HON. ELDER LEKE ABEJIDE: THE CLOCK THAT TICKS HOPE IN YAGBA LAND

By Leke Idris
The Chairman, Okeoyi Students’ Union

The avoidable sacrifice of personal interests and pleasure for the public good is the eternal stamp of virtue. In a time when the numerous financial resources accrued from political offices are employed to provoke society’s standard of modesty, decency and morality has become an acceptable norm in Nigeria’s political landscape, Hon. Elder Leke Abejide, the honorable member representing Yagaba Federal Constituency presents himself as the clock on the walls of Yagba land that ticks hope even when it is far easier for him to join modern politicians who readily attract wide support.

Seeing the country’s economic hardship which has deprived many people a decent meal when starving and a pair of shoes for the decaying feet of a poor man, I asked with tears in my eyes, How many of our beautiful girls who could have been our future Dr. Folashade Yemi-Esan (the success people are talking about)but have dropped out of school to become adolescent mothers due to lack of financial means to chase their academic destinies? How many of our brilliant school boys have become hunters chasing rabbits and monkeys around in our forests because there were no hopes for a better future? How many students failed and lost the courage to further their education because they could not pay WAEC fees? But at the face of it all, with a free option of committing his resources to frivolous ventures without giving a damn as is common among Nigerian politicians, Hon. Leke Abejide chooses the most noble alternative. He puts his hands in his pocket saying “Our children must be educated!” This noble deed of yours remains the most radical of revolutions without any iota of doubt. Since education, you will agree with me, is not only the miracle for intellectual enlargement but also the most potent tool for the development and growth of a people.

This man is teaching every other persons who have the capacities to ignite hope in the ugly face of despair a lesson. He is teaching the world a very expensive lesson! He is teaching you a lesson. He is teaching me a lesson. He is teaching all of us a lesson that life is not worth living if not for the purpose of service and genuine love for humanity. And this is a virtue all and sundry must covet.

Dear Elder Leke Abejide, I offer you my chiefest assurance that your numerous educational outreaches will bring Yagba people victory over poverty. When this happens your name must have been indelibly written in gold. Education makes all the obvious differences among men. I therefore charge you not to discontinue in your usual tradition. You are touching humanity in the most positive ways possible and I am certain that generations yet unborn will trace their emancipation from the bondage of poverty to your name.
I pray that the threads your hands have weaved, may they not fray. Amen.

Idrisleke0@gmail.com