This issue shouldn’t have bothered me as an ordinary citizen of Nigeria but considering the fact that we have had a enough issues on our hands as a country which we are grappling with at the moment which by far have negative consequences on our political life than what is it in U S election, one cannot longer put a blind eye to the potential ravaging issues. Issues ranging from #Endsars #Endbadgovernanceinnigeria and the senseless massacre of our brothers by the Nigerian army at the Lekki tollgate while conducting a peaceful protest in Lagos. Unfortunately, those who swore an oath to protect lives and properties ordered the young armed boys who do not even know their own right as a citizens of a country they ought to protect turned their arms against those who were demanding for a Better Nigeria for all us including the armed Nigerian soldiers and other security agencies alike.
If in sane climes, the armed men would have joined the peaceful protesters to demand a better working condition for themselves but as they always says, they are ready to die in penury rather than fighting for themselves. One would have thought that what happened in Nigeria over the recent times would have taught every well meaning Nigerian that we have a plethora of issues in our cupboards to settle and mind our own business in Nigeria but little did we know that the U S election will be another bundle of issues on the mind of many Nigerians who don’t even know anything about America than the Americans themselves.
First was the former minister of aviation, Mr FEMI FANI KAYODE who recently nicknamed himself as Mr SHOT FUSE MASTER who wrote passionately about Donald Trump. He wrote a very lengthy epistle about him but could not tell us the gains of Trump’s administration in Nigeria for the last four years of his becoming the president of the great United States of America. The reason why he supported him is that Trump is a Christian and that Joe Biden is anti Christ and maybe a proponent of same sex marriage but could not tell us the economic and political gains of his administration in Nigerian home and abroad.
Hummmn Nigeria with religious sentiment! Hope someone is not playing religious and ethnic jingle in the ears of Americans just like we do back in Nigeria to draw more religious sympathizers on our own side of political barricade. Unfortunately, Americans are wiser in their own games. They do not easily give in to primitive sentiment and emotions like we do here in Nigeria and Africa at large. Americans knows the kind of society they want to live in and they voted for it. It is not a place where one’s sentiment or emotions can override other people’s judgement of the right thing to do. Another Guy who did same thing is Prophet Dino Melaye who besieged us not long after the cable news network, CNN projected Joe Biden as the winner of the election. Prophet Dino Melaye rushed to his archives and started to dig out the photographs that he had taken with Joe Biden some years ago.
The intentions of that hasty display of his familiarity with a candidate when election was still on going left me to ponder. 1, he probably want to alert his political contemporaries in Nigeria that he has a close affinity with the world president thereby growing his political stature and intimidating his opponents in time to come as it is the case in Nigeria where u can only get anything by your connection to the rich. And I tell you again, that doesn’t work in America.
Even if it does in America, Is Dino the only figure from Nigeria/ Africa who had taken a photographes with a president of U S / incoming president of American nation as the case maybe? Other people might have but decided to keep it on the low because it’s of no electoral value to their personalities considering the fact that President Trump had already gone to court to challenge the on going process then. If Joe Biden had lose and Trump later declared winner what would have been your music with Trump and Trump’s dieing admirer like Mr SHOT FUSE? Certainly, it would be another song u will be singing now. The surprising thing is that even our pastors in Nigeria did not spare us a minute of rest with their prophecies of who will win and who will lose. They left Nigeria to go to America to do the job that American pastors would have done as though there are no pastors in the US.
The amazing thing again is I have never seen American clergy, pastors, even imam telling us who will win their own but Nigerian pastors were busy inundating social media minutes by minutes with their prophecies, old and new about who will win and lose. At the end of the day, what do we gain? We attract more hatred and display of how gullible we are as a country because we had sown seed of hate speech, sign of allegiance to a particular party who if did not win as projected us will turn against the other.
From Ralph Omale Public Affairs Analyst, Abuja
