Fighting for Peace

I had intended to write about the hype surrounding Finance Minister and "Coordinating Minister for the Economy" Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala's nomination to replace Robert Zoellick as President of the World Bank Group.

The fact is, if Barrack Obama allowed anyone other than an American hold that job, his reelection prospects would dim. Similarly, the countries of the European Union, while feeling obliged to pretend otherwise, are keen to maintain their grip on the IMF (and can barely disguise their preference for Mr Obama's reelection) and so were always going to give their votes to the USA (in exchange for which the USA will continue to vote for the EU choice for IMF boss).

I am not really sure why we Nigerians (or more properly President Goodluck Jonathan) decided to distract ourselves with this bit of meaningless symbolism when we have practical, real world problems we are still avoiding rather than resolving.

Speaking of which, you might want to read this article by Carmen McCain in this weekend's edition of the Weekly Trust. An excerpt of the first half of the first paragraph:

During the November 2008 crisis in Jos, an old Muslim man went to sit on the steps of the neighborhood Assemblies of God church in Kwararafa. Four times, he turned away angry youth who wanted to burn the church. The fifth time, the youth attacked him. Two weeks later he died of his wounds. Before he died, he told his wife, “You tell Pastor that he shouldn’t worry. For what I have done for the church is for the sake of peace and the neighborhood and I love him very well.” Thus goes one of the first stories found in Fighting for Peace: Learning from the Peace Heroes Among Us by Reverend Yakubu Pam and Dr. Katrina A. Korb.

We spend a lot of time glorifying and hero-worshipping people who don't actually do anything worthy of the praise. And we spend a lot of time talking as if the worst of our number are the true representation of who we are as Nigerians. I mean, it is bad enough that most of the world (including our fellow Africans) negatively stereotype, so why do we pile on and negatively stereotype ourselves? Why do we do that?

In my opinion, the unnamed old man referenced in the paragraph above is an exemplar of the best of us, of who most of us are deep in our hearts even if we don't always have the courage to act on our convictions.

You know what is sad? That old man's sacrifice is entirely unknown to the majority of Nigerians, busy as we are discussing the World Bank Presidency prospects of someone who was never going to be World Bank President.

That old man should get a posthumous national award. He and everyone else whose story is told in that book.

But its not going to happen, is it?