jail for stealing a bowl of food he needs for survival. He locks the prison door.
The child is a wanderer, she has no home.
The one who has one, lives in the room with many siblings and his talents becomes suffocated for lack of space. He runs from one point to the other on the dangerous terrain of honking vehicles, trading away the future. That is my African Child.
He will eventually retaliate and lives scars in the hearts of its victims.
He knows where the palace is
He will one day visit the king, the crown his target.
His eye balls will be hotter than fire
The guards will not stop him, he will break the chairs.
And his mother’s call ‘‘African child’’ will be heard around the hidden places.
He will only answer if he knows the undertaker that will bury him
Cold night!
What is obvious is that there are many young men and women around the world who cannot control their minds. These ones need leadership to tune them to the agenda of a purposeful society. If this is absent, that land should expect increase in armed robbery, prostitution, assassinations, fraud, Kidnapping etc. Considering the crime rate in Nigeria, the conclusion is that leadership has failed in curtailing the excesses of youthful minds.
Leadership through its in-action has continued to grow the negatives to the detriment of the society. This leadership cuts across the church, the mosque, the family and the political class. What then is leadership?
Leadership is a process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task. To lead, one must be there to allow for interaction. When the mother is not there, there is no leadership.
When the father is always on the road, the child is left to lead herself. When government chooses to absent itself there is no leadership, which is the reason when the so called follower calls, nobody listens. I mean ‘so called follower’ because, when the so called leader is not there who then are you following?
Leadership in a broad sense encapsulates many variables. Due to the topic we are looking at “Leadership Problem in Nigeria - a Challenge to the Youth’’, I will do a lot to restrict myself to political leadership.
In my collection of poems “Rhythm of Thoughts”. I wrote:
Heroes are not those who sit on donkeys
And begin to clap for themselves
They are those who run the horse race
And command the stars.
Leaders are not those who tie goats to themselves
And drag them as they go.
They are those who go into the den
And come out with the medal of faith
True leadership is traced to followership that does not keep mute during circumstances that can derail the ultimate goal. Leadership which traces its origin to a central caucus will only answer to few lords who could also be disappointed when power possesses the chosen one. Great leaders are not stooges. They are philosophers. They don’t only consider yesterday and today. They look at tomorrow; they look ahead and prepare bench marks for the growth of their people
It is pertinent to explore the essence of true leadership especially when power emanates from undemocratic methods. A true leader must listen even when his conviction identifies the truth. The only thing left is for that leader to apply his intelligence and devise a platform from which his conviction is best projected.
The defeat of the tenets of democracy by vague compromises is still the pain the society is gnashing its teeth to survive.
The devaluation of the collective decision of a people by a group means that the so called followers must look outside the box and understand how the hardship in the land is not only the fault of those swimming in opportunities.
Followership has resigned to fate by reason of its own failure. It takes men of good intension to hear the weak voices of the masses. Mathew Hassan Kukah in his book entitled witness to justice states:
We created most of our mess ourselves and we are the ones
who have to clean it up. Those who might wish to help us
are welcome, but in my view, they should come and find our
hands duly soiled from labour.
Kukah continues:
Nigeria remained trapped in a time warp. It has not succeeded
In extricating itself from the colonial trap that is suffused with
Inherited prejudices and distorted social histories.
The result is that in politics, economics, education, academia,
Religion and every area of our national life, these prejudices
continue to dog and shape the choices we make in our
relationship.
Nigeria is dancing on the brink because those who have had to the opportunity to navigate the ship of state have only stopped short of wrecking it. A country that got independence on a platter gold, got to the stage and forgot its lines. The memory loss has been condescending and devastating.
When in 1914, Lord Lugard amalgamated the Northern and Southern protectorates, the coalition of thoughts led to movements of independence in the new enclave. This was to define a single nationality. Some have said that the British advertised the assertion that their brave men crossed the deepest seas, swam the widest oceans, braved dysentery and malaria to come to Africa on civilising missions. That they came to help take the darkness out of the soul of the poor, uncultured and savage Africa.
Not minding this assertion; is the continent of Africa not ripe enough to lift itself above historic definitions and propound intensive economic, cultural, scientific and political visions?
The sense of nationalism that was triggered by groups like the National Congress of British West Africa (NCBWA), the Nigeria Youth Movement and later, Action Group (AG), National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) and the Northern Peoples Congress abated immediately power got into indigenous hands.
Ethnicity and religion became the strangulating factors that blinded the political elites in their efforts to dominate the political space. The NPC in the centre sought a domination of the Western Region by entering into alliance with a breakaway faction of the Action Group lead by Samuel Ladoke Akintola.
What the core Action Group saw as an unholy alliance was challenged in the 1965 election in the western region. The Nigeria National Alliance (NNA) led by the NPC after winning the controversial 1964 election through compromise must have been taken aback by the dimension of the violence witnessed in the aftermath of the flawed 1965 election in the Western Region.
The Action Group and its supporters took to the street in protest against the announced results. Today, ‘Operation Wetie’ is a lexicon in Nigeria’s political history. At this point the cup was full for governments of the first republic.
The Army struck in Jan 1960 to put hold to the adverse drifting of the country. Sir Tafawa Balewa the Prime Minister was killed. The premier of the Western Region Akintola was not spared by the coup plotters.
Ahmadu Bello in the North was also murdered. It was a bloody event that took the lives of most of the big players of the first republic.
Announcing the coup Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu said:
My dear country men, no citizen should have anything to fear, so
long as that citizen is law abiding and if that citizen has religiously
obeyed the native laws of the country and those set down in every
heart and conscience since Oct 1st 1960. Our enemies are the political
profiteers, the swindlers, the man in high and how places that seek
bribes and demand ten percent, those that seek to keep the country
divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers or
VIPS at least, the tribalist, nepotist, those that make the country look
big for nothing before the international circles, those that have
corrupted our society by their words and deeds…. We promise that
you will no more be ashamed to say that you are Nigerians.
The problems Nzeogwu identified in the coup speech of 1966 still linger. Successive governments sang the same song.
From Gowon to Murtala, to Obasanjo, to Shagari, it was the same story. Buhari swept the civilian government of Shagari out and arrested many of the political elites of the time.
Buhari’s government was consumed in August 1985, when Ibrahim Babagida struck. Babagida in his address to the country said:
Regrettably, it turned out that Major Gen Buhari was too rigid
And uncompromising in his attitude to issues of national significance.
Efforts to make him understand that a diverse polity like Nigeria
required recognition and appreciation of differences in both cultural
and individual perceptions, only served to aggravate these attitudes.
Major General Idiagbon was similarly inclined in that respect…..
A combination of these characteristics in the two most important
persons holding the nations offices became impossible to contend with.
This is one of the reasons Babagida adduced for sacking the Buhari government. He emphasized the importance of giving serious consideration to ethnic divide in a complex country. Call it Federal character, you will not be wrong, but I am strongly averred to a system that relegates merit in the guise of satisfying ethnic and religious dichotomies. We have practiced this system for sometime but has it staved off the constant cry of marginalisation by the different ethnic nationalities?
Back to IBB’s coup speech, he went on:
We have so far been subjected to a steady deterioration in the standard of living, an intolerable suffering by ordinary Nigerians have risen higher, scarcity of commodities has increased, hospitals still remain mere consulting clinics while educational institutions are on the brink of decay.
Did Babagida fulfill the above stated mission? Your answer might not be different from mine. Forced out in a military pressured fashion, Babagida hurriedly installed Ernest Shonekan as the Head of the Transition Government. Gen Sani Abacha was waiting in the wings. Before we knew it, Shoneken’s three months reign was cut short. This was in the heat of June 12 crises.
The freest and fairest election in history of Nigeria was annulled with no genuine reason. This was Abacha’s message in the early days of his administration:
We shall not allow any individual or group to hold this nation to
ransom and we will not tolerate acts capable is further damaging
our institutions whether public or private. We must break with the
traditional approach scratching only the surface for fear of upsetting
power and entrenched interests….. The colossal wastage of public
funds through mismanagement, fraud, embezzlement and other white
collar crimes have contributed in no small measure to the poor state
of our economy and social services.
No administration worth its name can allow this unacceptable situation to continue.
Didn’t the unacceptable situation continue?
Was the Abacha government worth its name?
I have gone through these speeches to show the consistent national agenda of Nigerian leaders. Unfulfilled promises!
This was Abubakar’s pattern of speech except that he fulfilled the aspect of handing over to a civilian government. Gen Olusegun Obasanjo came with the same logic and transferred power to Yar Adua who encapsulated it into a seven point Agenda. President Jonathan now sings the same song under a Transformation Agenda. For 51years Nigerian leaders with their drummers have been singing the same song. But the people are not dancing
The country is not moving at the right pace and in the right direction. Something is obviously wrong somewhere!
That thing is leadership.
Is it that Nigeria has been saddled with an intellectually hobbled leadership class?
Is that Nigeria is unlucky to have leaders without conscience or those who know what is right but choose to do the wrong things?
This is where we have to start, by answering the question lets take note:
Great obstacles make great leaders.
Sir Winston Churchill said:
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind
If you are the future, I challenge you with this quote.
Mahatma Gandhi posits:
We must become the change we want to see.
This is another challenge to the youth.
The words of Aratole Frances:
To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream,
not only plan but also believe.
Napoloen Bornapate said:
Ten people who speak make more noise than then thousand who
are silent.
Remember, government is nothing more than the combined force of society or the united power of the multitude for the peace, order, safety, good and happiness of the people.
Former American Ambassador to Nigeria in the book Nigeria Dancing on the Brink states:
Whether under the military or the civilians, the fundamental issue
is bad governances. The federal government’s economic policies
reflect the special interests of those who control it.
Accordingly, economic policy is focused on providing of short term
benefits to the heads of the patronage networks that dominate Nigerian governance to the deferment of long term economic development.
In the wake of the celebration of Oct 1st 1960 as Nigeria’s Independence Day was enthusiasm and great hope for the emergence of Africa as an influential bloc of world politics and economy.
Nigeria carried the hope, but the illusions of the years after are the dark horizons that have been defined in Somalia, Congo, Ethiopia and in the many hinterlands of the crawling countries of Africa.
As Nigerians are soberly consumed in the myriads of dashed expectations, at least less put our heads up and expect the best in the years to come.
The failure cannot be subjected to the many dreams of the past but in the reality that Africa must shed its sleeping toga and set sail on the swampy water it has continually dredged.
Nigeria is swimming in turbulent economic water with the generality of its people hoping that the future will help. There are empty boats in the water, with many standing on the shore watching the boats dancing to the tide.
Every citizen of this country should be ready to paddle; first you must enter the boat.
You cannot afford to sit down and look, anymore. Building a nation is the responsibility of all. Change can only come through a domestic conscious movement where the people are the determinants of the plans of government.
This can only happen when a people decide to exert themselves.
One thing is clear; corruption is behind Nigeria’s arrested development. It is the elephant that has comfortably sat on the head of this country.
It is corruption mostly supervised and implemented by political office holders and their collaborators. Corruption is a virus in Nigeria incubated in the laboratories of government. These laboratories are the Ministries, Departments and Agencies.
It therefore was a national relief when Obasanjo created the ICPC and EFCC to tackle the deadly corruption that will eventually cripple our country if the trend is not halted.
The ICPC and EFCC have been eventually consumed by a system that is anchored on political patronage and deceit.
Let’s look at today:
I start with my thought on Jonathan’s Transformation Agenda.
It sounds lyrical and well shaped in paper. But behind the idea is a loose philosophy of change which will hamper whatever effort the government is putting into reviving the sorry state of Nigeria’s economy.
A transformation that is not based on moral cleansing especially in the case of Nigeria is outright failure. A country that has lost its conscience must return to the part of truth, justice and integrity for it to make headway.
Jonathan’s Transformation Agenda to me is mostly based on policy formulation. One is not convinced that policy evaluation and implementation will be given centre stage.
A country that has been enmeshed in the kind of diabolic displays by its political forces must first work on the minds of its people before embarking on policy roller coaster.
It should be a matter of state policy to instill the sprint of nationalism and truthful patriotism for policies to translate into benefits for the people.
Nigeria has consistently performed abysmally in policy implementation because of the intense level of banditry in government.
With such a climate still pervasive, any talk of a transformational Agenda will be washed away by the corrosive onslaught of the gluttons in the corridors of power.
A close look at the present policy of the Jonathan administration reveals nothing new; it is a redrafting of previous policies. Yar Adua’ 7point Agenda is captured in Jonathan’s Transformational Agenda. Nigeria is not lacking in good policy idea, the problem is fundamental and the political will has not shown the courage to combat the raging corruption in Nigeria. If Mr. President is sincere with his transformation agenda, he must take seriously the fight against corruption.
He must be a general to confront it headlong, which is the reason he is the Commander –in- Chief of the Armed Forces.
It breaks one’s heart when government states that there is a cartel milking the nation dry in the petroleum sector, so must counter them by initiating a new price mechanism. On a good day, what do you do to such a cartel? You dislodge them, bring them to book.
This is the logic;
Gross opportunism has been the bane of political and economic development of Nigeria.
Most of those that assumed power in Nigeria were ill prepared for the job. By the time they discovered how rich the country is, in the midst of the state created poverty, they went on unwholesome spending sprees – transaction that were in no way in the interest of the people.
Leadership, in Nigeria must be democratically tinkered with, in the face of the many ills of the land. Ideas rule the world and the many opportunities that the system has foisted on the Nigeria people have proven not to be driven by true philosophy of governance.
This is where the problem lies. That is the reason corruption wears a bullet proof in Nigeria. That is the reason Nigeria is not working.
There are many salient paints behind the push for a national conference, whether sovereign or not. Nigeria is a country built on a strong ethnic foundation and disturbed by religion persuasions. There is the religion driven with the boldness that relegates conscience under the guise of protecting the God that is our protector. How can the protected or the one seeking for protection be fighting to protect the protector?
That is the reason someone in the name of god and ethnic bias hacks down the next man for self satisfaction and edification of the almighty. This is not tenable.
The Jos Crises is clear example of how inhuman the system has become; it is at the heart of the need to raise nationalist that will save the day.
Boko Haram, the Niger Delta, MASSOB are other examples of how a country cannot grow. Institutional corruption skewed to benefit of the oligarchs has assumed a severely malnourished dimension. It has raised clicks of politician that have what it takes to threaten the fabrics of the country.
The man paid to guarantee the security of the citizenry cannot safe guard himself. Armed robbers have taken over the streets. Economic policies are not working meaning that patriotism is now a strange word to many Nigerians.
Federal character and resource allocation continue to raise the heat beyond the roof. Some have said that presidential system of government is no longer appropriate.
To tackle the biggest challenges of nationhood many have called for a sovereign national conference to redefine the basics of co-operation between the different people that make up Nigeria.
President Goodluck Jonathan agrees that Nigerians can continue to talk, but no national conference will be convoked for the process of setting a new Agenda.
Nigeria continues to move firm one crises to another.
If Mr. President feels the solution is not in a national conference he has another three years to defrost the ethnic tension and sew a seed of national cohesion, without which Nigeria will continue to dance on the same spot.
The Economy
In Nigeria today, the federal government is the main driver of the economy against the sprint of federalism. The states have been weighed down by the bullish stance of the federal government in a system where the local government has been made a parastatal of the state government.
The actions of the bullies have created severe hardship in the land thus leading of the emergence of bullies in the Police, PHCN and many national agencies.
In the face of this, government continues to drum up new policies without finding cogent reasons why the precious ones failed. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, the finance minister in a presentation entitled “Transforming Nigeria, a Short to Medium Term Agenda, talked about the policies and programmes of the federal government targeted at transforming the critical sectors of the economy within a four year framework. Programmes woven around the Millennium Development goals and vision 20-2020.
In the presentation, Ngozi gave a graphic breakdown of how Nigeria’s economy fluctuates between burst and boom. Her analysis shows how Nigeria consumes all her earnings in times of prosperity and goes all out borrowing in times of shortfalls.
She said “Nigeria is spending faster than it is earning. She told the audiences of the 41st Annual Accountant Conference that this government is set to reverse the trend.
Ngozi again confirmed that the country’s recurrent expenditure as it stands today is in the region of 75% with about a paltry 25% left for capital expenditure.
According to her this pattern of spending is driven by consumption and of course corruption. Presently at 16.4% the domestic debt profile is alarming, with government having nothing to justify for the huge debt.
The target is to improve the country’s transparency index rating by at least 10 points by 2015.
Unending projections!
Using Ngozi’s words:
Impunity has to go on the part of government, impunity should not
Exist for anybody. Where it happens there should be punishment.
The truth is that the finance minister said nothing new. All have been said again and again. It’s the old practice of government preaching what it does not practice, except somebody is sure that this is a new dawn.
Anyway the indicators are yet to support the argument that this government to poised to rise above rhetoric and grandstanding.
The amounts borrowed in 2011 where used for what?
Why is government shying away from taking on the cartel that has held the petroleum sector in its throat?
There are many questions, begging for answers.
2012 is here and the medium term expenditure frame work is before the national Assembly. Can any good thing good come out of it?
Transformation hinged on the removal of subsidy to provide safety nets and drive poverty out of the land. I am a bit confused here.
Most rating except that from government indicate that Nigeria is negatively constant or experiencing a downward slide.
In the Ibrahim index of African Governance released last month, out of the 53 countries assessed, Nigeria was ranked 41st with a score of 41% out of 100. In the same ranking the top ten are Mauritius, Cape Verde, Botswana, Seychelles, South Africa, Namibia, Ghana, Lesotho, Tunisia and Egypt.
Even in terms of regional ranking, Nigeria is in the 13th position out of the 16 West African countries considered.
Human conflicts beget change
How the change is managed goes a long way in defining the future. The future holds the foundation of our hope. So the resolution of today’s conflict should be hinged on truth and justice. Conscience is a demand that will help us scale through the huddles and the traps we have set for ourselves.
As the days go let’s remember how some times the thought of the future reveals blurred images. This is a food for thought. To eat it, we must agree to play our roles in taking Nigeria to where it ought to be
Be strong
Be motivated
Dream great dreams
Work towards your dreams
Love your country
Knowledge is power
Recognise the potentials of others
Be fair
Learn to share
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You see, it’s like a sailor on a voyage to discover the sun in the sea. He wanted to know the reason the sea glitters.
He could not paddle in the prevalent storm, though he was not ready for that- he had a ship.
Days in the sea he felt the sun beaming its light from underneath the sea.
Since it was a journey into discovery his heart was made up, that the sun in the sea loved the sea passionately that it could not release its heat because the sea was cold.
His co-sailors told him that there was no sun in the sea. That the sun he sought was the sun in the sky splashing its light on the sea.
He told then that the sun he sought was far brighter than the sun in the sky. That if he found the sun, he would keep it and groom it into flashes that will brighten their lives when the adventure wears them out.
They abandoned the ship and left him alone in the sea.
He did not shiver, he didn’t bite an eyelid. He sailed the sheep onshore and lived his remaining life by the sea searching the light that flows like an emotional song.
He lived there for many years and died happily at a ripe age.
Many years later, some sailors went in search of this adventurer.
They found his heart smiling on the sea. They tried to capture the heart, but the flashes permeated their hearts and they melted and loved the beauty that roams everywhere.
Today those that seek love travels to that sea to allow the flashes from the sailor’s heart, to wet their appetite for an endless love. What a sailor, what he sought, his co sailors didn’t understand. Many years later his heart becomes the symbol of love.
Let love reign among us and wait and see what the future holds
Love for the land
Love for the people
Love for all that make our existence worthwhile is all we need,
Love!
