By Olalere Fagbola
When the bush was burning but not consumed,Moses in simply registered in the school of whyfore and thus began his call into Exodus.Distance is now shrinking hourly with amazing rapidity ,yet the global citizen is not de-schooling his mind away from the four walls of his parochial father’s Land Use Act .There was this Pharaoh who knew not Joseph,the Yesufu .He never cared to probe ancient wisdom that informed the landmark of Goshen Land Act .He rode roughshod over ancient paths like you and I are today approbating and reprobating all the same. He moved from xenophile to xenophobia full blast and thought he would sleep with his two eyes closed.We can have enough for our needs but not enough for our greed and land grabbing. But against whom are the laughter of the intellect ? Citizens of the Global Space Use Act yet clinging to the parochial land act of his forefathers. Where then lies our Jubilee theology when our craving is still owning the land in perpetuity ?The same reason why the internecine wars have not departed from our backyards regardless of the phoney sense of brotherliness we profess at every corridor .Why would we continue to trade off derivatives for depravity of mind embracing leprosy in place of pimples ? It would shock you to know the peace that passeth all understanding in the immigrant-friendliness Town planning Act when our fathers gave out the “SABO-GARIN” to Yorubawa and the Igbo ; ZANGO to Hausawa and the Fulanis; the OSHODI to Nupawa (Tapa-Tapa Ejinanan Babo)while OJA-OBA still retained its dignity and splendour. I sometimes fear for my own reason ,for when government fails to carry along foresight in its town planning acts, it fuels act of brigandage in its backyards. The same way we invite chaos on our major roads as we close all roads in the name of building flyovers across cities without building steady feeder roads while we attempt (in the face of population explosion)to ban okada riders who are simply obeying the law of social realism when we neither fix the roads nor encourage mass transit buses and taxi cabs .We stand to see how far and to what extent we can go with this Trojan horse policy of our Town planning. I go with the thought of my learned teacher,Modupe Oduyoye who in his Potent Speech did say :” A diviner (like a consultant physician) does not have to smash words on the ground ,for he knows too well the power of truth .When a truth teller stands before people who are stubbornly addicted to resistance to truth ,he does not cast his Pearls before swine .He resorts to the use of masal…Those who have ears to hear ,let them hear .”
OLALERE FAGBOLA.
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