It’s unfortunate, this article is coming
in late. This is because I almost ignored the racket “ My Oga at the top”
generated. However, because of some salient lessons in the whole joke, I have
decided to hit you with this.
Even though, my ways may be very different
from yours, I still believe we must be objective in our analysis, judgment, and
conclusion about others. The NSCDC Commandant,
Mr. Shem’s experience in the hands of Nigerians and the Channel TV personalities
cannot be too different from what many of us face on a daily bases.
Some of us have been
arbitrarily judged, smashed, squeezed, criticized, and battered for several
years because we have failed to be who they want us to be. Different darts and
missiles have been thrown at us because they chose to judge us from the first
impression they conceived about us. What insult haven’t we received? They will
try to judge you by the few words they hear from your mouth. When you use signs
and symbols to communicate national issues, they misconstrue every bit of it as
you are either tagged the head of Nigeria Illuminati, or they may even try to
put your sexuality to question. However, we still love them, and still fight
for them even when they don’t really understand why we are here. Some have not
even realized the need to hold on to the reality that confronts them today,
instead, they are committed to producing gunpowder for the celebration of
individual blunder, and they swiftly push national blunder aside.
Yes, the NSCDC Commandant
goofed, he failed to give the correct NSCDC website, he wanted his oga at the
top to announce that personally, hence he couldn’t go ahead to announce it, as
his oga may end up announcing another one later. At first, it appeared to me as
if he didn’t understand the question until he got to the point of providing the
URL of the website, and then we all laughed when he was unable to provide the
web address as demanded. We all laughed at his little or no IT knowledge, and
not really because he is not competent enough to do his job. We all laughed
because he had displayed some level of confidence right from the beginning of
the interview till the point he was to give the website details.
However, is it enough to
have made it a trending topic on twitter and on other social sites for days? I
must say that we have all failed by pushing aside the lesson and the message of
the controversial interview. If you don’t know, the message is simple; there is
a systemic failure. We have all failed our country. We have even failed to
channel our heavy online presence towards a more positive direction. We have
failed to understand that the entire system has no structure as it stands now.
If that is not the case, why were we not intelligent enough to see beyond Mr.
Shem’s failure and begin to reflect over leadership failure, using the social
media platform? It has always remained this way, where only few of us can speak
our minds in a country where mediocrity reigns supreme. We have failed to see
how mediocre now flood the civil service , but all we are now looking at ,is
just Mr. Shem’s blunder. Why???
Members of staff in several
organizations know little or nothing about their organization. They can’t even
tell ‘categorically’ like Mr. Shem, whether they have an existing or functional
website. How effective are various media units that are scattered across
different Ministries in the country? NSCDC should even thank God that it was
Mr. Shem who failed, and not their media unit, because such would have been
possible. I know that majority of Nigerians that work in the civil service are
not up to date with the internet social world, as they believe in doing things
the old way. You won’t even blame Mr. Shem for not being able to give the
correct web address or not being able to add dot.com, because the NSCDC
Website, prior to the controversy was almost dormant. How would you expect one
to know a website that doesn’t exist or non-functional?
But my pain is simply that
we have all failed to tackle the most pressing issues of the day, falling into
the trap and deception of the phrase “My oga at the top”. We have been so
deceived and then became so careless about our safety, laughing hysterically;
with our eyes gazed at “My Oga at the top” until the dreaded Boko Haram found a
way to shoot us with their arrows. We laughed until we forgot that we have
urgent national issues to address, and the faceless ones hit us hard again in
the city of Kano. What a shame!
While we were busy
gossiping, creating cartoons, producing T. Shirts, and cooking beats in the
studio to ridicule just a single individual, we lost millions of naira at the
Murtula Mohammed Airport, Lagos to some armed men who stormed the airport,
harassing both Nigerians and foreigners. I heard they had a swell moment at the
airport. You can’t just imagine that armed robbers could succeed even in an
International Airport. Where is safe then? “Yet, we were busy with My oga at
the top”
While we took the joke to another
level, the Boko Haram militants also saw our weaknesses and carefree attitude,
and they hit us hard, killing well over 60 people in the Kano bomb attack. They
beat all security apparatus in place in the volatile city, because, we refused
to watch our back as we were laughing at “ My Oga at the top”
In our usual carelessness,
when some people were demanding for amnesty for some faceless people, we kept
mummed, because we were only interested in “Oga at the top.” We refused to ask
questions on why some people should be advocating for this group.
As good, committed, and
patriotic citizens, couldn’t we have embarked on a campaign against violence
using the social media platform for that purpose? How many of us are willing to
laugh at some of the ogas in the North who have sold the future of our children
in the name of leadership tussle? How many of us have been able to tell the
Northern leaders that they have failed their people for giving some terrorists
the supports they really do not deserve? Yet, we still talk about “My Oga at
the top”
These are no time for such
jokes as we have better and serious issues to address as Nigerian youth and
children. Enough of this “My oga at the top” Stop the rubbish now! Let’s ask
them some questions on why we must continue to bury our ourselves.
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