Charlyboy: My Oga at the top: Stop the rubbish

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.