Odeyemi Sorphie

That is a weighty charge from the DG, and it lands like a drum at dusk. It is not enough to appear every four years, basket in hand, to harvest votes from the North on the soil of shallow tribal sentiment. A farmer who only reaps and never sows will one day find his barn empty and his field fallow. So I ask, Oga Waziri: who in the North has risen in profile because of your leadership? Which young man from Arewa owe their uplifting to your pull Mr. Abu? Can anyone in the 13 states of the core North say, "I became something of value because I followed him"? One tree cannot make a forest. Yet you have spent a lifetime as that lone tree, casting shade only upon yourself while a whole forest withered at your feet. True leadership is not one champion rising forever above the rest, using the multitude as a ladder and leaving his followers in the hopeless dust of perpetuity, where only his ambition counts. No Sir. True leadership is raising other leaders, strong enough that you may lean on their tall shoulders in the twilight of your years, like a proud father resting at his compound's gate. The one who plants for tomorrow is the one the evening remembers. Moses mentored Joshua. Socrates mentored Plato. Plato in turn mentored Aristotle. Elijah mentored Elisha. Mandela mentored Thabo Mbeki Lee Kuan Yew mentored Goh Chok Tong. Awolowo mentored Bola Ige, Jakande, Onabanjo, Osoba, Etc. And Asiwaju mentored Osinbajo, Fashola, Nuhu Ribadu, Femi Gbajabiamila, and others. Of those he raised, many became governors, some became ministers, hundreds became lawmakers and principal officers in parliament, and at least one rose to be Vice President. Alhaji, who did you raise? But the North has grown wise. A river that has been dammed by one man's greed will find its own course. No longer will Northerners be stooges to one man's eternally fruitless ambition, a man whose only mission in life is to wear the crown, even if every other man's vision is snuffed out along the way. Alhaji, you will learn and will learn the cruel way. The child who is carried on the back does not know how far the journey is. Even the North you counted as your birthright will slip through your fingers like harmattan dust. Both North and South have turned their faces from you, and you will wake to the reckoning in January. Good Evening Severally...