A few days ago I ran into this caption on a blog -‘See What President Jonathan Did To This Respected Man In Front Of His Wife’ -curious to see what Jonathan had done again, I clicked only to see a picture of Ambassador Dalhatu Tafida and President Jonathan, with Patience Jonathan looking on. Eventually I saw the picture on other blogs with different captions. What they had in common, however, was the apparent desire to make the president look bad. If they had even projected it with a comical slant, maybe we might have tried to laugh but their captions seemed more like they were bringing us some serious breaking news.
I have argued more against Jonathan than I have in his favour, but one thing we must keep in mind always is that critiquing a nation’s leadership is a serious instrument through which we seek to improve the nation and is neither comedy skits for cheap humour nor a chainsaw with which to hack the leadership to pieces at all costs. As someone said on a certain platform, “If there is something more appalling than the sycophants who support the president, it’s the sycophants against him.”
People have argued whether Dalhatu Tafida was really kneeling on the ground or just leaning from a chair in the picture, I deem it irrelevant whichever be the case. If Jonathan asked him to kneel and he felt it was demeaning to him, he could have refused and resigned, if need be, with his head held high or he could have refused and waited with honour for the president to do whatever. I mean, have we run out of serious issues that this is what we throw at the president now? Both men simply had a meeting, why try to embarrass them unnecessarily? That some blogs deemed this parody and cheap blackmail of the president news worthy makes a mockery of the daily serious efforts of 160 million or more Nigerians to make the leadership more accountable and calls the professionalism of most of these blogs to question.
There are issues better explored within the confines of one’s immediate environment and there are issues to be brought to the teeming Nigerian public; this picture and a suitable caption is one of those issues we can have a good laugh with in our immediate environment and not news worthy enough to bother Nigerians with. Bloggers best be guided as nation building is serious business and not a comedy show.
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.
