Zara and her Father

Zara Aliyu Umaru, a six year old, had requested her father to give her something, as her contemporaries are inclined to do. Her father typically asked her to wait until tomorrow.
When Zara returned to her father the following day to demand for the fulfilment of the promise, she observed that he was hesitant. When she realised that he was not forthcoming with the promise, she asked him: Is tomorrow today? He replied: Today is today. When she observed that his response stopped at today, she asked: When is tomorrow? Perplexed by the pointed question, he was left with the only option of giving her whatever she wanted.
The father must have wondered: Today na today! That is what happens when an adult iconfronted with the brutal innocence and frankness of a child.
In fact the father had recalled that encounter when he was presenting a paper entitled: Matsayin Arewa a Nigeria; jiya da yau da gobe. (The state of the North in Nigeria; yesterday, today and tomorrow). He had digressed by relating the encounter with his own experience as a child when the elders or the leaders, as the case might be, used to describe him and his contemporaries as yara manyan gobe (children, leaders of tomorrow).
He had bemoaned the fate of that hackneyed phrase with which he and his contemporaries were deceived into believing that they would one day become leaders. What they did not know then was that the allusion was neither automatic nor magical. Now they know it would not take expertise or effort on their part but special grace of God to make that dream a reality.
Is it, in retrospect, not becoming manifest not only in the North but in Nigeria that the phrase and the unrealistic, if not unrealisable, hope it is built upon have become hackneyed? This is because the phrase has always been expressed from time immemorial. It has come only to pass and fruition elsewhere where it was and is genuinely meant to be realisable.
It is no joke that in Nigeria, the phrase is easier said than done. The fact that Nigerian leaders would rather thrive in its semantics than its reality is underscored by the perpetuation of a cabal whose selfish purpose must be fulfiled as a condition of making it to the leadership position.
To have the nerve, like Zara, to look any erring elder or leader in the face and tell him the home truth however justified is to toy with the prospect of assuming the position of manya. This is because the leaders, just like the customers, which they have grown to become in some awkward way, are always right.
The form and substance of leadership are measured by the double standards set by the cabal which nurture rather than nature has favoured to perpetuate itself in power in whatever guise perhaps until eternity.
Is it not rather strange that in other lands, there have been some good attempts at realising the object of the phrase leaders of tomorrow? But what is the fate of the phrase in Nigeria where there seems to be distinction without difference between yesterday, today and tomorrow leaders?
Zara’s interesting encounter with her father is a typical example of how to confront the sorry story of Nigeria’s yesterday, today and tomorrow. The grin and bear it syndrome which has been the bane of her peers and forebears is a good example of how not to confront manyan gobe conundrum.
Zara’s father who had thought she was too naïve to understand the implication of leaving things until tomorrow was disconcerted by her solid resolution to make him fulfil what to her was a faithful promise. That may have been a private affair between father and daughter, but its far-reaching implication is patent. How was she to know that the fulfilment of such promises is often hard, if not impracticable, in public life however genuine the purpose for which it was made and however hard done by one feels about it?
If only Nigerians would follow the example of Zara by collectively demanding the fulfilment of the numerous faithful promises mostly on oath often made by Nigerian leaders, Nigeria and Nigerians would be better for it. But this can only be possible if the leaders themselves would equally follow the example of Zara’s father by extending private fulfilment to public life. That way, promises would be made and kept through the instrumentality of the budgetary discipline.
But must they be confronted with the Zara’s truth or truism before they are jolted to such rude awakening? That is the question that still lies in the womb of time, even as we speak!
Zara’s case has typified the dormant cause of not only children but adult who choose to sidon look while they are sold to manyan gobe rhetoric.
If Nigeria’s yesterday and today are saturated by the cycle of recycled leaders, how can tomorrow realise the dream of manyan gobe? Would there be any dispute about what tomorrow would bring?
Celebration of Children’s Day, trivialization of Children’s parliament, promotion of Kiddies page, surrendering a state government to a child to run for a day has not made a serious case for the realisation of the object of making children mayan gobe. In fact it has further trivialised it.
By the way, is there any budgetary allocation to the children’s parliament? Does its speaker’s voice strike any cord of concord between fact and fiction of realising this childhood dream? Would it waive the rules of due process when the interest and honour of the powers that be conflict at the stake of delivering the goods?
Does Zara still have the nerve of translating her childhood belief into adolescence having been grounded in, if not by, the Nigerian reality of manyan gobe?
Was Shakespeare not right when he said children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong?.