One of the enduring controversies of ages is the conflict between good and evil, between truth and lie. To many minds, the origin of lies and the reason for their existence are source of great perplexity.
One of the enduring controversies of ages is the conflict between good and evil, between truth and lie. To many minds, the origin of lies and the reason for their existence are source of great perplexity.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content1'); });
In politics as in other areas of human endeavor, it is not uncommon to observe that exalted truths bring hatred and strife. The irrepressible conflict to uphold and defend one is to attack and overthrow the other.
But truth and lie cannot harmonize.
I don’t know Okupe as a person, or as a medical doctor (thank God!), or as political hangers-on. But the little I read about him makes me want to spit. This much is true about him:
He’s a man plagued by moral, financial, and credibility problems. Okupe wears pride like a jeweled necklace and clothed in cruelty. He’s a man who submits to the soft, glittery pleasures of the world.
His days with the OBJ administration are remembered only in terms of dying testimony of false theories and fatal delusions. Now, all gone like a breath of wind that never returns.
Once Aso Rock First Family realized that Reuben Abati’s artful perversion of the truth was not good enough to win many converts or coerced many Nigerians to believe hook line and sinker the president’s “transformation agenda,” Doyin Okupe was brought out of retirement to doozie up the cloak of falsehood.
Given his perilous past, no one was surprised that Mr. Jonathan tapped Okupe as the best enemy of truth to hunt and hunker down the critics of the president’s administration.
His addition to the Aso Rock propaganda machine has brought the noisy paltering and disgusting fabrications even more dangerously alive.
Poor Okupe, like a warrior aroused from a drunken stupor he hurriedly abandoned his N886 million life of luxury, windfall from road contracts he never executed to answer the call of duty.
Okupe, like a well-aged wine wasted no time to announce his arrival. I’m not an attack dog, call me attack lion, he was quoted as saying. Without wasting time, he went to work.
Oblivious of the words of our elders that if a man climbs rotten trees intending to make it his castle, don’t be tempted to join him or be drawn into argument with him. He didn’t blink an eye, he joined the propaganda coterie.
To smooth and soothe Aso Rock’s propaganda machine, the elderly German Shepherd seems to be saying to the young Oracle, Abati: “Man Up” – Don’t be a pussy, brave it, be daring,” “strap on a pair, grow some balls, stop being such a complete utter wuss,” and “be tough, be a man, do what a man should do.”
We know attack dogs especially a German Shepherd like Okupe don’t come cheap. We’ll never know the purchase price of the bully German native. For sure, Mr. Jonathan doesn’t give a damn how much it cost Nigerian tax payers to retrieve the special breed.
Henceforth, Jonathan’s version of “Man Up Campaign” would be led by his newly purchased German Shepherd. In his rhetorical veneer violating Nigerian’s delicate sensibilities, Okupe set to high boil from the word go.
Since he became president, Mr. Jonathan’s Aso Rock signature has been the charade of deceit, lying, and make belief. By now, Nigerians have become accustomed to the tired choreography of lies from the grinding mills of Aso Rock.
September 10, The Nation newspaper reports that Okupe plans nationwide tour with his new BMW (747 series?) to show case the achievements of President Jonathan.
According to Okupe, the GEJ administration’s achievement in the last 15 months includes: power, roads, and electoral reforms being the high points of the administration. Okupe said Mr. Jonathan had revived 10 abandoned IPP (independent Power Projects), 8 of the projects rehabilitated up to 90%. The rest 2 are up to 80%.
He said Mr. Jonathan inherited 1,900 to 2,200 megawatts of electricity, now it’s been increased to 4400 megawatts and “… the people can now enjoy at least 15 hours of uninterrupted power supply.”
Contracts for Benin-Ore road, the Onitsha road, and Lagos-Ibadan expressway would be completed on schedule, said Okupe.
The tour will take him to the six regions of Nigeria, viz: south west, south east, south-south, north west, north east, and north central. Tagged “achievements,” the tour is aimed at misdirect our criticisms and rage of the government to a Nigeria’s world of heaven and sentimental romance.
As part of the campaign to sell Nigerians delicacies of lies and wrongs of Jonathan’s administration, during the tour Okupe will be armed with copies of book titled “Sure and Steady Transformation.”
Okupe’s common sense needs some dusting off.
Do we need a bull dog and a bull horn to clog our ears with the “achievements” of a depressingly inept government?
Isn’t it normal and expected that a tangible, concrete development will be visible by all to see? Do we need a town crier to mesmerize us with mirages of rhetorical charade?
Won’t Nigerians feel the positive impact of such “transformation” in their day- to- day living?
A country of 160 million people, 67 million youths are unemployed according to the director general, National Directorate of Employment (NDE) Mallam Abubakar Mohammed. What other achievements could eclipse this potential time bomb epidemic?
As Mr. Okupe cruises in his turbo charged BMW around the country, he should pay special attention to these primary markers of cycles of chaos and destruction:
Raw realities of poverty, heaps of industrial ruins and relics, the sorrows and tears by the bucketful of Nigerians, the bread of suffering, the silenced majority, the sick eyes of a crestfallen people, and the landscape of dystopian wasteland.
Do the markers above bear any resemblance to the contents of “Sure and Steady Transformation?” Hell, no!
The Jonathan administration believes rightly or wrongly that Nigerians are too daft to recognize apples from oranges. The recycled theater of the absurd went on unhindered with oppressive tactics to support it and with many people believing that orange is an apple.
Never mind the Cool Aid the German Shepherd is trying to force Nigerians to drink. I see Okupe’s propaganda tour as lump of clay that dissolves even before it is molded.
Like every Orwellian regime, the lies and the wrongs of Aso Rock are doomed to fall. The people might have tasted an apple, but they damn sure recognize the taste of oranges and have had enough. But the revolution is gearing up and will not stop until the people get the apples they deserve.
We’ll like to remind the Jonathan administration that the most dangerous of all false doctrines are those seasoned with a little truth. The president should devote his time and resources with boiling urgency and an audacious sincerity to the suffocating problems that are killing Nigerians daily.
There is a difference between straw and grain!
[email protected]
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('content2'); });