Skip to main content

of ridicule worthiness

i swear i try very hard to cut the president some slack but he just wont let me be. okay, so we have all  grown weary of complaining about his lack of vision, and his inexperience but he has to remind us constantly that not only does he not know a thing about governance, he has refused to surround himself with those that indeed know something about it.

if you read my blog post from two years back, i mentioned that i no longer wake early to catch the independence day speech by the president since president obasanjo left office because it lacked any substance thereafter. during obasanjo's time, he was always trying to start something. if he wasn't trying to get himself a third term, he was riling up the senate on something or the other and if it wasn't that he would be exchanging words with orji kalu and bola tunubu. o the days. of course, he kept the nation on edge the entire eight years and you couldn't blink or miss a speech because it could just mean the end of an entitlement for you or your parents.

i guess someone told president jonathan to put some spice in his speech and get people to talk about him for days after by committing an unforgivable gaffe. after all, any publicity is good publicity. and so, the president of the federal republic of nigeria, the one man with unlimited resources in this country, who can afford the best brains to advice him, the best editors to proof read his material and cross check the facts decided to quote an international organization wrongly in no less auspicious an occassion as the independence celebration of his own country. he got up there in front of the whole world and announced that nigeria had been recognized as winning the fight against corruption only to be corrected publicly by the said organization in the most embarassing fashion. yes, he now has all the publicity he couldn't buy even if he sat on a nepa pole and sang christmas carols in october.

every single day since, i have been waiting for the announcement that his advisers have been sacked or at least transfered to a different unit, but instead i am assailed daily with ill thought, borderline insulting explanations from the same set of people who should have expended this same energy reading that independence speech 50 times over to avoid this global embarassment. i really don't know why i expect us to get it right after 'just' 52 years, but i see no other alternative. like someone said to me on independence day, the change WILL come someday...it is inevitable.

Comments

Luciano said…
yes, the change will come. lets just keep our fingers crossed and try not to hold our breath
Anonymous said…
yes the change will come, either for good or bad...but that good change might not come in our generation.
Toinlicious said…
Is it a bad thing that i am no longer bothered?
Anonymous said…
@Toinlicious yes it is a bad thing to be unconcerned

@others... we are the change, we are the revolution(not bloody) we are more than them, we can all come together and make Nigeria great, we can cast a vote of no confidence on these set of people, and identify among ourselves people with integrity, unless we are saying we have none of which i know we do

Popular posts from this blog

Of #MoreThanPlatitudes

Look at this picture. That's one of the children being rescued from a collapsed school building in Lagos, Nigeria. You don't have a be a parent and I won't pander to your better instincts. Tell me this is acceptable or should be allowed to occur again. The President sent condolence messages and the Governor visited the site then said the state emergency services will do all they can cliched response. the end. and people moved on. The heartbreaking pictures of the children pulled out half dazed with cement dust all over their little noses (Exhibit A) did not let me sleep last night. I have gone to drop a comment on the governor's pages on all social media platforms that we need #MoreThanPlatitudes 🚫❌ We need to hear what policy changes are triggered by the death of these babies. The Commissioner of Education must address Lagosians and set up a project team with the Commissioner for Works or Town Planning etc to undertake an immediate structural integrity test...

of the world through their eyes

Sometimes, the best blog post on a subject is made of the words from someone directly involved and this interview could not have come at a better time. Meet my friend Lola, longtime childhood friend and huge blog fan. I just want one person who reads this to relate to it, and get the real sense…that many other people out there have dealt with whatever you are presently dealing with closely, and are winning. Me: so, i'm doing a series of interviews and I’d be glad to chat with you though on anything you're comfortable sharing Lola: shoot Me: what exactly do you do for a living? Lola: practice law largely, I freelance as referee, cook, nurse......name it Me: LOL @ your freelancing jobs...I guess that’s what every mum does. Okay. With a NGO? Or private practice? Lola: private practice (new at it), been in NGO for the better part of my working life Me: that much I remember @ NGO. What was that like? And why did you leave? Lola: interesting, but the last one I was at had...

of those days

i love the phrase "in those days". for a long time in my life, i never felt qualified to use it though, but everyone older than me seemed to use with such pride that it made the phrase itself assume greater meaning than the sum of its words. it was not only used to reminisce, but also used condescendingly. whenever you said something factual yet unpalatable to someone who was older than you, and they lacked the authority to slap you across the face, they would resort to trying to sting you by starting the next sentence with "i don't blame you, in those days...". unlike many people around me, i had the good fortune of starting school early and never failing a single class. which meant that compared to many of my peers, i was often quite young for my class later in life. by the time i finished law school i was 24 and my dad could not stop oggling at all the other classmates during my call to bar ceremony. i vaguely remember him telling my mum and i on the drive ho...