Of altruistic mistakes and benign benefits
And internet activism does not cost much. Most of those who engage in it either stay permanently glued to the computer screen in their office, home or cybercafé or they are pretended yuppies who use their big boy’s toy – the Blackberry which even signs them off with the words ‘from my….blackberry’ to wit. Never […]
And internet activism does not cost much. Most of those who engage in it either stay permanently glued to the computer screen in their office, home or cybercafé or they are pretended yuppies who use their big boy’s toy – the Blackberry which even signs them off with the words ‘from my….blackberry’ to wit. Never mind the snail speed of the internet. Since Ernest Ndukwe reached the retirement age, all he is waiting for is who takes over his beat.
But starting an internet debate group has its hazards. The starter does not often have full control. There are people out there who seek to hijack every medium to peddle their half-wit ideas and when confronted with superior logic, they result to insults and abuse and all sorts of name-calling. So if you have no hide like an elephant, the arrows could be poisonously difficult to bear.
But as far as internet activism goes, the internet activist believes that he knows it all. He is an acerbic and vitriolic critic waiting to push his proboscis on any pervious skin and inject his poisonous ink. He believes that nobody speaks, writes or argues better than him and that his logic is the most superior. I have carefully followed with bemused interest, the kind of interpretation given to political issues in Nigeria and now, policy issues are equally being interpreted using the warped prism of ethno-religious and sometimes socio-political elucidation. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi may have just made an altruistic mistake with his dealings with the five bank chiefs and their subsidiaries. But only a fool does not see in this altruistic mistake, a benign benefit to the entire Nigerian society.
Nobody is asking for him to be canonised. Just that we should be grateful that such a mistake is made and that those who over the years have fraudulently misconstrued the true meaning of success by living off common heirloom have now been exposed for what they truly are. If and when they are finally dealt with, our parameters for gauging success is bound to change for a long time to come. This, to my mind is a benign mistake if indeed Sanusi by reason of his being a Mallo without brain had made this misatake. But what do we have? We have internet and corrupt fifth columnists who tried to read funny meanings to his brave action so far. To them, the sacked five directors were sacked not because they cooked books (a matter of fact) but because they are southwest Christians.
When that did not wash, they moved to northern agenda – Sanusi was deliberately working to get his pound of flesh for the north missing out on the 2004 consolidation exercise. Then, oh no, he wants to rubbish southern banks so that the northern oligarchy can buy them over. Or oh no, he wants to sell them off to his foreign partners. And the last, he wants to kill all the banks for First Bank to remain the first and only. The asinine ingenuity of these gullible people makes a mockery of antics of the man called Maradona. Their capacity to invent tricks by the dozens is unrivalled. They are drowning men holding on to straws!
It does not matter to me, whether Sanusi wants to kill southern executives. Of what use have they been to the preservation of southern business ventures or to the army of unemployed from that area? I also hear that the Oronsaye civil service reforms would set back my own northern Nigeria by a quarter of a decade. Pray, how much have the poor, helpless and hapless people of northern Nigeria, gained from sit-tight officers who prevent others from rising? How many, except their inner circle of friends earns their pay from the money they loot from federal treasury? I find it difficult to imagine how we canvass such puerile sensitivities in order to discredit serious issues and allow ourselves to be used by bourgeois elements whose privileges benefit none except their short circle of friends and lackeys. Surely if they go, they are replaced by people from the same area with perhaps more altruistic dispositions. Is this truly 21st Century Nigeria?