Category: As I Was Saying...
This afternoon, I read a Punch article titled “We’ll Never Hang Buhari’s Portrait In Our Offices”. It appears to be a statement credited to Olisa Metuh, the National Publicity Secretary of Nigeria’s opposition Peoples Democratic Party, the PDP. Many lame comments have been attributed to that same man in the wake of the transformation of the PDP from a ruling party to an opposition group - the said transformation of the party status to opposition being the final masterstroke dealt the party by the then Nigerian President Goodluck Ebelemi Jonathan as part of his Transformation Agenda. God bless the end of his godforsaken regime.
I think that most self-respecting men, and perhaps President Buhari would cringe at the very thought of their portrait hanging in any of PDP’s corruption-infested nooks. It is the kind of putrid 11AM thought that makes one retch as he vomits all his breakfast and postpones all further thought of food indefinitely. Few people who appreciate the extent of that party’s rottenness would be proud of an association with anything remotely connected with it, while their level of rot persists.
But … what was that journalist’s own sef? Was this report made for lack of sensational stories to publish? Isn’t that journalist aware that the Chibok girls are yet to be found? That a dollar still exchanges for over two hundred naira? That power, though better, isn’t yet at its best? That we still have no trains? That the refineries are not yet all working at 95% capacity, whether they be domiciled in the plains of the 97% or in the forests and creeks of the 5%?
Some people in this wailing business just have no idea how to do their wailing job. They suck at wailing properly, just like they suck at most things else. Rather than learn to wail properly, they whine and whimper and look to their paymasters for encouragement, for approval, for acknowledgment that they have tried in the discharge of their wailing duties; yesso, for acknowledgment that they have tried.
That kind of mediocrity was the old normal, the status quo that the wailing wailers had come to love and had fought so hard to maintain, the state of progressive deformation they had called the Transformation Agenda. To them, debilitating mediocrity was a goal, a peak to be attained rather than a trough to be avoided.
Thankfully, 15 million other Nigerians thought different. And every hour that goes by, yet another Nigerian gets around to seeing the PDP chiefs for the shining examples of corruption that they really are; yet another Nigerian who doesn’t have to buy petrol for his generator every evening comes to understand that good governance has no creed; yet another Nigerian who is surprised that his local health centre is suddenly dispensing essential drugs begins to appreciate the fact that good governance has no tribe.
Buhari’s picture has no business being in that photo album. His portrait has no business hanging in that decrepit Hall of Shame.
But what do I really know? I’m after all only human.