A voice eases pains, tensions, frustrations and actions and where a voice is mute, like an earthquake, everything would seem normal for a long while but just when no one is expecting, it goes completely wrong even resulting in huge destruction of properties and lives.
 |
| Photo credit: google.com |
A voice lets go tension and pressure in the same way the ground tears apart to ease the earth of excess tension and pressure it had withheld for a very long time than it can bear, in a devastating earthquake.
The outcome is usually enormous and nearly irreparable and the little that can be done usually almost wipe the affected nation's treasury.
The people are traumatised and it takes a very long time for life to go back to normal in those region of the world.
This is the exact same way it is when the voices of people are taken away.
A brief expounding on “democracy”; it is a system of government in which the majority selects a person which they feel from their judgement of their character, have what it takes to do what is good for the nation.
Democracy is a system of government in which “everyone” rules the nation through a small number of worthy and trusted representatives.
It is a sort of government that everyone has the right to bring their suggestions, or lend their voices to everything that affects their nation, however good or bad that suggestion is.
Isn't it a beautiful system of government?
As a system of government that “everyone” rules a nation through “a few people – representatives”, the people rule with their “voices” and the representatives rule by making those “voices” into laws.
Or in other words, by executing the messages in those voices.
This is because the voice of the people is their will and their will is what the constituted authority swore to implement.
That is your daily job for the duration of your tenure as their representative or leader.
This is how bad it is! Lol
As a leader you are still a member of the people and not above or better than them, which means if you as a president, senator, governor or minister, take for instance, wants red but the people who voted you to represent them wants blue, their will must supersede your own, no matter how well you think of your red.
This is why you see on election day, even the president votes.
In this system, it is only the majority that have their way.
Simply put, it is the role or civil duty of the people to tell their leaders what to do and we'd certainly need two things to do that; a voice and a medium (platform).
I do not think any sort of regulation to the freedom of speech of people of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in what lawmakers are working to implement under the Hate Speech Bill or any negotiation of our freedom of expression in what they call Social Media Bill is a brilliant idea.
It is like telling a president or a governor not to exercise his constitutional responsibilities, just because one or two past leaders abused them.
If you ask me I'd say that our country is better now than when both “democracy” (government of freedom) and “social media” was inexistent.
Many reasonable campaigns have gone viral on social media by non partisan persons which have drawn local and international sympathy causing the government to act.
Take for instance the #BringBackOurGirls and #EndSARS campaign.
It is not just the politics of our country that has enjoyed the pros of the social media, entertainment and businesses have enjoyed great rewards from the online social environment as well.
Through social media stars have been born, cries have been heard, evils have been exposed and businesses have reached unimaginable distances on our earth.
For me, it is only thanks, thanks, thanks to the social media and the people that afford us such luxury.
Those people sincerely mean well for our democracy and future as a nation.
Nigeria must join the rest of the world to realize that the “voice” of the people is the real diamond.
It is only through the “voice” that the contents of the heart is known.
Please don't hang people for speaking their minds.
Instead, lets build a nation where there is nothing hateful to talk about.
A country with jobs for the people.
A country with security even for the poor man's home.
A country with good hospitals and regularly well paid medical staffs.
A country with adequate learning and research institutes.
Great airports, awesome businesses, gender equality and so on.
The way to succeed in democracy is to pay close attention to the voices of the majority.
Sometimes the voices would be pleasant, but many times it won't.
It is human nature to always complain because their wants are insatiable, lol.
Upon election, you accepted to be blamed for everything that goes wrong including the divorce of an Akwa Ibom man and his wife in a village in Ikot Ekpene, lol.
Leaders are selected on the grounds that they have the capacity and capability to make life easier and better.
When there is a deviation from these, frustrations would be aired, and the tone of such frustrations are a direct function of the individual's temperament and it varies from one man to another.
It is a sort of an-army-commander-soldier kinda thing!
When the commander gives an order, the soldier does not have to like it to go for it.
He has no choice!
The people are the commander of the president, while the president is the commander of the armed forces.
He is not to command the armed forces against the people, he is to command them in favour of the people.
An understanding of democracy only tells one thing; “power is with the people”.
Some of the most dangerous zones of the world is where the people don't have a voice.
Those are the red zones of our world.
Humans or any animal cannot live in silence in the presence of evil and oppression forever.
That was how the Nelson Mandelas, Martin Luther Kings Jr., Fela Anikulapo Kutis emerged.
Where there is no voice, the people continue to habour hate, pains, sufferings, victimizations, frustrations, oppressions, human right violations and gender based violence.
It burns within.
It wells up.
They struggle to keep it.
Even with serious pressure, they hold it back.
They fear to let it come out.
Then one day will come when without their own doing, they will rupture and erupt deadlier than a magnitude 9.6 earthquake.
Disastrous, Destructive and Fatal.
In a nutshell, the revolution we fear is not in the “speeches” of people but in their silence.
If we listen more to one another and analyse the messages in their voices in a scale of “good ideas” and “bad ideas” instead of “hate speech” and “love speech”. Then we implement the good ideas and democratically discard the bad ones without punishing anyone, we would achieve faster the greatness that we crave.
God bless Nigeria and everywhere else.
Contact Victor Cosmas Abia on;
Email: victorcosmas2003@gmail.com
Twitter @Victorcosmas
No comments:
Post a Comment