It’s another season of wailing for Nigerians now that Twitter has bypassed the “Giant of Africa” and sited its headquarters in Ghana. Jack Dorsey and his Twitter gurus must have avoided Nigeria like a plague because they would not want to work under a terrorist minister who screamed that he gets his orgasms when unbelievers are killed!
If Nigeria wants to enjoy the company of the makers of the modern technological gizmos it is incumbent on the country to put on board leaders that are techno-savvy – not presenters of “NEPA certificate.”
In the run-up to the 2015 elections, a friend of mine sent me a photograph of the then President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan working on his laptop computer.
What the fellow who sent the photograph wanted me to understand was that Nigeria cannot afford to go back to the dark days of computer-illiterate leaders.
Time was when all that defined the Nigerian leader was just his garish agbada or babanriga and the sheaf of unread papers in front of him.
It had been Nigeria’s misfortune that since independence no Nigerian Head of State or President had been through the four walls of a university.
Then came the briefly tragic tenure of the mourned ex-President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua of “Umoru, are you dead?” fame. After Yar’Adua died, together with his Masters Degree in Chemistry, Nigeria somewhat upped the ante through the coming via “Doctrine of Necessity” of Dr Goodluck Jonathan, armed with the end of book knowledge, alias PhD!
The simple man from Otuoke, even as he was in the full custody of the much-coveted Doctorate, was dismissed as being “clueless”, and Nigeria perforce reverted to lower than square one.
I am not saying that just going to the university necessarily makes a great leader, but not having a proper education is definitely not the best preparation for modern leadership in this changing world of knowledge.
A leader who had not been to school is akin to a waste pipe!
One tries as much as possible not to keep going back to the colonial masters to source the blame of Nigeria’s many problems, but the evidence is all too glaring that colonial Britain never really wanted educated and aware leaders for this country.
Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was avidly hated by the British who ensured that the independence election was skewed to favour the feudal North.
Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s promotion of the ideals of education was a threat to the neocolonial plans of Britain.
It is my duty here to remind the wide world that the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) which ended up forming the government at independence in 1960 actually came last in the elections if the popular votes were meant to count.
The popular votes of the independence elections of December 12, 1959 show that Dr Azikiwe’s NCNC-NEPU coalition scored 2,594,577 votes to place first with Chief Awolowo’s Action Group (AG) coming second with a total of 1,992,364 votes while Sir Ahmadu Bello’s Northern People’s Congress (NPC) came last with a total vote count of 1,992,179 votes.
According to Nnamdi Azikiwe in his book, Ideology for Nigeria: Capitalism, Socialism or Welfarism, “The colonial regime had so adroitly manipulate the electoral constituencies that the most unpopular party (NPC) won the most seats (142); the most popular coalition parties (NCNC-NEPU) won the second highest number of seats (90); whilst the second most popular party (Action Group) won the least number of seats (73)…”
Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who could not rival Zik or Awo in education thus became the Prime Minister, not minding that he had back in 1947 said “Nigerian unity is only a British intention for the country” and that “if the British quitted Nigeria now at this stage the northern people could continue their uninterrupted conquest to the sea.”
The gerrymandering and manipulation of census figures engineered by colonial Britain have been given a new fillip in this day and age of brazen kleptocracy and kakistocracy!
History had to be manipulated out of the school syllabus and curriculum in the bid to truly return Nigeria to the Dark Ages.
It was out of desperation that outraged youths took out their laptops and mobile phones to organize the EndSARS phenomenon that sent panic across all the levers of power.
The computer essence cannot of course find a common ground with the herding of human beings as cattle. The youths are screaming “My laptop is faster than yours!”
Twitter has some 25 million of its constituents in Nigeria, and if democracy is truly a game of numbers, Twitter ought to have its headquarters in Nigeria and not in Ghana.
Let’s hear the lament of former Governor Sule Lamido: “Buhari has reduced Nigeria to his level; even professors and SANs are behaving like illiterates under him.”
Only a laptop presidency can survive the daredevil youths of Twitter democracy.
It’s another season of wailing for Nigerians now that Twitter has bypassed the “Giant of Africa” and sited its headquarters in Ghana.
Jack Dorsey and his Twitter gurus must have avoided Nigeria like a plague because they would not want to work under a terrorist minister who screamed that he gets his orgasms when unbelievers are killed!
If Nigeria wants to enjoy the company of the makers of the modern technological gizmos it is incumbent on the country to put on board leaders that are techno-savvy – not presenters of “NEPA certificate.”
In the run-up to the 2015 elections, a friend of mine sent me a photograph of the then President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan working on his laptop computer.
What the fellow who sent the photograph wanted me to understand was that Nigeria cannot afford to go back to the dark days of computer-illiterate leaders.
Time was when all that defined the Nigerian leader was just his garish agbada or babanriga and the sheaf of unread papers in front of him.
It had been Nigeria’s misfortune that since independence no Nigerian Head of State or President had been through the four walls of a university.
Then came the briefly tragic tenure of the mourned ex-President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua of “Umoru, are you dead?” fame. After Yar’Adua died, together with his Masters Degree in Chemistry, Nigeria somewhat upped the ante through the coming via “Doctrine of Necessity” of Dr Goodluck Jonathan, armed with the end of book knowledge, alias PhD!
The simple man from Otuoke, even as he was in the full custody of the much-coveted Doctorate, was dismissed as being “clueless”, and Nigeria perforce reverted to lower than square one. I am not saying that just going to the university necessarily makes a great leader, but not having a proper education is definitely not the best preparation for modern leadership in this changing world of knowledge.
A leader who had not been to school is akin to a waste pipe! One tries as much as possible not to keep going back to the colonial masters to source the blame of Nigeria’s many problems, but the evidence is all too glaring that colonial Britain never really wanted educated and aware leaders for this country.
Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe was avidly hated by the British who ensured that the independence election was skewed to favour the feudal North. Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s promotion of the ideals of education was a threat to the neocolonial plans of Britain.
It is my duty here to remind the wide world that the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) which ended up forming the government at independence in 1960 actually came last in the elections if the popular votes were meant to count.
The popular votes of the independence elections of December 12, 1959 show that Dr Azikiwe’s NCNC-NEPU coalition scored 2,594,577 votes to place first with Chief Awolowo’s Action Group (AG) coming second with a total of 1,992,364 votes while Sir Ahmadu Bello’s Northern People’s Congress (NPC) came last with a total vote count of 1,992,179 votes.
According to Nnamdi Azikiwe in his book, Ideology for Nigeria: Capitalism, Socialism or Welfarism, “The colonial regime had so adroitly manipulate the electoral constituencies that the most unpopular party (NPC) won the most seats (142); the most popular coalition parties (NCNC-NEPU) won the second highest number of seats (90); whilst the second most popular party (Action Group) won the least number of seats (73)…”
Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who could not rival Zik or Awo in education thus became the Prime Minister, not minding that he had back in 1947 said “Nigerian unity is only a British intention for the country” and that “if the British quitted Nigeria now at this stage the northern people could continue their uninterrupted conquest to the sea.”
The gerrymandering and manipulation of census figures engineered by colonial Britain have been given a new fillip in this day and age of brazen kleptocracy and kakistocracy!
History had to be manipulated out of the school syllabus and curriculum in the bid to truly return Nigeria to the Dark Ages. It was out of desperation that outraged youths took out their laptops and mobile phones to organize the EndSARS phenomenon that sent panic across all the levers of power.
The computer essence cannot of course find a common ground with the herding of human beings as cattle. The youths are screaming “My laptop is faster than yours!”
Twitter has some 25 million of its constituents in Nigeria, and if democracy is truly a game of numbers, Twitter ought to have its headquarters in Nigeria and not in Ghana.
Let’s hear the lament of former Governor Sule Lamido: “Buhari has reduced Nigeria to his level; even professors and SANs are behaving like illiterates under him.” Only a laptop presidency can survive the daredevil youths of Twitter democracy.
END
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