Dele Farotimi is probably my cousin that I never met. He hails from Imesi Ile, my beloved hometown. In Imesi, everybody knows everybody; and everybody knows everybody who knows somebody. We are a closely knit community of cerebral men and women who quietly make marks in Yorubaland and Nigeria.
Dele speaks truth to power. What a beauty that is.
Dele, I heard, is in his 50s; definitely I am his older brother. I salute what he does, but he needs to be guided by what the Bible calls “the principal thing”, which is wisdom.
Dele may be speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves, or for those who are afraid to do so. But what I pray that he learns over time are two things.
1. People he is fighting are desperate and deluded breathing beings who are ready to fight back dirty. Many of them are mentally ill but don’t know it. When you fight loonies; you will lose many precious things
2. People he may be fighting for in Nigeria will hail him, and speak well about him now. But when the rubber meets the road on any freeway; the same people will begin to fight him. And then they will leave him in the dragnet of much troubles that may lead to dangerous turns of life. Plenteous are examples in Nigeria’s history.
I salute Dele on his fight. But he may need to be always guided by the words spoken by the wisest man that ever lived. His name is Solomon.
“There is time to be silent and a time to speak… a time for war, and a time for peace”. Ecclesiastes 3:7-8.
If he chooses to keep fighting the way he does; I will be on the altar of prayer for his sanity and safety.
May God grant my brother mammoth discernment in a treacherous territory. Amen!
#SMACKDOWN
