When’ll Nigerians Learn from the Past?
By Rufus Ibebe
LAGOS JANAURY 28TH (URHOBOTODAY)-“We don’t live though life only by our own experience. We live thoughwith other peoples experience as a reference too”- Nicke thaddeus.
Learning is the acquiring of new or modifying existing knowledge, skills, or performance. Learning is a process that starts at birth and ends in death.it involves changing the behavior of people and thesechanges are usually, permanent. History is the study of the past, especially hoe it relates to humans.
It involves studying what has happened in the past. The reasons why things happened in the past the way they did, and if possible what should have been done to avoid them from harming us if they happen
again. History always have a way of repeating itself. Without learning from our history, we will find our self in in the same problems that those that lived before us found themselves.
Alhaji shehu Shagari the first executive president of Nigeria once said “that the saddest thing about Nigeria is that Nigerians never learn from history”. I make bold to declare that not only Nigerians but the world at large is guilty of not learning from history. If we should be truthful to ourselves,we must agree that what Alhaji shehu Shagari said is actually the basic problem that is facing the
world today.if we can learn from our history, the world would have been a paradise to the inhabitants.
I wish briefly alight some historic events that have repeated themselves and how many people failed because they failed to learn from those that it had happened to in the past. We are failing because
ewe have failed to learn from our history.
The bible said that the devil came to steal, kill and destroy but Jesus came that men maybe saved. Prophet Mohammed came to teach the will of Allah. According to him, those that follow the ways of Allah would be rewarded with paradise.Moses, Jeremiah and many other prophets brought the message of salvation to this world.all These prophets mentioned above suffered from one common problem(lack of co-operation from the people) and some were even killed. Today the story continue,people are still yet to co-operate with men of God and still go about killing then when history has made it clear that killing them wont stop their mission.
Adam eat the forbidden fruit and lied to God hence he was driven out of the garden of Eden. This was the genesis of the problem of mankind.did man learn from this? No, instead they improve on telling lies.it surprise me how child of 8years, would successful convince his 50 years old dad that he is telling the truth when actually he is lying.
On the 5th of November, 2006, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging and he was executed on the 0th of December 2006 after he was found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. His death was spouse to act as discouragement to all those that are planing towards going the same direction that he went.did people learn from his death? No, if they did, Charles Taylor the president of
Liberia would have been standing trial for war crimes,and crimes against humanity. If found guilty, he would follow the same shameful road that Saddam Hussein followed. Hosni Mubarak was the president of Egypt until 11th February 2011,when he resigned after eighteen days of demonstration during the 2011 Egyptians revolution. He thought that he was too powerful to be removed by the masses but the end, he failed. On the 20th of October, 2011(eight months) after Hosni Mubarak was removed by the masses in Egypt , Mu’ammar Gaddafi was killed by national transitional concoil
(N.T.C) in a revolution. If he had learned from histiory and resigned liked Hosni Mubarak , today,he could have been alive.
Osama Bin Laden was killed on the 2nd of may, 2011.his death was met to but a stop to terrorism. He was the founder of a tourist group named Al-Qaeda who claimed responsibility for bombing the world trade center on the 11th of September 2001.he was killed in a private residential compound in Abbottdad, Pakistan by U.S Soldiers. Did people learned? No, because, Boko haram and other terrorist groups are still going about killing people.
Our politicians are not left out in this lack of history learning. Chief James onanefe ibori, chief D.S.P Alamieyeseigha are on the list of former governors in Nigeria that have be convicted for corrupt
charges. This was met to pass on a strong message that all corrupt governors would be convicted after their tenure in office.did our governors learned? No, because corruption still remain the other of
the day in our government house.
I wish to remember our leaders of what Jerry Rawlings did in Ghana.in as much as i don’t pray for that history to repeat it self in my dear country Nigeria, we must la earn from it and stop (corruption) doing
what lead to it 2015 election is just around the corner.we must learn to avoid what happened in our previous elections were bloodshed and election materials stealing was the other of the day.
We learn by exampled and direct experience because there are limits to the adequacy of verbal instructions -Malcon Gladwell.
Rufus Ibebe is a Delta State based journalist