Beyond
the rhetoric of intellectual assertion, the truth remains undeniably that
Lunguda nation is the most richest extract in the state, yet its inhabitants
still paradoxically lives on a lonely island of destitution and abject poverty
with hardscrabble background despite the vast ocean of un-harness and un-tap
resources and material prosperity that is wallowing within their armpits.
To
say that Lunguda people are literally living and sleeping on unrealized money
that may sound as a hyperbole garnish with resounding embellishment but
nonetheless is the truth, even the white men who came to Lunguda land some
years back as field researchers back up my line of thought by attesting that
substantial part of the lunguda folks are living below poverty line despite the
resources in the land which is capable of transforming the chiefdom into Mecca
for tourist, and I guess is what is enticing and alluring bunch of business
tycoons and cabals from several quarters to develop interest on the land.
With
this damning and heart piercing discovery of how people who are suppose to live
in excess wealth in the land that is literally flowing with honey and milk but
ironically swimming in the muddy waters of impoverishment and impecuniousness
it may likely leave myopic thinkers blowing whistle in the air on the dwarf
growth of the land but I belief that situation analysts who see yesteryears and
today will feel tempted to conclude that lack of rallying point and unity among
the people of the lunguda community is what set the nation on the pedestal of
stagnation and developmental retrogression.
It
is still green in the minds of Lunguda people how their nation was crippled by
the manacles of disunity during the leadership tussle between Guyuk and
Shelleng over the chairmanship of the local government when the two regions
were brought together to coexist under one local government, the longuda people
had to suffer shame and defeat due to lack of unity. After Lunguda people
suffer several blows by today’s neighboring local government as a result of its
disunity, Lunguda community has to come together under the canopy and platform
of Lunguda development association to collectively hew out of the mountain of
disgrace a stone of hope that set the community on the part of lasting development.
To
add to my apprehension, Lunguda development association was the only existing
platform that unites the people and offers better opportunity for charting the
course of the Longuda community, the platform was the only thriving voice of
Longuda nation. The local government recorded a lot of achievements through the
same platform. The Guyuk durbah roundabout, the uncompleted stadium which was
initially intended to serve as the Longuda cultural centre is all the products
of the lunguda development association in question.
Going
down memory lane, one will discover that since when lunguda people collectively
come together to stand as one entity on the platform of Lunguda development
association there was mushroom development and they were having identical voice
on issues that impinges on their community until when the said elders choose to
rape the psyche of their kinsmen by fraudulently sharing among themselves resources
realized at the fund raising launching of April 11, 1982 that ideally meant for
building community cultural centre and community maternity hospital. This was
the action that finally buried the Lunguda development association and it never
resurrected to this point. It was this intellectual duping by the Lunguda
elders that further tore the unity of the people apart and created perpetual
hatred for the elites and resistance to any community mobilization and
development efforts.
Aside
with the hullabaloo of how our elders use Lunguda development association to
destroy unity of its kinsmen in early 80s, Lunguda analysts like me are feeling
tempted to ask whereabouts of the resources and money gathered during the
Lunguda annual cultural festival that was held between 28-30 May, 2009 at the
Dishon Dansanda square which happens to be the last cultural festival my
kinsmen hosted in the locality. Those who still have the annals of the said
antecedent green in their mind will testify that on the second day of the
festival 29 May, 2009 at exactly 6:30 to 7:00 PM the programme was donation!
Donation!! Donation!!! And people both present and absent contributed not less
than five million (N5000000) for community development but today the money is
nowhere to be found; a situation which force many Lunguda elites with clean
hands to swear that they will never contribute anything in the development of
lunguda land either present or in the future, no wonder the arrangement for
this year cultural festival remain nothing but a night mare.
It
is actually laughable and funny, yet painful to note that today in Lunguda land
there is no unifying platform for coordinating decisions and interest of the
populace not to talk of opinion leaders who can stand for the community. It is
still boiling in the heart of Lunguda race how Lunguda elders and interest
youths nearly exchange blows over alleged issue of selling part of lunguda land
to Dangote; issue that is ordinarily supposed to be sought out amicably without
fracas but later degenerated to what can be literally define as a verbal combat
among the elders simply because of disunity and lack of unifying platform for
coordinating decisions that impinges on the community.
Today
in Lunguda land we don’t have single or identical voice when it comes to
decision making that have effects on the community unlike other societies that
always speak one language with single voice when it comes to issues that have
impact on their community. The only time when you will see elders coming
together to have a dialogue is during political season when you will see our
gold digging elders coming under the platform of the so called Lunguda elders’
forum to chart a course that will attract brown envelop but not actually during
societal trial when community demands their sacrifice.
It
is now visible to the blind and audible to the deaf that one has not to posses
a magic wand or consults an oracle to believe that Lunguda land is on the brink
of collapse and disintegration because now no meaningful development that will
be recorded again in the land without the forces of the Tobiahs and Samballats
at the opposition side. For me to vindicate myself from being name rabble
rouser but a person who speak with facts and figures, let me blow a whistle on
why this year cultural festival did not hold despite fixing and shifting of the
date of the festival. It was revealed that there was a clashed of interest
between the elders of the land when the preparation was at the peak after
eyeing the aftermath dividend of the festival. Sources unveiled that every
elder was injecting his personal interest into it to the point that those who
were reduced to a subservient class choose to pull-off and finally back-off
from the preparation.
The
disunity of Lunguda race has led us to internal war, laid to waste the dreams
of our founding fathers and to this day, it will constitutes the fulcrum of our
social, economic and political disequilibrium that will set the land on the
brink of collapse and equally create a flourishing ground for perpetual retrogression
and lapse that will subject the posterity to grapple with conflict and strife they
no nothing about.
Today,
I use this hallow spot as an oracle to foreshadow for my kinsmen the black
future that awaits us even with the limestone and fertile land that we are
bragging about if we fail to learn and master the art of unity. Our zealous
effort to eat from the juicy fruits of the limestone discovered within our
armpits as we are desperately yearning will remain an armchair allusion, which
on the contrary aliens who know the value of what we possess will join forces to
steadily plunder our potential wealth and stylishly convert us to mere laborers
in our motherland.
For
us to create a Lunguda land of our dream, we must learn to settle our
difference and see ourselves as one big family with collective mindset of
silencing the echoes of dichotomy and disintegration that set our land on the
path of retrogression. It is high time for youths both at home and Diaspora to
come together to form a union that will serve as a platform for discussing
issues that have impact on our community, which I belief by so doing all the
jangling discords of disharmony that existed for years will be transform to
beautiful symphony of togetherness that will mount up a banner for progress and
peace in our land.
For
us to move and leap forward as a community of one blood, we must all put hands
on deck to curtail the perpetual hatred and wickedness that we have being
breeding among ourselves for years by learning to see progress of one as
progress to all and injury to one as injury to all because we have being so
wicked to ourselves to the point that if a person is struggling to come up with
a sense of bright future that will help our community his kinsmen below his
shadow will join forces to push him to gutter which has never help us as
nation.
To
this end, it is high time to stop rehearsing our past mistakes and deliberate
on rewriting the ugly events in the annals of the community that held so strong
the clog of the development of the land and concentrate on creating Lunguda
land of our dream, if not whirlwind of disunity will continue to shake the
foundation of the community until the bright day of togetherness emerges.
When
I look at Lunguda land, I see a community whose destiny is pregnant with
significance destined for safe delivery despite the frailties and flaws that
engulfed it. I have this optimism that when we collectively come together as
architect of our fortune with diverse potential, we shall build for ourselves
new Lunguda nation that when the history books of the land is written in the
future posterity have to pose to say that there lived a race of people who
fought tooth and nail to inject a new meaning into the veins of history of the
land.
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