Before you people start, let me explain. Lol. Yes I did see all your
comments about me not getting involved in the ‘Wendell Simlin’ scandal. I
didn’t write anything about it because it was an accusation which could
be true or false and I just refused to be pressured. I decided to leave
it alone until Mr Reno reacts to it but he never did… so…:-). Anyway,
here’s another piece written by him… I ncreasingly, Social Media status
is depending on how many friends you have on Facebook or how many
followers you have on Twitter and so much investment goes into this
because many derive their sense of self worth from these numbers.
Sophisticated users of Social Media have wised up to the fact that
followership grows when you diss (excuse my colloquial) authority
figures such as government leaders and other leaders in society. Now,
where many on Social Media are faced with a choice of speaking their
minds or speaking what is likely to be popular, many cannot resist the
pressure to play to the gallery. This behavior is very contagious and
many youths simply conform and lose their personality to the crowd. And
it is not just youths. Increasingly, we are seeing elders, even those
who might have been elder statesmen, kowtow to much younger Social Media
overlords. What is happening here is very subtle but very real. In
the New Testament, satan showed Christ all the kingdoms of the world and
their glory and said to Him in Matthew 4:9 “all this I will give you,
if you will bow down and worship me.” Today, many overlords are
presenting a large following to Social Media adherents in Nigeria and
saying ‘all this I will give to you if your subsume your opinion to
mine’! And what makes a person an overlord? The answer is of course
Social Media followership. Social Media was created to influence the
real world, however, it was not meant to be an alternative to the real
world. But increasingly we are seeing that what you might call a cabal
has formed in the Nigerian Social Media space and I, for one have
experienced first-hand where members of this cabal have invested so much
on their Social Media personalities that they have detached themselves
from the real world. Not long ago, I paid a condolence visit to Malam
Nasir Elrufai after he lost his daughter and I met a renowned Social
Media personality at his residence who to my surprise introduced himself
to me as his Twitter handle! And this is a regular phenomenon I am told
by others who have come across some of these personalities. And when
somebody invests so much time and focus on the virtual world of Social
Media how can you convince them that that world is surreal and they have
to reflect the real world on Social Media rather than reflect Social
Media on the real world? I am going somewhere with this. At the
beginning of the year, I wrote a piece, Nigeria in 2014: Facts Versus
Fiction, chronicling President Jonathan’s achievement in office. A
blogger wrote a rejoinder saying in essence that President Jonathan had
achieved nothing and that my piece was not based on reality.
I did
not take offense but I wanted to know which aspects of what I wrote were
in his opinion (and others like him) inaccurate. To cut a long story
short, it turned out that he disagreed with the achievements I had
listed and that was his basis of calling them inaccurate. If care is
not taken, overlords can have their opinions amplified back to them by
their fawning followers which in itself is not such a bad thing,
however, where the overlord is not perceptive enough to distinguish an
echo from a real voice, he/she may end up mistaking that echo as the
voice of the people. Some people say vox populi vox Dei (the voice
of the people is the voice of God). They may be right or they may be
wrong, but certainly no one can argue that the voice of an echo is not
the voice of God. It may be the voice of a tin god, that I concede, but
never the voice of God. And the behavior I have constantly seen
displayed by many an overlord in the Nigerian Social Media space is
indicative of a narcissistic dictatorial tendency among many people who
criticize the government on Social Media. This behavior is briefly
summarized in this phrase, ‘when I need the public’s opinion, I will
give it to them’. They assume that whatever they disagree with is a
lie. In other words, their opinions are superior to facts. So, for
instance, when you write with data from the World Bank, The
International Monetary Fund, IMF, the United Nations and other tested
and recognized world regulatory bodies, they take only those aspects
which are negative and amplify them while rejecting those aspects which
paint the government and Nigeria in good light. Some have tried to
justify this behavior by saying they are closer to the people. But with
all due respects, many of those on Social Media today are some of the
most privileged youths in Nigeria. They have iPads, iPhones and the
latest Blackberry devices. They frequent the homes of prominent and
wealthy Nigerians and some of their parents are among the elite members
of the Nigerian political and business royalty. In fact, from
available records, a good number of those with the loudest voices on
Social Media do not even live in Nigeria. These regular Social Media
users are a great asset to Nigeria, but many of them are detached from
the poorest of the poor and would not know how to represent them. In
fact, I wager that the overlords amongst them (not the regular users)
may not know how to connect with the average rural dweller. Very few
would argue with me that they are more interested in the political
fortunes of their handlers. Yes, you heard me right-handlers. I put it
to Nigerians that this administration cannot be vulnerable to the
antics of these mercenaries for the simple reason that the Jonathan
administration has connected with the masses who form the bulk of the
electorate that gave it its mandate in the first instance. When this
administration revived the railways, many critics said these trains were
not the most modern trains. You can see from this type of thinking a
validation of my arguments that these Social Media mercenaries are
disconnected from the masses of Nigerians. If they are not, why would
they criticize a man who has given food to starving people because the
food was not prepared by a gourmet chef? If you had no trains for
decades and somebody brought you trains, your only thought is that you
now have a cheaper alternative to get you from point A to B. When the
consumer keeps patronizing the rail services, naturally the law of
process will kick in and these trains will eventually be modernized as
turnover increases. But here is the thing. Every time a passenger
travels from the Lagos Terminus at Iddo to Kano at a cost of 1500 Naira,
the President is putting back 10,500 Naira into his pocket which is the
saving on the 12,000 Naira he would have spent on a bus ticket to Kano.
In the same vein, whenever a Nigerian flies out of Nigeria directly
from or to the Akanu Ibiam International Airport, Enugu, the President
is putting back sixty thousand Naira that he/she would have spent on
connecting flights to either Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja or Kano
Airports back into his pocket. It doesn’t end there. When an itinerant
scholar known as Almajiri goes to school in the new Almajiri Model
schools built by the Jonathan administration in EVERY state of the
North, he no longer has to stay under the heavy rays of the sun during
the hottest periods of the day. He can then learn and assimilate what he
has learnt and with the combination of Eastern and Western education
that such schools provide, he is better able to add value to himself,
his family, his community and Nigeria. This is the impact of
President Jonathan on Nigeria. The essence of that impact is to build up
the abilities of the vast majority of the Nigerian masses to the level
where they can join those privileged youth on Social Media and speak for
themselves rather than have an overlord hand them their opinion. And
it is happening right before our very own eyes. Unbeknownst to the
overlords, there is a miracle taking place in rural Nigeria called the
Conditional Cash Transfer. The Jonathan administration is giving cash to
women who go to Federal Government provided health centers for pre and
post natal care. If they choose to have their babies in these centers,
they get another cash transfer. Many of these rural women are thus
enjoying for the first time the better life they have been hearing about
since the 1980s. Another miracle occurring right before our eyes is
Dry Season farming. For the first time in Nigeria, farmers in arid and
semi arid areas are being assisted by the Federal Ministry of
Agriculture to engage in dry season farming where they had hitherto only
farmed during the rainy season. Many people in Nigerian cities are
buying roasted and boiled corn as I speak. This is a new phenomenon. It
used to be that corn was only available during the corn season. That you
are able to buy fresh corn by the road side in March is one of the
miracles of Dry Season Farming. Ask yourself how it is possible that
Nigeria did not face a food crisis after the 2012 flood disaster that
wreaked havoc on much of Nigeria? It was because of the miracle of
dry season farming! After the flood, in just one week, the Federal
Ministry of Agriculture distributed free of charge, 20,000 metric tonnes
of rice seeds. In addition to these, farmers also received another
batch of flood resistant rice seeds sourced from the Rice Research
Center in the Philippines, a country that has learnt to cultivate rice
in spite of their regular annual floods. The end result is that
Nigeria’s annual food import bill has reduced from 2.3 trillion Naira
per annum before 2011 to 1.8 trillion Naira today. This is 500 billion
Naira that has remained in Nigeria instead of finding its way to Far
East Asia from where we import a lot of our dry staple foods. And I
encourage every reader to verify these reports. They are publicly
available and you can Google them. Farmers, Almajiri , and rural
women may not all presently have access to the Internet and Social
Media, but they all have access to and have been touched by the
Transformation Agenda and are the major reason why Nigeria’s Per Capita
Income which was at $1091 in 2009 is $1721 today. (Please see
tinyurl.com/y5tfwwd ) They are the reason why Average Life Expectancy
in Nigeria which was 47 years in 2007 is today 52 years (please see
tinyurl.com/yyl5xy2 ) And they are the reason why I remain
unapologetically a supporter of President Goodluck Jonathan and his
Transformation Agenda irrespective of what an overlord may say.
SOURCE :www.trends.ng
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