Nothing kills faster and more assuredly than misplaced trust. And nothing generates misplaced trust than friendship and blood relationship. It is good to trust your friends and relatives but trust me, nothing would fasten your death more assuredly than trusting an envious friend or brother.
Nothing breaks the bonds of friendship and turns a brother to an enemy within than a sense of competition. A friend, Onyedikachi Ugbogu taught me this principle about twelve years ago.
Those days, my dad would always pray God to protect us from our friends and family. This prayer point made no meaning to me then. I should be the other way round. So, I thought in my infantile mind but how wrong I was.
The man whose picture adorns my page here is Thomas Sankara. For the records, Thomas Sankara was a young revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso who ruled his country progressively for four years before he was brutally murdered by his brother and friend, Blaise Compaore.
Thomas Sankara’s father adopted Blaise Compaore as a child. The two brothers and friends, Thomas and Blaise grew up together, ate from the same pot and shared the same bed. Their father facilitated their enlistment into the military and even drove them to the recruitment ground together in the same car.
On the night that the coupists came for the life of Thomas Sankara, lo and behold, it was his beloved brother and friend, Blaise Compaore that pulled the trigger. As Shakespeare would say of Brutus’ treachery – “this was the most unkindest cut of all”. And Thomas Sankara, the man called African Che Guevara, died in the hands of a household enemy.
The killing of Thomas Sankara looks like an abridged modern replay of the killing of Julius Caesar by Brutus in Shakespeare’s all time classic, Julius Caesar. Driven by the fear of being outshone and envy, Brutus joined the conspirators against his best friend, Ceasar. Like the valiant general that he was, Ceasar braved and withstood the stabs of the conspirators but when he saw his most trusted and closest friend, Brutus drawing daggers at him he shouted: “et et Brute? – even you Brutus?”
It wasn’t the jabs of the stabs that vanquished the noble Ceasar’s heart but the treacherous act of Brutus “for Brutus, as you know, was Caesar’s angel”. An unfriendly friend.
As I said in a similar post recently, I am not the movie-watching type but I recommend the trilogy of The Godfather to every young person.
In the movie, when Michael Corleone succeeded the godfather and became the new don, he made regime survival a topmost priority. A trained army officer himself, he so fortified his personal security in such a way that harming him was almost beyond any human possibility. However, his security was broken one day as an assailant rained a barrage of bullets on him and his wife but they survived.
That his security was expertly broken set his heart racing. It must be an insider’s job, he figured out. And he was right. No matter what it takes he must find out who sold him out.
True to his fears, it was his elder brother, Fredo that masterminded the assassination attempt. When asked his reason, his answer was simple – envy!!!
He was angry that their father willed the throne to his younger brother though, out of his own amateurish disposition. He has been envious of his younger brother. He has always felt entitled to the the dynasty. He has always harboured in his heart plots of eliminating his brother and usurping his position.
Yet, he has always smiled at his brother. He has always had unimpeded access to his brother. He has always wined and dined with his brother. But he has always been the poisonous puff adder under the beautiful rose flower. He was bidding his time waiting for an auspicious time to strike.
Fredo harkened to the smart words of Shakespeare – “to beguile the time, look like the time” but his brother, Michael Corleone felt relaxed thinking that his brother will never harm him because blood, they say, is thicker than water.
But is blood truly thicker than water?
