A critic reminds us of the Chibok girls…

“The snakes are emitting dangerous venoms rather than kill them; we are setting up committees on snakes” local adage.

The easiest and most attractive national past time now seems to be buck passing especially with the bunch of leaders that we have, that can hardly peel a banana nor wash an already white handkerchief.

Not many of us want to take responsibility for anything, from personal, to family or national life. The blame is on the system.

We do not need to create demons out of our leaders because they are specimen of demons, so we hang our sins on them appropriately and inappropriately too. And unfortunately their behaviour has made it easy for the critic to descend on them.

We at most, talk, write and discuss the Nigerian myth with a sense of fatalism.

If everyone thought as much as I did about justice and fairness, life would be better. I am critic, but I am also the critics' critic, the unrepentant believer that the best way to keep government on its toes is to keep harping on their flaws so they can improve.

Often I say I believe the things I write on, are important for our nation as they are for other nations, but when it appears to me Nigerians especially those in authority do not react to these issues as people in other lands do, I repeat them in new essays to remind old readers and recruit new ones to participate in the continuing dialogue.

As a critic, even my bitterest opponents, those Jonathan disciples and APC apologist and crooks called politicians have to read me personally or have someone read me and tell them what I said and did not say, so that their anger can be kept burning hot.

Sadly this is Nigeria where nothing works and no one cares, when it works, it is because someone's interest is about to be served or being served not the people's interest. We talk about our institutions despairingly.

Our leaders do not watch network news any longer except when their faces would be there on occasion of their sons/daughters wedding or such. They do not need the newspapers anymore because it is full of their lies and the critics' truth, bitter truth.

Government bashing is now a national past time and every drinking joint, and suya spot has a sitting parliament with an expert on every and any issue like the chibok girls, even married men, and young men, with questionable lives both on personal and domestic level, are talking there.

The best government policy cannot change the individual. Because the policies are formulated on a bad foundation and by people with warped thinking.


Our lack of confidence in our institutions is apparent; we have long replaced PHCN with generators even at the Aso Rock villa, even as the DISCOs have refused to dance.

NITEL, NIPOST, NPA, NMA, everything and anything that has an N has been run down. Even Nigeria herself or is it himself.

Despite my barrage on the leadership I believe we ourselves can do a lot in improving our lot, we do not need a decree or law that would ban urinating in public place because it is wrong. We do not need government to teach us to stop treating ourselves like animals.

Do we need government to teach us that we demand responsible leadership and representation? Certainly not, we should know that and act in a fashion that depicts that we demand more than what we are getting.

My ranting ends or better as I often call it, admonition, ends this way—In May 2014, the Chief of Defence Staff Alex Badeh said “The goodnews for the girls is we know where they are but we cannot tell you, we cannot come and tell you military say this or that, just leave us alone, we are working we will get the girls back, added they will not risk 'killing our girls' by using force to rescue them.”

Since then we have had a committee, we have had a visit from the Pakistani girl-child education advocate, Malala Yousafzai who insisted Jonathan should see the parents, and that Jonathan has done, and lest we forget they have shared monies too; even Shekau in recent weeks has been more concerned with the conquest of Demboa, and parts of Borno state.

Both some old folks called Northern elders have tied political fortune of 2015 to it, threatening Jonathan, yet, it is 126 days and counting and the Chibok girls risk being one of two things: a case study to be remembered once in a while or a one-day miraculous return.

The critic's anthem is one that has always inspired me by H.G. Wells, "we are going to write about it all. We are going to write about business and finance and politic and pretences and pretentiousness, and decorum and indecorum, until a thousand pretences and ten thousand impostor shrivel in the cold, ...we are going to write about wasted opportunities and latent beauties, until a thousand new ways of life open to men and women. We are going to appeal to the young, and the hopeful, and the curious against ----the established, the dignified and the defensive. Before we are done we will have all life within this scope of the novel.

In those good old days of NTA, sadly it has also lost its own 'N', Frank Olize of the former Newsline would ask, “Its 9 o'clock, do you know where your children are?” Our nation is loosing its very soul, forget that PDP lie, and do not be deceived by the stealth walk of APC…would we see the chibok girls, although the damage has been done—Only time would tell