LEADER: You are all welcome to this meeting. I am sincerely happy to have this great number in attendance. I was thinking that many of our members will be discouraged to attend this meeting, your presence here today is a testament to our togetherness and commitment to the struggle.
It gladdens to see all other branch leaders and representatives too, this simply means that we are all focused on having ourselves aiming at the ball.
It is two months now that we had had our protest, which we “tagged protest against bad governance” may I tell you, the protest was not in any way successful, and this sets me thinking about the need to have had the protest in the first place. We have shown that we are no better than the leaders we were railing at, at least from our actions and inactions during the needless protest.
REPRESENTATIVE: Leader, but why this condemnation of our past activities regarding the recent protest? We said all our strata of government were bad ,in this town and we took to the streets, now you are saying , we embarked on needless protest.
What do you think will be the reaction of kabiyesi? somebody we wanted to chase out of office, you are now talking about “needless protest”, are you saying we are stupid?
My leader, I hope you have not been bought over by kabiyesi? I can’t take anything beyond him.
LEADER: My dear, your drift is very clear to me. I must tell you, I am not such a person. Nobody can buy me over, are we not in it together? We actually disappointed ourselves, unless we are not ready to own up.
We designed the protest to hold in all the nooks and crannies of the town for ten days nonstop. Are you aware that this could not be achieved, due to some attitude put up by some of our leaders, coupled with the disagreement of Kabiyesi and the chiefs, concerning any form of protest?
Some of our leaders too backed out, some jumped ship, while some others were serving as moles to Kabiyesi and his chiefs.
Agents of Kabiyesi too, did not help matters. All this resulted in a lot of casualties in some of our hamlets.
Excuse me, before we go further, let us stand up and observe a minute silence for all our departed souls, those who by “divine, intervention” was unable to give account of the protest due to their demise, we salute them, ‘Omo Akin ni won’.
May their souls rest well!
REPRESENTATIVE: Leader, thank you for this recognition, their death will not be in vain, and if this is going to be so we must not back down until we get results, hence, their death will be in vain.
LEADER: When we went on that rampage which we wrongly christened protest against bad governance, we did not know that this will expose the animal in us all.
“When we went on that rampage which we wrongly christened protest against bad governance, we did not know that this will expose the animal in us all.”
Why did I say this, I was surprised to see some of us destroying some of the town’s monuments and other historical places, while some of us , from different other hamlets went as far as removing chairs, tables, air conditioners, Shelves, rugs , mats and other materials from the structures built with our money, and which are supposed to be the legacies for all of us.
Unfortunately, they refused to ”harvest books” when they got to one of the hamlets gallery of books, because ,in their own belief, those books were “haram” and nobody should have anything to do with them.
We were advocating for good governance, yet we refused to acknowledge the usefulness of books in development, or what do I say regarding this action?
If we had agreed that Kabiyesi and his chiefs were bad, which propelled us in taking the action we took abinitio, then, what some of us did during the protest was even worse.
The truth now is that we did not need that protest in the first place.
May I say this also, there is need for us to have a rethink, is the kabiyesi bad? Or is he trying to right all the wrongs perpetrated by the kabiyesis that ruled before him? We have been dropping all the blame at his door step ever since, though, l am not here to give any verdict on those locust invested years, for all of us, we went to sleep, forgetting to ask questions, and now the chicken we thought was far away outside has come home to roost. The consequences of our negative actions and attitude are now poking fun at us.
By the way, who is the government, is it not me and you? we need to find our bearing anew, if not, we will all sink. God forbid that we find ourselves in that situation!
Way forward, as from now on , what we need is not protest ,all hands must be on deck, all of us must come together in realisation that ,this town’s project is also our own project. We must be ready to contribute our own quota, however little or small, we are government in our own way. If we know this, we know peace.
We are all young, brimming with raw energy, Kabiyesi cannot provide jobs for all of us, but something is sure, if we are ready to embrace Agriculture, this is one area where we can get enough jobs and feed our teaming population.
Mining of hidden treasures is another area, we just need to recalibrate our priority, things will surely take shape, as the reign of Kabiyesi enters full throttle.
REPRESENTATIVE: You have made a lot relevant points today, in this meeting.
I will go back home with all the takeaways in order to sway the people in my unit that there is need to tarry a little.
May Gid bless you, our leader.
Till the next meeting.