RECONCILIATION

Reconciliation as a desirable option in our political engagements,  disappeared from our national discourse a long time ago. Since the halfhearted effort of the Oputa Panel came to naught, we have been at each other's throats. Things have gotten worse progressively and our divisions have taken the front burner in our national interactions. We can attribute this sad state of affairs to the inevitable bifurcation that partisan politics have imposed on us. But this necessity has turned minor cracks into gaping chasms under the watch of politicians who don't understand the meaning of statesmanship and strategic compromise, politicians who don't understand that you can't force a twenty-year  outcome out of an eight-year double tenure without laying a ten-year foundation. Now our entire future as a country has been reduced to what happens between now and 2023. We are moving closer to a national dénouement than ever before since the end of the tragic civil war. How can we step back from the brink. It seems that our leaders have lost the connections that would  enable a truly national conversation to take place. Everybody's going for broke in a brinkmanship context that no one can win and everybody stands to lose. I don't want to sound so pessimistic, but how can one hope when the very future of our country are the ones dying needlessly while septuagenarians describe a future they will not see.

Welcome

Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo was his name, and he wrote a collection of poems, which inspired the name of my page. This blog is my protest against darkness of all kinds, wherever it exists in the world. But I speak out of the delayed dawn of the Nigerian day, the seemingly perpetual night of our national existence. My blog is my own little candle, bravely glowing in this darkness waiting for the dawn to emerge. If you can't see by my light, please forgive me, this is all I've got.