Many people are sitting down and allowing some vested interests to be gaslighting them against a man, Nasir El-Rufai, whose only sin is to be intelligently and intellectually gifted by God, to be conscious of it and using it without fear, favor or pandering to advance the cause of society including theirs.
Some of my brethren from Southern Kaduna, with all due respect and appreciation of their documented long standing issues and dynamics, are buying and swallowing, hook, line and sinker, the narratives from their new found lovers that El-Rufai is demonic and evil, without pondering over their fate over history and time, even long before Nasir El-Rufai appeared on the scene, and placing them side by side to determine factually and objectively, how truly worse or better El-Rufai was for their cause and fate.
I do not want to mention some of my APC brethren to whom El-Rufai has suddenly transformed from hero to villain, simply because he told us some hard truths about our party; truths which most of us know and some have equally voiced out.
Tragically, some say, not unexpectedly, some of my brethren from the South East, many of whom have never crossed River Niger to the North, have already jumped in the fray and joined in the bandwagon of 'he hates Igbos and Christians' 'El-Rufai is evil', etc., much the same way they did to Buhari, without any sensible proof and without pondering over the motive of those orchestrating and feeding them such narrative. No lesson having been learnt.
For a man whose watch word as Minister for FCT was excellence. Or did anyone hear that he favored any particular tribe or religion while he went about restoring the Abuja masterplan as its Minister? I have been in the FCT and I know firsthand. Put your ears to the ground, beyond the hype and the noise and hear stories about today.
A man who as Governor of the cosmopolitan Kaduna state engaged Nigerians - Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa, Christian and Muslim and men and women alike, so long as they could add value to his governance of the state. Including many of those joining betrayers and ungrateful elements to castigate him today. I was not one of them, but I can't in good conscience pretend that I did not know.
A man who inspite of his limitations as chief security officer of the state on paper, understood that security was paramount to delivering his mandate for the people who elected him and who God temporarily placed him in authority over. He was tough on every part, North and South alike, when need was. For him, criminality was criminality, no matter who orchestrated it.
That is not to say that he was a saint or made no mistakes, but he who is a saint among us and of no sin, should cast the first stone. Compare and contrast your own state and state Governor with Mallam Nasir El-Rufai’s Kaduna state and El-Rufai as a Governor.
Unfortunately, the increasing tragedy of our politics today, is that it blurs the lines between common sense and nonsense, truth and lies, friends and frenemies and reality and illusions; making heroes out of villains and vice versa, making many to defend who and what they like and not what is right, and making people to embrace those they should sensibly avoid like a plague and to hate those they should ordinarily love and vice versa.
Sadly, many of our leaders, or better put herders, have perfected the art of manipulation, using different tools, including divide and rule, lies, half truths and propaganda, weaponising hunger, poverty and 'kabu-kabu' education, which instead of liberating the mind, rather imprisons it and instead of building courage and self confidence, accentuates timidity and cowardice, to keep the citizens hostage, just so they can consolidate their grip on power.
In the end, we remain in an endless and vicious cycle of ignorance, hate, division, bitterness, disappointment, lamentations, underdevelopment, poverty and pain.
I sincerely pray that God would grant wisdom to anyone who truly desires it and open the eyes and minds of men and women to the true truth. Not the manipulated truth.
In the end, I know one thing for a certainty, evil strategies shall fail and truth shall always overtake lies.
#GodBlessNigeria
©️ Uche Diala
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Opinion