The Destruction of My Father’s Legacy

Dr. Jarlath Uche Opara
Jarlathuche@gmail.com

Pride and greed are the best destroyers of generational wealth and lagacies. Like an inferno, they bring to dust and ashes what hitherto was the pride and cynosure of ones ancestral legacies.

No one is omnipotence, no one is all powerful, all mighty and all knowing. What we are we derive from the suport and allegiance of people. None is all sufficient unto oneself outside the validation, approval and suport from others.

The most powerful person, if at all there is such a thing is because of people, remove people’ support they become very vulnerable, weak and debilitating.

The stength they wield and the air of importance they exhude are possible and sustainable because of the unthinking, malleable, hob-hobing and stomach enfrastructured crowd that chant behind them.

Remove such crowd, their humanity becomes exposed and their inabilities, weakness etc made manifest.

Such is the fate of any human, however powerfully and invincibly they flounce around, they are nothing without the support of the crowd that mill around them for their selfish interest.

The truth is, any person that lives in such illusion of seeing themselves as God and Almight must be folly, discreet depleted and bereft of common sense which of course is not common.

Dust is him that brags and bellows in pride and arrogance, Do You Know me? Empty and vain is that soul that carries themselves as God who has the air and can withdraw it at will. None has such power and privilege.

Such ill mannered and godish behaviour is the bane of my father’s legacies, the envy of all and the pride of all.

We had it all worked out, nature was good to us. Of all the land in my community, my father’s is the most productive, fertile, with rare deposits of Gold, crude and all manner of mineral resources. My father managed it well and tranfered it to our most senior on his demise.

With diligence he managed it too , making sure all got equal and equitable share of the deposits.

Though as humans with insatiable crave for material things, we had disagreements which would be resolved .

With time our family became the pride of our community because of such natural deposits which visibly changed our status, giving us an edge in the scheme of things. Not only that we are enriched with such deposits, the harmony, peace and unity so undivided we enjoyed among my sibblings a sight for sore eyes and the envy of all.

We became so powerful, nothing would move in my community except we give nods of valudation and approval. We understood this power of unity and won’t trade it off for anything.

One day, my youger brother became the custodian of this ancestral empire of natural wealth. How did he get this opportunity? It was a collective resolve among us to be rotating the mangement of our natural deposits every four years. My seniors had their time, I had mine, others had theirs too

Though our various monents of leadership were not free from schemishes, there were of course but not as devastating, destructive, debasing as that of my younger brother a chaos that has brought the glory, unity, peace and love we have all enjoyed to the debasing level of ignominy.

Through his greed and arrogance he has brought the majestic aura we were known for to the mud and robbed it with the stinking ointment of debasement.

Through this greed and power intoxitication of his, he has broken the hedge that over the years made us a unique family. Today we have been infiltrated by strangers, raped by political gorrilas, held captive by mafias and brute political merchants who for long have been envious of our good fortune, seeking surreptiously ways to take the shine off us.

He thinks the best way to go is to destroy it since he can’t have control of it. He feels happy that the once highly united, closely knitted sibblings though with cracks and dents in dotted manner are now under the control of strangers, a scenario that has never played out before.

He feels happy for strangers to be incharge of our father’s farm land just because he couldn’t have his way of being the only voice that should be obeyed even when he is among the youngest.

Greed and power are like whiskey, a large intake of them makes one to misbehave, seeing mirage as reality. He is on a speedy drive on a runway without speed breakers and his brake very faulty, one imagines the end. May be he doesn’t know how poisonous the drink he thinks is a smoody is. Time is the revealer of all things.