I think that in life you must always know that there can be no gain without pain. I think that is the central lesson. However you may define it that people talk about my doggedness, about my tenacity, spirit of resistance and all that. All about that may be true, but it would be immodest on my part to place all of what happened on those values.
I think that the greatest strength that got me going throughout the struggle was really the irrepressible nature of the Ekiti people and I was particularly lucky because I had no reason to pay people to go to court. They would go and be there by 6.30, they would even tip the civil defence people if there are too many people inside the court so that they can just go in. They would do that, organize their own prayer sessions, they would go to the mountain top, everything.
So, when people talk about your courage, your boldness, I say to them, did I really have a choice? Could I have walked away with this kind of support base that the people are championing? For me, I think the lesson for me is that if you have the people really behind you, you can fight a thousand battles without looking back because you know that they will be there in defence of the truth.
I also think that it is important to believe that once you are clear about the correctness of your position as an individual there will be a lot of thorns on the way, there will be a lot of difficulties. There were days in the struggle that I could not boast of five thousand naira in my account in the course of the struggle and I had to depend on my wife for sorting out family challenges which is a problem we all face in everyday life.
But the impression has been created that when you are in political struggle most especially in Nigeria you must have some load of cash stashed away somewhere and all you do is just withdraw and then just throw it out. But it was never like that. The people who were with me they knew the kind of challenges we faced. The kind of difficulties we had to confront and how we managed to stay afloat in those difficult times. But I think that the most important thing is just be truthful to yourself and insist that anything that you cannot defend in public don’t just do it in private because the world is a small place and for this kind of struggle you are going to confront all sorts of contradictions.
Read More:http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/politics/2010/nov/15/politics-11-15-2010-001.htm
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