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1. In the beginning, there was no society. People got together because it was the right thing to do. They formed authority not to take away their rights but to protect themselves. The authority of government comes from the people. That’s why it’s written in the constitution.
Achebe wrote “A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound.”
”We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so,” he continued, in Things Fall Apart. Kinsmen and women will come ttogether this week because it is good to do so. It is good to express themselves, peacefully and resoundingly.
They will do so because, again to quote the great Achebe, “When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool” . They want to tell Suffering that there is no space for him.
And for those who will be hard, “We cannot trample upon the humanity of others without devaluing our own. The Igbo, always practical, put it concretely in their proverb Onye ji onye n'ani ji onwe ya: 'He who will hold another down in the mud must stay in the mud to keep him down”
