Ejé Sukun Ara Yín -By Kehinde Oluwatosin Babatunde

Those who murdered Jesus felt they took away his perceived earthly dominance, they hardly knew they midwifed Jesus’s eternal control of the keys of heaven.

And in one of such apologetic gestures when Jesus was being trudged to the cross, Jesus responded articulately by telling mourners  “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.”  This statement is aptly profound for it laid bare at the foot of the murderers the fact that Jesus care less about this perishable world, yet those whom he would judge weep in his stead.

Over the past one week a mock video showing vice president Yemi Osinbajo stuttering at using the verb ‘were‘ has gone viral. The first time I saw the mock video I did not dignify it given that I have listened at several points to the Vice President speak, his oratory power for me is probably second to that of Barack Obama, I have seen Yemi Osinbajo give unscripted speeches laced with all manners of nuances to crowds without errors, so I felt the stuttering of ‘were’ was a mere glitch. 

If Nigeria was a country serious about revamping the education sector, Yemi Osinbajo’s speeches should have been codified and institutionalized in our tertiary schools for being the standard of speaking in public conversations.

I however find it disheartening that the generation of Nigerians who hardly read, hardly read more than a tweet for knowledge, hardly listen to news, promoted ‘look gooding guys’ as a new vocabulary, that writes all things in short hand including exams, that added ‘S’ to anyway without a contextual or grammatical explanation for it, that cannot engage in any form of cognitive conversation for five minutes are at the fore front in joking about the glitch of the Vice President. 

All I can say to you is weep for yourselves, not for the Vice President, he has outdone himself already, his children are not even sitting at home because of ASUU strike. 

It should be striking to this generation that despite all that is said about her jet age and computer sophistication majority of all  blue chip infrastructures and political system in Nigeria still belongs to these men of old. Ejé sukun ara yín.

Kehinde Oluwatosin Babatunde is a prolific writer and public speaker based in Lagos.
Email: Kehindeobabatunde@gmail.com