Let’s stop the blame game
Blaming others for our failures seems to be part and parcel of human nature and it dates back to creation. When the first pair of humans -Adam and Eve- fell by disobeying God, Adam blamed it on the wife and she also shifted the blame onto the serpent.( Genesis 3:12-13).
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The blame game at that point did not help matters. If they had accepted their fault and apologised, they might have attracted the sympathy and forgiveness of God and the consequences could have been different.
As humans, we don’t seem to learn any lesson from their mistake .We have been carrying on with this tendency of blaming others for our failures.
African countries keep on blaming our backwardness and underdevelopment on colonialism and its exploitation even after half a century of this historical episode.
It is true that this unfortunate incident has had tremendous adverse impact on our development.
It is equally true that bad governance, corruption, lack of foresight, unpatriotic posture, mismanagement and sheer greed on the part of those at the helm of affairs are the worst culprits, because there are many countries which also went through colonialism but have made it.
However, instead of accepting this unpalatable fact and resolving it, we almost always try to find an excuse elsewhere.
When it comes to elections, one thing I have noticed is that whenever political parties or politicians win election, the success is attributed to hard work, popularity and good campaign strategies but when they lose they forget that their opponents might have worked harder, or might have been more popular with better campaign strategies.
Sometimes, we create an erroneous impression, by our actions and deeds as if one cannot win election genuinely in our part of the world. We cry foul only when we have lost elections but praise the same election management bodies when we win.
I am not in any way alluding to the fact that anyone who complains of election results is playing mischief but it is also an open secret that some politicians, more often than not, do so as a face-saving campaign strategy in order to retain their following and to attract sympathy.
What many are not aware of is the fact that this strategy only works at the expense of somebody’s hard-earned reputation with the election officials being the worst victims.
Those who indulge in this wicked practice should always remember that their victims are also human beings who have families and therefore suffer psychological agony associated with such allegations and mischief.
The other side of the coin is that, if we abuse this strategy by crying wolf all the time when there is none, it will soon be a cliché and in a real wolf situation, nobody will take us seriously.
On the individual level, many are those who have messed up their lives in terms of education, relationship, business, sports, entertainment, health etc. But instead of doing serious introspection and change their attitude, they blame it all on the devil or witchcraft.
Until we put an end to always apportioning blame and take responsibility for our actions as individuals and as a nation, we will always come back to square one.