OPINION: THE NIGERIAN POLITICIANS AND THE REST OF US.

There is no passion like that of a functionary for his function. By: roylexi.com More Quotes | Submit Quote

The return of politics in Nigeria has made a lot of us to become political analysts, commentators and opinion leaders overnight despite the fact that we are always in a hurry to deny the fact that politics runs in our blood.

To be a known face in Nigeria's political arena, there are two things involved; it is either you make noise for the government or make noise against the government.

If you make noise for the government you are safe, if you make noise against the government, you are on your own.

There are so many noise makers for and against the government or to put it in its right language we have so many supporters and critics who have written many brilliant articles so voluminous that president Jonathan cannot finish reading them throughout his presidency.

While I must admit that most of us the so called critics are armed chair critics who always provide at best what is referred to as academic answers to political problems in Nigeria, so many of us are gifted with the spirit of crying more than the bereaved- what I can safely refer to as the abatinanian and okuperian spirits.

The end product of our writings is about being heard, seen and patronized- being relevant and we fall into two basic categories: the paid political noise makers and the volunteer political noise makers.

We are tempted to write because we believe that we have the right to do so while some of us want to rely on the Freedom of Information thrown at our face by the Government forgetting that those that gave us the FOI are only interested in creating one more avenue for them to laugh at the innocent display of our nuisance value.

It is a case of Idiamin's famous quote of 'I can guarantee you freedom of speech but what I may not be able to guarantee you is your freedom after speech'.

A new dimension of political noise making has been introduced.

The politics of letter writing.
This year 2014 from all indications may end up being the year of letter writing especially after the release of election time-table by INEC but the problem we the association of free readers have with the letters is that they are too voluminous and the underlying motive of those letters have been the clamour for A SHIFT FROM 'THEM' TO 'THEM' RATHER THAN CLAMOURING FROM A SHIFT FROM THEM TO US.

When politics and governance is reduced to personal gratification by the major actors, they are indirectly and unknowingly sowing the seed of greed in the mind of the coming generations and it is a universal fact that greed drives a Nation to ruin.