NIGERIANS LIKE BEER PARLOUR GOSSIPS

I can’t help liken Nigeria to a beer parlour and most of her citizens, patrons of this beer parlour. With the way we get gripped with frenzy over inconsequential and often times sensational news with no real benefit or even sensibility, I just can’t help thinking of us than more than a group of people who enjoy gossips.

The news that the budget was missing from the National Assembly was greeted with this usual frenzy. People started talking left and right and back and forth. I kept asking myself, what is the usefulness of this discussion? Radio and TV houses either had guests invited to the studio to discuss the ‘debacle’ or had their phone lines ringing off the hook with people who desperately wanted to give their own opinion on the matter.

But the question for me is, “why should this be important?”. The budget is a document! It is not like we printed one and then destroyed the electronic copy. Its not like that the copy that purportedly got missing is the only one printed. So why should jump into a frenzy on this one. Meanwhile, while we continue to genuflect on this ‘gist[, Lassa fever is quietly spreading, and killing people. Its killed more people than Ebola did, and there is no national pandemic declared. I don’t hear anyone telling us what to do and how to help to combat this deadly fever. Rather, we are all glued to a drama of missing budget document like people who are glued to those Mexican soaps that seems to go on forever.

I don’t mind that we talk about it briefly as a comic relief from the stress of living in Nigeria as a Nigerian, but to spend this inordinate amount of time and resources on it is a little bit taken afar.