The Great Speeches Of Odumegwu Emeka Ojukwu

A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and still be a forcible speaker, but without these, nothing will avail. Fluency, grace, and logical order are merely the decorative surfaces of an orator. Gen. Ojukwu was a man of eloquence; he knew how to electrify an audience. Sometimes I wonder why we don't listen to some voice of reason, especially those creating awareness for us, imploring us to see the danger that is approaching to engulf our being. Why do we look the other way around? Ignoring our purpose, our reason for being here in the world where lion and lamb think they can co-exist together, without us knowing that we do not belong to the same animal kingdom. Worse of all, our ignoring not to be proactive, mostly ignoring those that hated us with passion, and allowing them to take lives among us at their own chosen time, with impunity and without remorse. Some of our people are aching to wake-up from that deadly slumber that led us to be victims due to being in a trance since the guns went silent fifty years ago. Apart from the pains of genocide that lives with us, feelings of emptiness due to living alongside with deadly enemies, whose quest and sleepless night is to decimate and conquer us to the sea. Why do we never learn anything about them and let them know us more than we know ourselves? Ojukwu's speeches will help us come to terms with objective reasoning to determine the need for our freedom and generation to come. He inspired us, awakened us from that slumber in many ways. Unless some that decided to continue sleeping and wake no more. Pat Anjali once said: "When you are inspired... dormant forces, faculties, and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be." Our enemies realize that they can weaken us by attacking our oneness and sameness to enable them to divide and conquer us without firing a shot at us. We must know that no matter the degree of our resilience, there is an urgent need to resist the idea that makes us conform and fit in with every insult hull on us all the time, by our endemic "turning the other check." We must understand that Nigeria, as a country, is just an expression, and it does not exist. We should wake up and become the people aware of those things that impinge our reality and stop ignoring the enemy's quest to decimate us as circumstantial. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must act before it becomes too late for us. Ojukwu's speeches made it clear of what is necessary to change from not being aware of ourselves. To withdraw is not to run, and to stay with them is not a wise action, especially when there is more reason to fear than to hope. We must be proactive against our enemies and not look the other way just because we trade with them. Our freedom will be taken away into oblivion very soon, as we fold our hands and look the other way while we worship material things that cannot save us when the man with the sword comes. Maybe, we are waiting for the time when the hawks will carry the chicks away? The art of life is avoiding pain, and he who is the best pilot is he who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which he beset. There are moments when you feel free, moments when you have energy, moments when you have hope, but you can't rely on any of those things to see you through. Circumstances do that. It looks like our ears are made of plastics, worse of all, our allowing the death of common sense. Those among us who choose to sell their mother below the price of "peanut" should study the history of the people they are working for. To them, you are just a "willing tool," they will use you and kill you later when you have completed the deal in selling your mother and father to them...