I was told about this song few days ago and I’ve been listening to it relentlessly. It was rendered by John Legend at the Democratic National Convention for the recent Presidential Elections. It inspires me per time. It motivates me and sets me on fire.
I haven’t been able to write post for the past few days not because of lack of desire or lack of content but because of a heaviness a just couldn’t lift. I have been reading “Long walk to freedom” by Nelson Mandela and I regularly get goose pimples as I read and discover the way destiny unfolded for him. He didn’t plan to become the president of South Africa but his beliefs about how africans were treated against how they should be treated drove him to fight for equality between white and black in South Africa and ended in his becoming president of the Nation.
Mandela was the son of a chief and was being groomed to become a high chief in his native land. In fact, the reason education was important for him then was because as a respected adviser to the regent which was his career path, he needed to be educated so he could contribute from an enlightened perspective to the matters of council.
Education exposed him to the reality of racism and unfair governance in his country and sucked him deeper and deeper into the fight for liberation. One way or another, he gave up his rights as a chief in the making, as the ward of a regent and even as a lawyer to fight for the emancipation of his people.
He could no longer wake and sleep in peace knowing that with every turn of the day africans (the original owners of the land) were living as slaves in their own country in bondage to the white man. He suffered for his beliefs. His family paid for his beliefs. He eventually went to prison for his fight against enslavement and spent almost 3 decades behind bars.
He was ready to die to see South Africa free of Apartheid. He wouldn’t live free if his people were not free. He saw the that the future was now (while he was alive). He was willing to sacrifice his present even though he was aware of the past so he could secure the future.
He is now the most influential man alive and the future of native South Africans is secure.
Nigerians!!! Let’s wake up to the present so we can face the future and deliver it. The future was yesterday and we are already late, John Legend sang. Are you out there? Can you hear me? If you can, let’s join our hands together and set our faces toward the future while we employ our present with the benefit of our past to DELIVER THE FUTURE for Nigeria.
The country is far, very far from its destination and slavery, slavery by our own is holding forte. We need to be ready to break free from form this bondage. We need to become informed followers so we can elect responsible leaders. We need to become impossible to enslave any longer. We need to become difficult to rule but easy to govern.
IF YOU ARE OUT THERE…….
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