Mr. Oluwole Bakare completely got it wrong in The Guardian publication of Saturday, November 9, 2013 titled: Stella Oduah: Travails of hard working-public servant. Mr. Oluwole Bakare indefatigably tried to douse the current clamor against the oddity in the Nigerian Aviation industry. The happenstance here is the microcosm of the general decadence in our system. Why is he interchanging black for white when there is overwhelming evidence to show the castration of a wealthy nation called Nigeria by these unrepentant vultures in power?
I am terribly sorry for his likes for defending the indefensible. In a civilized society, the Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah would have tendered her resignation honorably if she has no skeleton in her closet. Mr. Bakare is indeed part of the “wired” Nigerians in the Diaspora, apology to Prof. Pius Adesanmi whose article I strongly recommend for Mr. Oluwole Bakare, the article titled: “WISH ME WHAT YOU LIVE ABROAD OR GET THEE BEHIND ME, BUDDY!”.
Here are some expositions extracted copiously from it for Mr. Oluwole Bakares to peruse. The ace article that succinctly exposed the anatomy of the maladies plaguing the Nigerian psyche. “I have claimed that even more than corruption, the psychology of the Nigerian is Nigeria’s deadliest enemy. Prof. Pius Adesanmi in his treatise goes further, ” Rewire that wrongly-wired psychology and all other things shall be added……..”.
“While not justifying or excusing manifestations of wrong psychological wiring in a large number of Nigerians based at home, I daresay it is largely understandable. If he is fifty years old and below and has never left the shores of Nigeria, no matter how educated, cosmopolitan, urbane, polished, and refined he is, you must remember that he has never ever experienced responsible and accountable governance for one second of his life. He has never experienced the humility and ordinariness of power”. He goes further that: “It is this lack of a lived experience of the real thing, of the real deal, that sometimes transforms the Nigerian regular Joe into the most vociferous defender of his own oppression”.
“If you know better and you hit the airwaves and the public sphere with tales of alternatives, the wrongly wired Nigerian could become your deadliest foe. He is going to come after you with all he’s got. He is going to defend with his last breath the same irresponsible government officials who are raping his present and mortgaging his future. If you look at things closely, this is to be expected. You are rocking the boat of the only world he knows. You are talking scornfully about the only experience of the world he can boast of.
“You are saying that his world is inadequate, corrupt, hopeless, unacceptable, and indefensible. You are saying that the only national space he knows is inferior to the paleolithic age. He will fight you. He will abuse you. This is what makes him the most reliable weapon in the hands of folks like Doyin Okupe, Reuben Abati, Reno Omokri, Ahmed Gulak and all those who make a living by retailing lies, deceit, and illusion on behalf of Nigeria’s corruption and impunity………..The wrongly wired Nigerian is their greatest asset. Here, they have an army of volunteers ready to be used in the schemes of their own very oppression. They will defend the status quo and the shitstem. They will defend the sadists who sell lies on behalf of the status quo. They will tell you to bugger off”.
The ebullient Professor has advice for political adversaries of Mr. Oluwole that ” You must understand that you owe it to Nigeria to persist and to insist. You owe the wrongly wired Nigerian, no matter how much he screams and abuses you. You owe him empathy, sympathy, compassion, and understanding. You owe him a great deal of patience. You owe it to Nigeria not to abandon him in the hands of the government sadists for whom his wrong wiring and lack of civic awareness are assets worth more than their weight in gold. You have to understand that the rapists of Nigeria rely on his wrong wiring to be able to continue and sustain their successful rape of that country. And the way to do that is to under-educate or mal-educate him, keep him permanently in a state of blissful civic unawareness, fool him into believing that he is being patriotic by defending them in the name of religion and ethnicity. You need a lot of patience to cut through five decades of deliberate psychological miswiring of this Nigerian by the oppressor he is defending. Look up Stockholm syndrome in the dictionary and you will understand why this Nigerian deserves your patience”. This last quoted parts of the talented Professor Pius Adesanmi’s essay recaps and speaks to the conscience of the likes of Mr. Oluwole Bakare who live in the comfort of their homes abroad defending the inept and egregious administration.
“However, you must understand that the Nigerian who is wrongly wired at home has a formidable ally abroad. This foreign-based ally of the home-based defender of the status quo is one of Nigeria’s most dangerous enemies. Unlike his partner at home, he does not possess the valuable excuse of ignorance. He has lived long enough in Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Scandinavia, Australia, Canada, and the United States to understand the real meaning of responsible and accountable leadership. He has lived long enough in those places to understand that what obtains in Nigeria does not even vaguely resemble what the rest of the civilized world calls governance. From what he has experienced abroad, he understands perfectly that Nigeria is a coalition of 170 million people ruled by crass impunity and unbridled, unaccountable irresponsibility”.Yet, our friend has perfected the art of experiencing his world in Euro-America with one set of standards and Nigeria with a different, lower, inferior set of standards”.
“Whatever it is he would never accept or tolerate as a member of the civic community in Euro-America he joins up with career rationalizers of mediocrity on the ground in Nigeria to praise to high heavens. That which he rejects for his base in London he justifies and rationalizes for his fatherland in Nigeria. In the unusual circumstance that a snowstorm disrupts power to his neighbourhood in America, Canada, or Europe, if power isn’t restored within hours, he is on the phone screaming, “this is not acceptable at all” at a poor customer service representative who is assuring him that “we are doing everything to restore power sir”. But when he hears that an entire city has not had power for two weeks in Nigeria, the career rationalizer of mediocrity for Nigeria in him takes over. He joins forces with his local teammates to shout at and abuse the collective children of anger for complaining about power failure. He takes over Facebook and Twitter, preaching patience. While flipping channels between baseball and basketball in his New York living room, he tells Nigerians coping with darkness that Rome was not built in a day. He churns out constipated data about how many electrics poles Goodluck Jonathan erected last year all over the country and urges the people to be grateful to their President”.
Few days ago, we lost another notable Nigerian Dr. Festus Iyayi, former ASUU president to a chronic contraption and a mere geographical expression called Nigeria. I am terribly sad. We keep losing our golden assets. Nigeria travel everyday on these famished roads. Nigeria air unworthiness is miasma for air travels, no portable drinking water, electricity is comatose, University students are exposed to vices in the society as idle hands while their counterparts abroad are advancing in exploring engineering, science and technology, politicians continue to milk the commonwealth and YET some wrongly-wired Nigerians are praising their present and past government. This generation of Nigeria is wasted. Nigeria is fast becoming a pariah state and a mockery of the international community. Haba!!! There was indeed a count
ry.!!!
I was terribly shaken to my bone reading through this paid article of Mr. Bakare. Why is he not taking a deep breath and see the psychological damage, hell and trauma that are being wrought on the hapless Nigerians daily before accepting to this nebulous “offer”? It is mind boggling and disheartening to see people who are at vantage positions collaborating with the vices in our society instead of advancing for egalitarian society for all.
President Jonathan should see the Handwriting on the wall that he will write his name and his government in gold by taking a great heed of these Any Government in Power( AGIPs); take urgent and decisive action to cure the cancer that has metastasized its body polity. Nigeria is such a great hapless nation with wrong Managers of its affairs. The anatomy of Mr. Oluwole Bakare’s article reveals the nothingness of a warped mind and nauseates our collective conscience and consciousness.
