I believe we all know the definition of the term ‘subservient’. Well for the purpose of clarity let me put up one of the appropriate definitions from ‘offline dictionaries’ (a mobile dictionary app) here – “abjectly submissive; characteristic of a slave or servant”.
Recently, President Goodluck Jonathan suspended Lamido Sanusi from the CBN and different people have pitched in with either the President’s camp or Sanusi’s camp and the argument has raged. Allegations of Sanusi’s misconduct in office have been presented by the presidency, while counter allegations of the government’s lapses have been flung back by Sanusi. I have read a load of comments from supporters of either camp and have made one disturbing discovery, most of the views on this matter project the prevalent subservient mindset in our clime. I came across few objective and critical comments which sensibly interrogated various perspectives (legal, political, etc.) of the Jonathan/Sanusi saga and thus projected sound views, however, comments from most people make one wonder whether there is some kind of mind control device being tested in Nigeria.
Be it in religious, political, economic or social sectors of our society, most Nigerians readily throw away sound reasoning in support of their favorite pastors, government officials and celebrities. Most of the people who are vehement in their support for Jonathan or Sanusi end up revealing their ignorance of what the salient issues in contention are, talk more of being able to situate these issues in a legal, political or economic context.
To some, Jonathan’s action is wrong simply because in their all-knowing wisdom ‘nothing good can come from Jonathan’, so there is no need to even x-ray the claims the government has put forward for suspending Sanusi or whether Jonathan’s action is backed by the constitution. To others, Sanusi is simply an APC mole, a religious bigot and an arrogant fellow hence he deserves the suspension and even more penalties without any further investigation. Most of these subservient loyalists simply lack the capacity to be neutral commentators who anchor their postulations in professional legal, economic and political tenets.
Defend any view you fancy but please do so intelligently.
My focus here isn’t to analyze who is right between Jonathan and Sanusi, I simply want to exhort us to subscribe to logic and cogent arguments instead of spewing prejudiced sentiments irrespective of whether the argument is religious, political, economic or social. Some legal arguments I read amply demonstrated that the president is legally within his rights to suspend Sanusi, but all the same Sanusi has the right to fair hearing and proper investigation to be absolved or indicted of wrongdoing as the case may be. Let’s observe the full event unfold.
Chukwudi Madu is a Contributing Editor at The Trent; a writer focused on creative writing, copywriting and technical writing. He is a proud alumnus of the prestigious Government College Umuahia (following in the steps of great Umuahians like Chinua Achebe, Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike, Elechi Amadi, I. N. C. Aniebo, Ken Saro-Wiwa and Christopher Okigbo) and an alumnus of the University of Nigeria Nsukka. He tweets @maduchuddi. His Facebook page is HERE. You can buy his books HERE.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
