LOYALTY

Recently, POTUS (President of the United States), Mr. Donald Trump was accused of demanding "loyalty" from James Comey, the erstwhile Director of the FBI. Not long after that, H.E Nyesom Wike, the Executive Governor of Rivers State sacked his commissioners stating that "some of them are not loyal". With these and many other issues bothering on "loyalty", I felt the urge to share a little story as regards same topic.

Few years ago while I was pursuing my first degree at the University of Maiduguri, I established a social and entertainment club known as Da Elevators Club (D.E.C) where I was privileged to lead a group of great men and women who were both friends and family at the same time. We had fun and a number of achievements under our belts but all that did not come without a price. We each had unique sets of skills and the whole thing was moving so fast that most started loosing focus of what actually took us to the university in the first place-to study and get a degree. We started failing courses and a good number of us had to repeat classes (yours sincerely included), although I was never doing bad academically prior to that, I reckon my "over confidence" caused it (as my primary school teacher-Eaglet Chiwetalu once said "Isaac, you have to check your over confidence, it will fail you someday"). I guess it was a curse that came to pass. I had this notion that I can learn anything within the shortest possible time so to study in-depth over a long time was a problem. I can be relaxing some few days to exams because I felt I will grasp everything within few hours which might be true but then I will give a layman's answer to a technical and engineering question which either gets me low grades or complete fail. Other factors played parts in all that too but back to 'loyalty', an incident occurred that almost took one of us to jail and till date, I honestly cannot tell exactly what happened or what led to that but to cut the long story short, I was responsible because I was the one who "said" something, so I was tagged a "snitch" and till this day, none of my friends asked my side of the story because once you've got the label of 'disloyalty', you can never be right and your opinion does not count. My friends started acting up and the bottom line is, the domino effect took place (a friend tells a friend who tells another friend who in turn tells another friend and before you know, the whole world knows). I was threatened and sidelined and you don't want to hear what I heard about myself, some people don't even know who I am or what I look like, but they know what "evil" I was. To say it was a bitter experience will be an understatement.

My crime, amongst many others I will never know, was wanting to be 'loyal' to that same friend who suffered the flip side of the resulting action from someone I did not know was seeking a reason to hurt another friend. I was personally shocked at the turn of events and because I had no one to turn or talk to because I was the the 'devil in the blue dress', I kept mute and allowed time, the healer of all to take its course, that ultimately led to dissolution of the club, I apologized to that friend for my mistakes and have since forgiven myself for all that crap.

So as a first hand victim of the term "loyalty", I've learn't over the years that as much as everyone will want the people closest to them to always "have their backs", being loyal a times comes with a great price because sometimes you cause more harm trying to "have the back" of those you love. And that, loyalty is also relative because I have seen people "betray" their loved ones because that is the only thing that will keep their loved ones safe and alive, I've also heard of people killing loved ones as an act of loyalty. Even though the essence of the word still very much holds oceans, the circumstances around its execution and performance may not make sense or hold a drop of water.

With "Loyalty" being "everything" (I will have your back and you have mine) come-what-may, it  should not only be when it suits you, is convenient to your understanding or when you know each step of the way, because with loyalty comes trust and I should be able to trust that even though I do not and may never understand why you took a certain step at a certain time, it is ultimately because you've got my back. 

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