VANGUARD
ON Friday, January 27, 2023, during the Vanguard Personality of the Year Award 2022, Mrs. Eunice Onuekwusi, a 60-year-old widow and petty trader from Amagu village, Ukwulu in Dunukofia Local Government Area of Anambra State, made history. Mrs. Onuekwusi was given a special recognition alongside state governors, captains of industry and other prominent Nigerians who received the highly-coveted Vanguard Awards.
Mrs. Onuekwusi came to the limelight for rejecting the sum of N5,000 cash offered to her by a political party agent to vote against her conscience during the November 6, 2021 governorship election in the state. The agent had approached the line of voters, handing each voter the N5,000. When it came to Mrs. Onuekwusi’s turn, she flatly rejected the money and insisted she will cast her vote according to the dictate of her conscience!
In a country of more than 200 million people, with 133 million citizens living below the poverty line, a country where corruption has become endemic, Mrs. Onuekwusi’s rejection of that cash overture to sell her conscience was like a shining star above the sky in a dismally dark night.
But Mrs. Onuekwusi is not alone in this conscientious act of doing the right thing in spite of her meagerly economic condition. Occasionally, we hear of a toilet cleaner who found bags containing wads of dollar currency running into millions, or a taxi driver who found a big sum of money forgotten inside his cab, and promptly returned the money to the owner. These occasional acts of humanity and moral rectitude show that there is still hope for us as a country.
In countries where government has inculcated a sense of pride for fatherland into the citizens, through the way it values and cares for the citizens, such acts displayed by Mrs. Onuekwusi, the taxi driver and the toilet cleaner, are also usually motivated by deep senses of patriotism.
