By Ola Pat
-----------------------------------------------------+++-----------------------------------------------------------Ola Pat is an experienced journalist with a bias for community reporting. He is the Assistant Editor at www.communemag.blogspot.com, a community magazine for Shomolu-Bariga, Gbagada and Environs.
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It’s all in our ways. Our students must pass or fail by writing examination, a purely academy endeavour. Anyone who failed this endeavour will be ably help along the way of ruin, academic damnation by the society. If you failed at your work, you will be kindly assisted to tumble down faster into the rubbles at the end of the hills. Fail in marriage and you will be cast into the leprosy camp. Why do we give so much to those who have too much? Why do we fail to gather at the side of those struggling not to tumble down? Why don't we give too much to those, who needed too much? Ladies and Gentlemen, our culture only support stars but ignored raising stars and abandoned fallen stars.
Indeed those who excel must be rewarded but couragement must be shower on those struggling for the pinnacle of their career and endeavour. We must demolish the gathering of failures, catch every falling comrade. A community is as strong as its weakest link; a comrade left behind may be forced by the enemy to divulge vital information. Yet we taught our kids that a junior adventurer never leaves a man behind. But we left behind tons of people who needed a different sand to flourish. Remember weeds are flowers too.
It is a collective failure that has continued to hunt us as a nation, stalk us as a people. Sir and ma, do I mentioned all the outcasts thrown out for their academic failure, those ostracized for their professional default without the provision for re-incorporation. Area boys today are the rejects of the society being nurture secretly by politicians. Al Magiri recruited by Boko Haram were the undesirables of our societal order. Our unforgiving and not standing up for the weak, our failure to fight for the right of others, got us here. Insecurity any where is insecurity to all. War in Syria is affecting Europe as refugees pour into Europe in their thousands. The disaster in North Africa is fueling the instability in Sudan and the entire West Africa and indeed the Boko Haram problem. We need to accept that between black and white, no and yes, bad and good is an island that is neither white nor black, a fence that is neither no nor yes, an action that is neither bad nor good, just a midway between.