The Price of Freedom

The "Freedom, Peace, and Unity" quoted in the final bars of the Nigerian National Anthem are not some special dishes served alongside pepper soup and ogbono stew on a lavish banquet table prepared by some political party in Abuja.  Instead, all Nigerians, and Africans by extension, will soon discover that there is a high price to be paid for true freedom, peace and genuine unity to become a lasting legacy.

It is in this that we have surveyed the complex make-up of our nation, its fumbling attempts at democracy, and pungent poverty in the midst of wealth, to conclude that the greatest challenge that we face today is not the stangle-hold of corruption, the absence of foreign investors or the simmering boilers of religious differences, but the lack of value to human worth.

The Present Truth

Our citizens abroad know too well the disdain with which our green passport is treated as a direct result of the value our nation places on the lives and well-being of its people.  It is rightly observed by some that the cost of life has sunk to a depth that can only be matched by the dark days of slave trade and human sacrifices of the past.  Economic, social and democratic progress can only be recorded in a society after good value has been assigned to human worth.

Our agency, the Macedonian Initiative (a faith-based NGO), alongside many others, has for many years fought abuses and violations to human worth across the country in the hope that the primary institutions charged with upholding the value of human life would awake to their responsibilities.

A Sad Truth

The trends observed in governance, however, give us very little hope, and the recent atrocity committed in Gombe State on the 21st of March, 2007, confirms the depths to which we have sunk.