After observing carefully what is going on in the Social Media among Nigerians, more especially among the youths, I am left with many questions unanswered. Why have we all forgotten what really matters for our nation? Why have everybody been lured into focusing on less important matters of national interest? Who really cares about this nation, politicians? religious leaders? the youth? who? Where are the true compatriots? What about the labours of our heroes past, have we all allowed their effort to be in vain? This is my preoccupation on this brief reflection.
One of the problems of our generation is the failure to understand what counts; failure to focus on the essentials. For a long time now, Nigerians seem to have focused their attention on less important things, forgetting the essentials. Everybody has been tamed and forced to fight a war that does not exist. Politics has become the order of the day. In every platform people are obliged to politicize issues, whether they want it or not. In fact, we have all become actively partisan- supporting a candidate that may not even know that we exist.
Even the unemployed youths have all been lured into advertising, a mediatized non-existing massive job creation, that cannot benefit them in anyway. They all speak of a President to be, whose credibility has no bound, even if they do not know how he is going to carry out all his political propaganda. Even the so called religious leaders have all been conditioned to see nothing except who becomes the next President of Nigeria. God has even revealed to some what He has planned to do to whoever votes a particular candidate. All we are yet to see so far, is when a Church choir will sing Vote Buhari! or Vote Jonathan!, even when it is not clear if they really have a plan for a united and better Nigeria.
We have been staged one against the other in a country that should have been one. People inculcate in us, through their sponsored video, ethno-tribal and religious hatred. And without knowing it, we have all become bigots; religious and ethno-tribal bigots; we have all become. No one asks the prospective contestants which Nigeria they are campaigning to govern? A country divided between North and South? A country divided between Christians and Muslims? A country where political party members have no plan or intention, than to fight each other?
Who speaks now of our dear Chibok girls who have now spent ten months in captivity? Who talks about the deceased people of Baga? Who cares about the Nigerian refugees in the Chad, Cameroun and Niger? Our concern now is how to get our Permanent Voters Card – which is very good – but then, what about our fellow Nigerians who have been forced to quit their territories without burying their loved ones? Nigerians have lost contact with reality. I am afraid we have already forgotten what really matters.
Ali C. Nnaemeka, omi
