Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Reflection on Obama’s call for National Service

Through out the current political dispensation, Sen. Obama has maintained he essentiality and core values of his fundamental ideologies and convictions in his quest to serve as the commander in chief of this great country.

Retrospectively it is very important to point out the fact that his desire to serve the people in this capacity was not borne out of the necessity to orchestrate and propagate the dogmatism of vertical relationship between leaders and those being led as we have seen in the most recent past, rather his is most importantly tailor after his experience as a community organizer on the street of Chicago in which he saw first hand the dire conditions of fellow Americans and human beings in one of the greatest country of the world.

The fire to serve the people in a better capacity of influencing decisions that can catapult the ordinary American’s life into one in which he or she is comfortable and the country is healthy, socially, economically and political must be construe as the fundamental urgency and necessity that informed his decision to run for the presidency, no matter how we may look at it.

While the reason for this brief article was importantly to focus on the senator’s call for national services, nevertheless I felt it is wise to highlight some of the obvious rationale for his running for the presidency of the United States of America, hence the above narrative.

For those of us who have been privilege to see the world from the eyes of the developing countries of the world where poverty is kind of a second nature, it is very easy to appreciate the argument, mentality, inclinations and rationale for Sen. Obama to pursue the quest for the White House even with little or no initial ‘big time money’ supporters like the others. His capacity to believe in the good will of the American people irrespective of greed, race, political affiliation and or economic status must be counted as a tremendous gift and vision for a young and dynamic senator like him.

The emphasis on the necessity for national service especially in light of the involvement of the youths immediately fill my faculty with nostalgia and reminiscent of the National Youth Service Corp program of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This program is a non- military one which encourages Nigerians on the essentiality of getting to know more about their country and help develop a nationalistic inclinations and better understanding among its diverse ethnicity, religion and socio-political strata. By and large not withstanding some inherent hiccups especially in terms of implementations, it is wise to conclude that the NYCS has indeed benefited the majority of Nigerian baccalaureate graduates that have participated in the program.

Given the fact that the United States of America is a developed country and actually one of the greatest in the world, I can vividly envision the enormous potential of having a youth program that will be fundamentally geared toward helping the current and future generation to work within the communities that is challenging and different from those of their ‘comfort zone’ as part of the sacrifices of getting to know the country better, and appreciate its diversity in terms of race, socio-economic and religious inclinations.

One of the immediate benefit of getting Americans to become engage in one another’s life and serve the nation as a patriotic volunteer ( during which stipends, board and meals will be provided by the scheme facilitators) is the direct impact it will have on stereotypes and media sensationalism and in some cases fallacies.

Furthermore, an individual that understand the people and community in which he or she had worked before is better position to defend then than one whose only knowledge is based on second hand information. For instance without an iota of doubt, many Americans that I have come in contact with were really shocked and astonished to learn from my family and me that in Africa we do not live on top of the trees like monkeys, and that in fact life can be very pleasurable in it’s own ways too. Today I am pleased to say some of these my friends have since visited Nigeria more than four times in the past 7 years!

Sen. Obama is indeed a visionary leader that has the foresight, wisdom and vision to that can transform the Americans into becoming more nationalistic and loving to the diversity that abound within the country and furthermore extrapolates such gain in helping to globalize humanity in a pragmatic and realistic fashion yet to be seen in this country.

Summarily I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt that if he is given the mandate to lead the people in the capacity as the commander in chief, this country stands to gain a lot at home and overseas. It is also necessary to point out that it is only Sen. Obama as of today that has the manifesto to authentically link the domestic economy with foreign relations. In other words, healthy, humane, diplomatic and candid foreign policies will also be a recipe for sound economic growth and integration within the world politics in such a way that America shall be able to occupy the position of being the true world leader, helping other nations to fight injustices, racism, terrorism, poverty, man inhumanity to man and above all create the atmosphere of freedom and the abode of haven for mankind.

God bless USA
God bless Obama

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