- 05/25
Bitter Pills
– By Des Wilson
President, Governor and LG Chairman as shepherds!
‘A good shepherd always feeds his sheep first,
even when he himself is hungry’.
– Matshona Dhliwayo
The Holy Book draws from the cultural experience of the Jews where it uses the metaphor of a shepherd to glamourise and dignify the lowly profession of sheep keeping. Like the cow herd, his primary duty is to look after the herds of sheep left in his care. His duty has always been to lead, herd, guard and protect the sheep. Even though shepherds always had fears about the safety of their sheep, their least fear was of the criminal marauders we call rustlers, and their grazing was conducted on mountain slopes and hillsides but not around the fields where farmers had planted their crops.
The only human group they feared were those who were clearly enemies of society, whose goal was to disrupt the routine motions of society. These were thieves and robbers. Their weapons were sticks, and where they also sought game, they had bows and arrows.
Today, shepherds no longer believe in the simplicity of their profession. Sheep owners trusted the shepherds because they were the embodiment of the qualities of sacrifice, goodness, honesty, protection and true guidance. They demonstrated their willingness to learn and had a good knowledge and understanding of the flock. They had the ability to observe and nurture their flock. They were hardworking and possessed tough minds even as they were loving and wise. All these qualities endeared them to their masters and even the community.
It is for these qualities that many herding or shepherding metaphors were used to describe human beings that behaved like the good shepherd. It was not that there were no ‘bad shepherds’. Clearly, they were a rarity because not much is written about them in the Bible except for the comparison of them with the good shepherd.
The bad shepherd is that man who passes through the wrong entrance, or through the fence instead of through the gate to enter the sheep house or pen.
The good shepherd would leave 99 sheep in search of a missing one, an act which shows commitment and diligence. Bad shepherds are greedy manipulators. In politics they are those boastful and proud sweet-talkers who deceive their flock and abandon them when they would need them. They are the ‘arrangee’ pastors and ‘miracle workers’ who need our prayers more than those they pretend to lead.
In Nigeria today, herders are kidnappers, murderers, terrorists, cattle rustlers, and ethnic and religious fundamentalists who kill other Nigerians for the loss of one sheep or cow.
Again the bad shepherds are those Nigerians who go to the National Assembly, House of Assembly or the combined executive and legislative houses of the Local Government and refuse to address the needs of the people they claimed they went to these places to serve, but indeed they went there just to steal the people’s (sheep) patrimony.
The good shepherd protects the people he set out to serve. He guides and guards them. The bad shepherd is the clueless leader who, when he has wrested power from his opponents through foul means, finds himself asking the very people he is supposed to lead, to lead him. And in the words of Mehmet Musta’Iden: ‘If a shepherd needs a shepherd for himself, then the herd of that shepherd is in danger’. Really, they are in deep trouble as we are in Nigeria. This was the case during Buhari’s ill-fated tenure, and it is continuing now, even though with a splash of cluttered policy somersaults and fantasies brewed at Breton Woods to preserve the imperial hand across the Atlantic, after a fitful election and a deplorable judicial mumbo-jumbo.
Anyone can see that we are being held hostage by America because they have grabbed our jugular. If you don’t cooperate, we will spill the bins or turn the applecart, they seem to tell Aso Rock. Yet I would like to ask our good shepherds in Abuja, the States and local government areas whether they can’t see that ‘the quality of the sheep determines the quality of the shepherd’, for a sheep who teaches something to the shepherd is no more a sheep but a teacher or shepherd.
When Jesus Christ referred to Himself as a good shepherd, He enumerated the qualities of one. So the truth must be told that whether you are a parent, a teacher, a caregiver, a political leader, or traditional overlord, you are a shepherd to many. Can you honestly say that you have been a good shepherd to those under you, or you are just a damn exploiter, liar, predator, of the poor and innocent, bloodsucker, profiteer, monster, criminal, political bandit, rapist, extortionist, knave and the devil’s advocate just doing his bidding in the Devil’s workshop? We must all answer our father’s name. Who are you?