OPINION: ENDSARS Protest: Ohaji-Egbema-Oguta Youths Should Remain Calm And Refrain From Any Acts Of Violence No Matter The Provocation.

"The peace we are enjoying today has been won with so much blood and treasure. We therefore cannot go back to those inglorious days where violence disrupted our socio-economic and political lives".... Bish Johnson.

As a concerned son of the soil, I want to use this medium to urge youths of Ohaji-Egbema-Oguta to remain calm and law abiding even in the face of provocations. 

The peace we are enjoying today has been won with so much blood and treasure. We therefore cannot go back to those inglorious days where violence disrupted our socioeconomic and political lives.

This advice has become imperative in view of the volatile nature of our region and the fact that no meaningful development can be achieved in an atmosphere of violence and lawlessness. 

Our region remains the most economically viable region of Imo State, we must therefore desist from any action capable of undermining any effort to fully maximize our potentials as a people. We must also recognise that while our stories are singular, our destinies are shared. 

The events of the last two weeks in our country has underscore the hard work that must still be done  in our desires to achieve the lives we wish for ourselves and our generations yet unborn.

Violence cannot solve any problems, instead it will stifle our collective desire and effort to attain greatness in our region. We must realize  that the work of building our region is the responsibility of all of us; men, women, youths and elders.

Even in the mist of despair, the task of perfecting our area must move forward. We will disagree, sometimes fiercely, about how to get there. As it has been since our inception as a people, progress will come in fits and starts. It's not always a straight line. It's not always a smooth path.

By itself, the recognition that we have common hopes and dreams won't end all the gridlock or solve all our problems or substitute for the painstaking work of building consensus and making the difficult compromises needed to move our area forward. But that common bond is where we must begin.

The belief that our destiny is shared; that our area only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. 

By our very nature, the tendency for us to be misconstrued and scapegoated still remains very high.  Despite all these and all the hardship we've been through, despite all the frustrations of governance, I've never been more hopeful about our future. I have never been more hopeful about the Urashi people of Imo State. And I ask you to sustain that hope. I am not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. I am not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight.

I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching out, to keep working hard and to keep fighting for better days ahead.

Remain blessed my people and may God bless us all.

Bishop C. Johnson (SW/AW) is a former United States Army Captain and, a Defence and National Security Strategist