This morning I received a call from that beautiful woman in Onitsha who birthed me. Characteristically I noted that her background was quiet, unusual for a thursday morning. The assertion is consequent upon the fact that my mother is a primary school teacher and so should be in school at such time which in extension meant that her background had no business being serene. So I asked for her location and she said home. I was immediately concerned for several reasons one of which is that my mother is not one to disregard her duties. If she was home, I thought, then she must be unwell.
Lo and Behold she was hale and hearty. Then I received the shocker, the very reason why I bothered to transmit these thoughts onto this network 'she was home because teachers were directed to engage in prayers against the spirit of death'. It happened that recently a number of teachers had died.
I was appalled. I was flabbergasted. we habitate a country with a very low life expectancy, where conditions at the time of last observation and subsequent calculation of factors necessary in reaching such factual conclusions were quite better than it is now (I am not speaking about a lot of time mind you). We live in a country where people are stressed to the very limit of their capacity, were income fails woefully in meeting the pressures of necessities, were our leaders partake in disbursing the commonwealth at will amongt the inner circle of charlatans, where syncophants hold sway. The health sector is in shambles.
the common man has not the requirement to obtain quality care, he is sick but cannot buy medication, he needs regular medical attention but cannot afford it. He is unhappy at home also for his children's school fees must be paid, the children fed, his rent paid. His local vigilante levy lies waiting, his wife's need if such applies waits in ambush, his extended family crouches to spring: a distant cousin who needs a place to stay, an in-law who just got admitted to the university. He is a man beseiged.
And there is no help in sight to break this siege, no resources to withstand it either. He is in fact, for all intents and purposes, a man who should be without hope. Where is the hope? When corruption riddles our government, when the national cake is an outdated colloquim, when his salary increases at a rate far below the rate of inflation.
Then in addition to all these, this very government resort to insulting his sensibilities, to bastardazing his civility. He is dying but he is told that his death is unnatural, that stress and hardship should nourish him and not accomplish the opposite. The notion is imposed upon him that the 'spirit of death' runs rampage, that the spiritual realm holds court over his life. He must then PRAY.
Ladies and gentle its high time we affirmed the state of your mind. It time you extricate yourself from the imposition of this darkness and the restriction of your mind matter to the foulest corners of primitivity. Mediocrity must be combatted, it must be excised and discarded. Rise above the facade of simple minded bigotry projected by our leaders in their bid to restrict you to a pedestrian view. Be informed that they are aware of their actions, that they count on your idiocy and your susceptibility to their manipulative entreaties.
Teachers should you pray, pray not that the 'spirit of death' is crushed by powers of the MAKER. NO! Pray that it may be unleashed on your government. For with their demise we may yet have peace, we may yet BEHOLD what has been hidden. With their demise, you may have life.