The Tainted Witness
To succintly make my point without further ado – and in order not to keep my readers guessing – I have decided to give “Mr Fix It II” a pride of place in this article’s title. He deserves a round of applause for writing such an earth-shattering, seamlessly ridiculous, lame and blatantly “PDPesque” Y! Politico piece on YNaija on March 11, 2013. Here: www.ynaija.com/ohimai-amaize-apc-heal-thyself-first-y-politico/
Since we all know how our generation’s Mr-Fix-It thinks–that we are all PDP and PDP is in us – it shouldn’t have bothered anyone how warped his mind is, or how he arrived at this ‘inescapable’ conclusion but then, the basic points of his article were just an exhibition of ignorance at its peak. And ignorance is very much the palm oil with which Ohimai’s words are written, to paraphrase Chinua Achebe. Ohimai has to heal himself from lame articles laced with his own sickening sense of self importance.
His main grouse was with the ACN’s Youth Leader and the assertion that the PDP has failed to develop a comprehensive Youth Policy for the country. Consequently, he extracted a quote that left out the context in which the accused committed this heinous crime that has so riled Ohimai (giving him sleepless nights and a break from his job of saving the nation from his cubicle of irrelevance at the Presidency).
He posited that most of what we say are just “casual assertions” – using the ACN youth leader as an example – and here is where I “casually agreed” with his point and the way he also casually chipped in the fact that “In 2001, under the leadership of President Olusegun Obasanjo, the PDP government enacted a National Youth Policy. The policy provides an overarching framework for youth development in Nigeria and remains valid till this day.” It is a sad one really.
Now that Ohimai has assertively dismissed us as “casual critics” and careless opinion hustlers; can we ask him what the point of that is, really? How has the PDP’s National Youth Policy fared? What milestones have been achieved that has led to the turnaround of this great nation? How is it that the select audience of the policy are not even aware that it exists? Just like he opined, anyone could have made that “careless and casual policy” but what Nigerians earnestly crave is action and having a 60year old as youth leader wouldn’t rank high as a perfect demonstration of an effective policy bulls’ eye. We are really tired of getting these rhetoric-laden assertions from government officials about one inconsequential policy (it can’t be if we don’t know about it, can it?) – that they intend to see through – or the other.
Can someone wake Ohimai up from his slumber and let him know the staggering number of the unemployed in our midst and give him the youth percentage in that collective? Can we all tell him that the PDP has failed woefully – judging by how much Nigerians haveinvested in this democratic experiment – and are still failing? Maybe he needs to understand that the PDP has governed Nigeria since the return to democracy in 1999 and the governments have succeeded only in further alienating the youth population through inactivity in the areas that matter and the ‘gold rush’ to plunder our reserves and loot the treasury.
It is easy to understand people like Ohimai when they carelessly dismiss critics and go on a winding mental aerobics just to prove their points. He wants us to look at alternatives in the line of a “one party state” like China. He asserts that there is no “Nigerian Dream” and questioned if we needed one at all. He feels that we can combine the dynamics of Party Ideology, Manifestoes, Performance and Good Leaders – everything that the PDP lacks – and still questioned the need for an alternative to what the PDP offers.
Whilst we can understand his romance with the pen and his right to open up a plethora of nonsensical assertions without any reasonable fact or basis, what he failed to realize is that we have a “Nigerian Dream”, one that is obviously and permanently etched on the face of every hardworking, struggling and upright citizen of this country – We don’t desire too much!
We know it is a process and we are ready to bide our time but we dream of a country where we can feed without dreaming of where tomorrow’s portion will come from. We dream of a country where we can move around without the fear of when the next bomb will explode. We dream of a country where there is a future for our kids irrespective of whether we are alive or not. A country where the leaders are genuinely concerned about the basics of governance is every Nigerian’s dream.
We only dream of basic things and yet, it has been a perpetual wait for “Uhuru”.
Ultimately, he should know that it is about PDP! When something is not working, such as how the PDP has failed woefully, the people reserve a right to try alternatives. If the alternative that the APC or any of the other parties represent paints a better picture to this corrupt demagogue we have tried, we will give the party a chance. As long as PDP remains a choice, Ohimai should know that Nigerians owe it to themselves to exercise the right to choose who will govern them in tandem with their summations.
I will advice Ohimai, who is a ‘tainted’ witness in this case, to read Chinua Achebe’s “A Man of the People” to really understand the Nigerian context and the evil the PDP has enshrined in our country. It was written in 1966 but it seems Achebe defied the time continuum to peer into the PDP of today. If he claims to have read that novel, then he obviously didn’t glean anything from it and is not directing his thoughts to the right recipients. He shouldn’t tell us to discard an alternative we have not tried; he should tell the PDP to heal itself first.
Nigerians, now the ball is in your court! Are we going to continue with more of the same come 2015?
I’m @deboadejugb
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