The age of make believe, By Odi Ikpeazu

In most of Africa, we are understandable absentees in some of the most positive stages of world civilization, notably the Age of Discovery and the Industrial Revolution. Though we are keen to leech on to Egypt’s legend as the cradle of civilisation, a sardonic bystander might cynically regard us as wannabe characters in a virtual fiction when we do so.

As if to make up for all that, it appears we have broken out in a stampede and made a beeline for the Social Media Age. Unfortunately, many have arrived there with quite an astonishing intellectual vacuum that would make the Grand Canyon seem like a hole on a golf course.

Conveniently convincing ourselves that we cannot reinvent the wheel, we have leisurely justified our inability to at least learn how to construct it. Being in that rather sorry state of mind, we have taken full advantage of the ease of social media to landfill our valley of vacuousness with delusions of sophistry and its incessant avalanche of verbal garbage.

The grand ambition of much of our population today is obviously to become overnight internet sensations, celebrities of vacuity, superstars of nothingness, rebels without a cause and quite laughably, social influencers of sorts. Isn’t it very doubtful that a comatose mentality can influence society, except in so far as to infect it with psychological influenza? Yet, a great number are obsessed with this new-fangled, influence-peddling, social media, pseudo-journalism. Characteristically too lazy to learn the proper practice but quick to make pretensions to it, so many of these counterfeit practitioners truly fancy themselves inexplicably as syndicated columnists, investigative journalists, sports analysts, important social critics and so on.

Apparently, the quickest way to public acclaim is to rain abuse on people in power, whereby specific allegations do not matter as much as sweeping insults. President Buhari was once popularly pronounced dead, not by doctors but by a motley crew of assorted folks with enough change to buy data for their phones. What was more, upon his death, he was replaced by a clone and although palm wine tappers, fishmongers and truck pushers had proof of this, impeccable intelligence organizations like the CIA, M16, KGB and MOSSAD incredibly did not.

Nothing brings on the applause like the so-called gallantry of speaking truth to power! Yet, for what seemed an eternity in the South East of Nigeria, none of those truth-speakers could venture out of their homes on Mondays. The other day, this young Northern Nigerian native of Twitter brazenly accused Mrs. Buhari of theft and plumpness, which predictably endeared him to the digital crowd, bringing memories of blood thirsty ancient Roman pleibians when gladiators were thrown to hungry lions in amphitheatres. This Northern twit, going by his bio which I gleaned, is a student of Toxicology at some instituition and it is my guess that he was trying his best to impress on his beloved audience the high levels of toxicity, which he has attained already.

I understand he was arrested and I can only hope that he is professionally made to answer to charges of false allegations of theft, acquitted if innocent and jailed if guilty. As for his derision of Mrs. Buhari as fat, I have taken many long looks at that graceful African woman and seen nothing but beauty, attraction and a full body. As a matter of fact, let me confess right here that she is one reason I am jealous of President Buhari but on the other hand, I genuflect to him for his exotic taste. As they say, real men eat meat, not bones.

I hear murmurings of intention to begin demonstrations across the country, an extension of the social media-driven EndSars, I imagine. In many of their trite criticisms, I hear references to President Macron, who some time go was slapped by some obviously unhinged Frenchman and why didn’t Mrs. Buhari just turn the other cheek when this Northern Nigerian accused her of a crime? Trust them to make these comparisons and approximations when it suits their mediocrity. By the way, I do hope they know that the guillotine was in use in France not just during the Revolution in 1792 but for hundreds of years thereafter and was only recently disabled after Hamida Djandoubi was guillotined just the other day in 1977.

And again, when they look toward France for guidance and example, it shouldn’t just be about slapping and an indulgent Emmanuel Macron. It should really be more about things like how French inventors invented Pasteurisation, canning of foods, the sewing machine, the refrigerator and of course how Louis Braille invented the braille to help the blind to read. It is obvious certainly that even within the fraternity of the sighted among us, many stand in dire need of the braille.

-Ikpeazu is a lawyer and a Pan-Africanist