In the past few days I have observed the outcry of a lot of Nigerians about the N5 million donated by Atiku Abubakar to the victims of flooding in Benue State.
Much as I believe in giving, I also believe that the decision to give is always personal. However, when we see people give voluntarily, we should be able to commend them for their efforts. In so doing, they can be motivated to do much more. The Yorubas have a popular saying that anyone who doesn’t appreciate a good gesture is like though a crooked robber.
There are so many successful politicians and business men all over Nigeria. But how many of them have voluntarily given or donated to these flood victims? Atiku Abubakar has a proven track record of giving to the needy and this he has been doing selflessly over the years.
A few days ago, the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump donated a sum of one million dollars to the flood victims in Houston in the state of Texas from his own pocket. I leave you to guess what our beloved President of Nigeria has done to make light the burden of these flood victims in Markudi.
No individual in Nigeria has contributed more towards helping IDPs in Nigeria than Atiku Abubakar. He has fed, clothed and educated thousands of vulnerable people for free, and his intervention in taking western education to the almajiris in Yola is exemplary.
If you must know, the Adamawa Peace Initiative and American University of Nigeria AUN founded by Atiku have been doing a lot of work to promote religious harmony in the North East region of the country. Many of these philanthropic gestures have been activated for decades and anyone reading opportunistic motives into them only makes a mockery of the beneficiaries of these gestures. And that, in my personal view, is a satanic thing to do.
The worrying part of this whole brouhaha is that these criticisms are coming from people who do not give. Before you remove the specs from other people’s eyes, plelase, take a deep breath and remove the ones in your eyes.
It will be nice if the people criticizing Atiku can stop the criticisms and rather show empathy for the flood victims by encourage others toll the line of giving. Nigeria needs all the help that she can have and it is high time her high ranking citizens borrowed a leaf from Atiku to start helping the poor.
Written by Grace Okagbare.
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