Charly Boy has finally weighed in on 'My Oga At The Top' saga.
It’s unfortunate, this article is coming in late. This is because I
almost ignored the racket “ My Oga at the top” generated. However,
because of some salient lessons in the whole joke, I have decided to hit
you with this.
Even though, my ways may be very
different from yours, I still believe we must be objective in our
analysis, judgment, and conclusion about others. The NSCDC Commandant,
Mr. Shem’s experience in the hands of Nigerians and the Channel TV
personalities cannot be too different from what many of us face on a
daily bases.
Some of us have been arbitrarily judged, smashed, squeezed,
criticized, and battered for several years because we have failed to be
who they want us to be. Different darts and missiles have been thrown
at us because they chose to judge us from the first impression they
conceived about us. What insult haven’t we received? They will try to
judge you by the few words they hear from your mouth. When you use signs
and symbols to communicate national issues, they misconstrue every bit
of it as you are either tagged the head of Nigeria Illuminati, or they
may even try to put your sexuality to question. However, we still love
them, and still fight for them even when they don’t really understand
why we are here. Some have not even realized the need to hold on to the
reality that confronts them today, instead, they are committed to
producing gunpowder for the celebration of individual blunder, and they
swiftly push national blunder aside.
Yes, the NSCDC
Commandant goofed, he failed to give the correct NSCDC website, he
wanted his oga at the top to announce that personally, hence he couldn’t
go ahead to announce it, as his oga may end up announcing another one
later. At first, it appeared to me as if he didn’t understand the
question until he got to the point of providing the URL of the website,
and then we all laughed when he was unable to provide the web address as
demanded. We all laughed at his little or no IT knowledge, and not
really because he is not competent enough to do his job. We all laughed
because he had displayed some level of confidence right from the
beginning of the interview till the point he was to give the website
details.
However, is it enough to have made it a
trending topic on twitter and on other social sites for days? I must say
that we have all failed by pushing aside the lesson and the message of
the controversial interview. If you don’t know, the message is simple;
there is a systemic failure. We have all failed our country. We have
even failed to channel our heavy online presence towards a more positive
direction. We have failed to understand that the entire system has no
structure as it stands now. If that is not the case, why were we not
intelligent enough to see beyond Mr. Shem’s failure and begin to reflect
over leadership failure, using the social media platform? It has always
remained this way, where only few of us can speak our minds in a
country where mediocrity reigns supreme. We have failed to see how
mediocre now flood the civil service , but all we are now looking at ,is
just Mr. Shem’s blunder. Why???
Members of staff in
several organizations know little or nothing about their organization.
They can’t even tell ‘categorically’ like Mr. Shem, whether they have an
existing or functional website. How effective are various media units
that are scattered across different Ministries in the country? NSCDC
should even thank God that it was Mr. Shem who failed, and not their
media unit, because such would have been possible. I know that majority
of Nigerians that work in the civil service are not up to date with the
internet social world, as they believe in doing things the old way. You
won’t even blame Mr. Shem for not being able to give the correct web
address or not being able to add
dot.com,
because the NSCDC Website, prior to the controversy was almost dormant.
How would you expect one to know a website that doesn’t exist or
non-functional?
But my pain is simply that we have all
failed to tackle the most pressing issues of the day, falling into the
trap and deception of the phrase “My oga at the top”. We have been so
deceived and then became so careless about our safety, laughing
hysterically; with our eyes gazed at “My Oga at the top” until the
dreaded Boko Haram found a way to shoot us with their arrows. We laughed
until we forgot that we have urgent national issues to address, and the
faceless ones hit us hard again in the city of Kano. What a shame!
While
we were busy gossiping, creating cartoons, producing T. Shirts, and
cooking beats in the studio to ridicule just a single individual, we
lost millions of naira at the Murtula Mohammed Airport, Lagos to some
armed men who stormed the airport, harassing both Nigerians and
foreigners. I heard they had a swell moment at the airport. You can’t
just imagine that armed robbers could succeed even in an International
Airport. Where is safe then? “Yet, we were busy with My oga at the top”
While
we took the joke to another level, the Boko Haram militants also saw
our weaknesses and carefree attitude, and they hit us hard, killing well
over 60 people in the Kano bomb attack. They beat all security
apparatus in place in the volatile city, because, we refused to watch
our back as we were laughing at “ My Oga at the top”
In
our usual carelessness, when some people were demanding for amnesty for
some faceless people, we kept mummed, because we were only interested in
“Oga at the top.” We refused to ask questions on why some people should
be advocating for this group.
As good, committed, and
patriotic citizens, couldn’t we have embarked on a campaign against
violence using the social media platform for that purpose? How many of
us are willing to laugh at some of the ogas in the North who have sold
the future of our children in the name of leadership tussle? How many of
us have been able to tell the Northern leaders that they have failed
their people for giving some terrorists the supports they really do not
deserve? Yet, we still talk about “My Oga at the top”
These
are no time for such jokes as we have better and serious issues to
address as Nigerian youth and children. Enough of this “My oga at the
top” Stop the rubbish now! Let’s ask them some questions on why we must
continue to bury our ourselves.
