The strength that comes from unity and the safety that comes in number have always played stirring roles in the experiences of people have of each other and the world they inhabit.
Because people have played witness to the power produced when people pool together, the importance of working together, of speaking with one voice is as imprinted in the human psyche as anything else. This imprint is made more imperative by the need to belong, the need not to be left out.
The United Nations, an umbrella body of 193 Member States was formed as a response to the devastations of the second world war. The staggering scale of human suffering and destruction of infrastructure wrought as the war raged spoke an irresistible language to a world that until then had largely held in disdain the idea of working together.
Since its inception, the interventions of the United Nations in world affairs have proven crucial not just in nipping potentially cataclysmic conflicts in the bud before they arise, but in building a world that is at once peaceful and prosperous.
It speaks to the significant appeal of the United Nations and its telling trajectory in softly shaping world affairs that even otherwise renegade countries ruled by dictators do everything they can to belong to the body.
The United Nations Secretary-General Mr. Antonio Guterres recently took in his first official visit to Nigeria for a period of two days. Among other things, the visit afforded the Secretary General the opportunity to meet with the families of the victims of terrorism as well as evaluate the impact of climate change on vulnerable communities and assess progress made, as well as the challenges to the COVID-19 recovery.
Among other things, he reiterated the commitment of the United Nations to support Nigeria in building a country that is peaceful and prosperous. While paying tributes to the victims of the August 26 2011 terrorist attack on the UN House in Abuja that left 23 UN employees and civilians dead and injured 16,the UN Chief crucially asked that the perpetrators of terrorism in the country should be brought to justice even as the United Nations was adopting a victim-centered approach to tackling terrorism in the country.
While the UN Chief toured Nigeria, there were calls from him from some quarters to move beyond government`s rhetoric and see for himself just how bad things are in a country that has been on the precipice for far too long. These calls served to amplify the disconnect many Nigerians feel from their government, and especially the distrust.
This is especially a problem because in the human experience, the bad always travels faster and farther than the good such that it becomes very easy to lose sight of the fact that there are always two sides to any coin. In the context of governance, even when they are truly miraculous achievements in a couple of areas as is the case with the present administration, it is the rotten eggs that make the news. With distrust swirling like a cyclone in Nigeria, the crucial partnership between the government and the governed in building a strong nation has simply refused to work.
Through its many organizations, the United Nations support people around the world. All over the world, during countless moments in the course of history, an organization often branded toothless for lacking a standing army has again and again acted as a fire fighter, going to places where the world`s most sophisticated armies fear to tread.
Women and children continue to be supported by the UN. Nature has also continued to be supported as the United Nations has continued to be a voice for the world`s most vulnerable people and things. The power of the United Nations is not military. It has been a soft but ultimately superior kind of power – the power that comes from unity which in the changes it has helped bring about has lent credence to the fact that there is safety in numbers.
Nigeria has a lot to learn that is if Nigerians have not become incorrigible and irredeemable.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
