By Rev Francis Oleghe
Several years ago, I read Aminata Sow Fall's novel titled: “The Beggars’ Strike”. There Mour Ndiaye who had done nothing meaningful for his people badly required the favour of street beggars in order to be appointed Vice President of the Republic in the impending cabinet reshuffle.

To court the beggar’s favour, he prepared expensive ‘fawn-coloured cow’ meal for them. That was a great delight to the beggars in the past. But now they revolted to the chagrin of the politician. They refused his sacrifice of crumbs. They wanted honour and maintenance of their human dignity. They wanted the real thing: change in their status and in their national life. They wanted good roads, education for their children, hospitals where they could receive adequate medical attention; they wanted all that was theirs by right, without molestation.

They vehemently rejected the politician’s worthless sacrifice, leaving his political career hanging on a balance. This is the greatest political revolution I know of in Africa. It may be true that a beggar has no choice but these beggars refused to be such a beggar in their own country. They decided to take up invisible arms against the forces that reduced them to street beggars by exercising their choice not to accept mere crumbs.

Until you learn to do without the crumbs you may never have the real stuff. The greatest weapon against a people is the attitude that settles for the crumbs. No country the world over where majority of the people settle for crumbs that ever amounts to a force to reckon with. No matter how wealthy the few opportunists may be the country in general would remain backward. God never intended a few to ride over the heads of the others. God always desires a nation where people can freely determine their destiny under a fair and equitable arrangement.

When Israel came out of Egypt, they were a band of refugees – homeless and without any military training. God wanted them to be a self-determining nation rather than slaves within another nation. But the greatest challenge God had in delivering them from slavery was the fact that their taskmasters had successfully deceived them by the sumptuous meals they were served. “Can it never be better?” they had reasoned.

And the mixt multitude that was among them fell a lusting: and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely, the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic:

But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, besides this manna, before our eyes.

They forgot that the fish, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic cost them their freedom. They forgot that they laboured, as slaves, to have less than what was rightfully theirs. They forgot that there was a Canaan land flowing with milk and honey right before them. And they forgot that the manna they ate was not mere food but angels’.

The Egyptians indeed completely captured their minds with the crumbs, the leftovers, that the real thing had no appeal to them. Today, Israel is completely free from Egyptian domination. Virtually all nations of the world are independent; that is no more a challenge. But in its place is a new challenge we all must arise to confront: a few political opportunists now hold the majority of their fellow countrymen under treacherous slavery.

The policy of present day slave drivers is the same as that of ancient Egypt: offer the crumbs and deceive the people to accept the crumbs as their lot; make the people believe the Palace would defile them and thereby perpetually oust them from their inheritance.

 Rev Francis Oleghe, a legal practitioner is a Pastor with TREM Headquarters.