BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM Yesterday, I was astonished to read comments by some Nigerian youth about a particular social activist for shouting the name of Rauf Aregbesola as the winner of yesterday gubernatorial election in Osun State. They questioned her rationale for such exclamation and scolded her for using her group page to promote APC and I was amazed. The first thing that came to my mind was: HAVE THESE FOLKS FORGOTTEN A PART OF THE NIGERIA CONSTITUTION THAT TALKS ABOUT FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND ASSOCIATION? Might be they fogotten but I want to remind them that majority of the social media activists and commentators are always in the opposing camp and it is their Constitutional right to do that and they owe you no explanation. It is very rare for you to find activist being on government side. If they dont openly declare where they belong or which party they are playing, their body language speaks volume. It is unfortunate that majority of Nigerians are gullible and they followed people blindly even to the grave. I can authoritatively submit that many of the youth activists on social media are opposition to President Goodluck Jonathan and not the federal government. They wrote all manner of post to bring him down before the people and to some extent, it is working for them. But, the truth remains that Goodluck Jonathan was elected by Nigerian in what was acclaimed by local and international observers as the best poll in Nigeria. So Constitutionally, he is the head of Nigerian government and deserves some respect. If we do not respect him as a person for whatever reason, we should respect the office that he occupy. It is amazing that today we are already celebrating the victory of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola as the winner of yesterday governorship election in Osun but fail to acknowledge what propel the victory in the first place. The false alarm that was raised on social and print media that PDP led government mobilized the security forces to rigged the election in favour of their candidate has been put in the freezer and the position have since forgotten about it. It is hypocrisy to see people celebrating only when they are being favoured by the process but shout on top of the roof when it goes the opposite. What guaranteed credible election in Edo State where Adam Oshiomhole won was the heavy presence of security operatives. Same was applicable to Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State followed by Anambra State before Ekiti State where a PDP Candidate won. From information available, no life was lost and the poll went smootly in all the aforementioned states. The thuggery, snatching of ballot box, stuffing of votes, voting at peoples bedroom rather than polling units, and other manner of malpractices ceased with the presence of heavy security during election. Why then do we want to crucify President Goodluck Jonathan? We should not gorget the era where vote were bundled away by INEC and results announced on radio and pages of newspaper yet this country was still existing and people accepted whatever that was announced and sometimes, when it is contested in court, the result remains the same. I think time is ripe that we Nigerians should learn to accommodate people not basically on the ground of where they come from or which camp do they belong but what he or she can offer. It will be on record that President Goodluck Jonathan bring sanity to the electoral processes in Nigeria. This is an unbeatable facts. We must accord him the respect that he deserves and give him the necessary support that he needed to take Nigeria out of the doldrum. Goodluck Jonathan meant well for all Nigerians and he is working seriously hard to correct the ills of the past. It is our role as citizens to applaud him when he does it well and scolded him when he does the opposite. It is a betrayal of our conscience to submit that he has done nothing and only people with lack of good parental upbringing and moral values that make such assertion. Activism is not blind to reality but we must put our conscience to test and swallow our pride to commend when necessary.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 06:23:12 +0000
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