OPINION: THE BAMBOO AND THE MIGHTY IROKO (A message to my political family)
THE BAMBOO AND THE MIGHTY IROKO
(A message to my political family)
The Iroko tree is by all means a big tree.
Strong and sturdy.
Firmly rooted and invincible.
Passersby look at it in awe thinking, “for a tree this
is massive”
So much is the awe surrounding the Iroko that a myth
is weaved around it about a spirit called “Oluwere”, famed to have immense
powers over fertility and productivity.
When a man is personified as Iroko, he is a man of no
mean stature, physically, socially, politically and/or financially.
At the river side grows the bamboo.
Slim, hollow pipes.
So weak looking one could attempt breaking it with
bare hands.
One day came a great storm. A tempestuous gust of
wind.
The Iroko tree was sore troubled.
It’s root shook in the soil. The ground gave way and
spewed forth the root.
The great Iroko tree fell.
Down by the riverside the storm went raging. The slim
strands of bamboo got in the way.
The storm bludgeoned the bamboo.
Together they stood.
Bent double, they still withstood the onslaught and came
back up.
Several people came looking when the storm was over,
to find the mighty Iroko tree fallen and the teeny bamboo standing.
Then a white-haired sage nearby, a man of years and
immense wisdom reasoned out loud to them and said,
“THE STRONG IROKO TREE WAS STANDING ALONE WHILE THE
WEAK BAMBOOS WERE A BUNCH.”
The wise man’s admonitions minister to my political
family today. It also ministers to all politicians but I never wish our brethren
on the other side of the political divide take heed.
No matter how strong we are as individuals, or how
much we are held in awe by well-wishers and ill-wishers, we are like the Iroko
tree. We may even arrogate a winning spirit around ourselves, like Oluwere, that
can make or mar the fate of others.
But the wind will come when it will. Even Oluwere has
no power over the whirlwind.
The political whirlwind usually comes hard close to an
election.
It is in the air.
Let the powers that be see themselves like the bonded
bamboo, rather than might Irokos.
Standing together as the wind rages, together united
against the wind, like the bamboo, they would not fall.
They should not see the bamboo mentality as weakness,
but see the Iroko mightiness as weakness when trouble comes.
The storm is here. We are bending double, sore troubled. There’s only one way to survive this hurricane. Stand together like the bamboo.
So that by February/march 2023 when the the
hurly-burly is over, we will be found UPSTANDING, SHOULDER HIGH.
If we must truly rescue the nation Nigeria from the
abyss, we must stand together and forget our individual strengths and bond
together with a collective capability.
The people look up to us.
History beckons at us.
Posterity waits by the side, ready to judge.
TOGETHER, ONLY TOGETHER, CAN WE MAKE NIGERIA
WORK AGAIN.
Femi Ladapo (Femolad) writes from Ibadan, Oyo State.
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