By Rotimi Fasan
The 21st day of September is celebrated around the world as World’s Peace Day,
a day dedicated to the promotion of all that is peaceful in human culture. The
world sure needs peace, lots of it in these times that try the souls of even
the most complacent.
If there was anything remarkable
in this year’s commemoration of World Peace Day, it would precisely be the
anomaly of talking about a day like this at a time when everything seems
programmed to upturn our peace of mind.
Going by the magnitude of social
and political upheavals around the world, anyone would be forgiven to think
there never was a more turbulent period in human history.
Without counting the disruptions
of our peace that come with many of those cataclysmic events we like to call
acts of God- freak storms and flooding, tsunamis, earthquakes and forest fires,
I say without even paying much attention to these kinds of disasters that cast
doubts on the capacity of man to manage if not control nature, we yet cannot
deny that the times we inhabit are among the most trying in human history.
In Nigeria, peace couldn’t have
been farther from our doorstep. While the economic and social problems mount by
the day, the little time that could be spent in relative quiet is taking up
with worry about the next place a bomb is likely to go off. Bomb throwing,
hostage taking and violent crimes have become such everyday occurrences that
they no longer strike many of us as unusual.
Such is the brutalisation of our
humanity that the worst criminalities elicit from us no more than a sad shake
of the head before we move on to the next in a line of unending tasks of daily
survival. Suicide bombers are on the rampage, while all economic indices
suggest that the future can only be worse.
The Nigerian labour movement has
been issuing notices of an all-out strike should government go ahead with its
planned increase of fuel and electricity tariffs.
Our President who was last week
at the UN General Assembly told the whole world how well we are coping with our
new status as a country under the possible ministration of Al Qaeda elements as
it is on the target list of suicide bombers. The President added another
dimension to the discourse of increasing cost of electricity tariff by telling
Nigerians that the wage bill of the PHCN workforce outstrips the revenue
generated by the parastatal).
Already huge sections of the
workforce in many of our states are on strike while others are getting set to
join the strike bandwagon.
From Osun State where medical
personnel have been on strike for months, only to be joined by civil servants
protesting against the state government’s non-implementation of the Federal
Government approved new minimum wage regime- to Osun, Oyo, Ondo and Ekiti, the
story is the same. Workers are rearing to take on government.
University teachers under the
aegis of the Academic Staff Union of Universities have also issued notice of a
warning strike that commenced on 26th- again because of government’s failure to
honour agreement it freely went into with these teachers who are no longer
content to await their reward in heaven.
Sometimes one wonders if Nigerian
workers can’t for once abandon their unionist toga and try to be reasonable.
Why can’t they see that the solution to poor pay is not asking for more Naira
of diminished value? One wonders if there isn’t something akin to deliberate
mischief in labour’s apparently too easy resort to strike as a means of
resolving industrial disputes.
But when you think of this you
also can’t forget that such strikes are usually preceded by months of unheeded
warnings to government. And what’s more? Can the workers be reasonable where
their so-called leaders continue to ‘live large’ on unearned wealth?
How can a civil servant who can’t
pay her daughter’s medical bill for a disease caused by the very fact of their
material poverty- how can such a person bear to hear the ill-digested platitude
of a state governor calling for cooperation between him and the mass of hungry
people around?
Who can afford to be ‘reasonable’
in the face of the mindless squandering of our resources that goes on among
alike elected and unelected Nigerians, so-called leaders and people’s
representatives, that control Abuja?
Why should ordinary Nigerians be
the ones to make sacrifices their leaders are loath to make? Many of these
politicians and top civil servants enjoy free medical and housing benefits.
They do not pay to fuel their cars nor do they pay for their phone calls. How
would they understand the pain of those who groan under the weight of
increasing utility bills of services not provided?
It’s getting close to two months
since PHCN provided electricity to the part of town in which I reside. The last
time they did it was for a criminal purpose. Then they switched on power for
about four hours, enough to enable them finish distributing their criminal
bills before plunging themselves (not us) in darkness.
Now Nigerians have learnt to
provide their own electricity even if by so doing we all go deaf with noises
from the noxious fumes-spitting contraptions we call generators. Power
from PHCN is reserved for standby purposes, for those moments when our
generators fail us or when, in order to save fuel, we switch on to PHCN when
the idle hands there choose to turn on power.
With all these troubles of daily
living, finding food to eat and paying bills in the midst of direct attacks by
those propagating one extremist view or another, there is no word for it but
that we are in troubled times, leading one to wonder if there would ever be
peace in our time.
IDENTIFICATION
Directions:
Choose the correct word that best describes the sentence.
21st
of September Natural Calamities Nigeria
Suicide
bombers Al Queida Union
___________
1. This is the date dedicated for “World Peace Day.”
___________
2.These are the acts of God?
___________
3. This is the place where peace is considered far from attaining Peace.
___________
4. This pertains to terrorist bombing carried
out by someone who does not hope to survive it.
___________ 5. An organization of
workers joined to protect their common interests and
improve their working conditions.
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