by Lawrence Onochie
“My primary preoccupation was to give every citizen a stake in the country and its future” Lee Kuan Yew
It is said that when you open your mouth to speak you tell the world who you are. Many great leaders all through history have met their waterloo not because of the strength of the opposition but because of the sycophancy of the thoughtless and shortsighted supporters who couldn’t see past the immediate temporary gains into a future of avoidable negative backlash. Our biggest challenge, as a country, right now is not necessarily the lopsided decisions that has been made by our President, so far, but the rattling and chanting of those who say “it doesn’t matter if the government is sectionalized as long as they give us result”.
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Such degree of twisted thinking is unbelievable. It would be convenient for everyone to submit to that position after all we want result at all cost, even if the result creates bigger and more destructive problem for our children and our children’s’ children as long as we are not there to experience it. That is the height of self-centeredness.
What kind of LEGACY would we be leaving behind? A legacy of discrimination, a legacy of inferiority, a legacy of oppressive rule, a legacy of domination and servitude. Among the people who helped to create the monster called Hitler were Jews, sycophants who wanted change at all cost who couldn’t see past immediate benefits. Of course they got it!
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It is often said that we learn best from our experience, but we never directly experience the consequences of many of our most important decisions. We tend to think that cause and effect will be relatively near to one another, but sometimes they can be two or more generations apart. Consequently when faced with a problem, it is the ‘solutions’ that are close by, that are most convenient and have more immediate benefits that we focus on.
We often are too shortsighted to think through and find out how our choices and decisions would affect a generation after us and the kind of problem our children would be dealing with because of our myopia. THINK!
Lawrence Onochie is senior pastor of The Kings Heritage and the author of several books including, Against All Odds. He is also Chief Executive Officer of Laurel Noche Consulting, a human development training organisation. He is a former missions director of House On The Rock, Lagos. Connect with him on Facebook.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
