Learning from the Seun Onigbinde fall… -By Abdullahi O. Haruna

You know what? We are the government in whatever way we look at it. The aspirations of every citizen is to serve in the government of his country. As powerful and rich as Donald Trump is, he ended up as the President of the United States of America. Don’t be surprised the day Dangote becomes Nigeria’s president. The continuous quest for aspirations is the sustaining rope that keeps us going. Naturally, being in government does not mean being rich but a fulfilment that you are serving your country.

In this part of the world, people demonise their government in the name of opposition. That’s isn’t opposition but the lack of understanding of what citizenship entails. Even those in the opposition don’t demonize the government, they engage in their rhetoric in order to gain power. So it is baffling when I see young Nigerians making criticism a preoccupation. Hell no! Pointing out alternative views to people in government shouldn’t come in acerbic splendour. Here, we have more people cursing, damning and using invective when addressing governance issue. Activism is not a replacement for madness, you don’t have any right to throw insult on people in government because you have alternative views. Drop your alternative prisms and leave it at that, arrogating yourself the crown of a judge is taking entitlement to an unattainable level.

See how we have lost Seun Onigbinde to the pit of self-immolation, he has all the brilliance required of a budget expert but fell to the push of social media esoteric. He traded his emotional intelligence for social media likes, retweets and hails. Being an alternative voice is a plus to government but when you replace the language of civility to gutterish buzz words, you miss the essence of your initial thrust. He was a young man who opened the consciousness of Nigerians to how government budgets are implemented, tracked and monitored. He challenged government expenditures and called for open governance. He did excellent jobs of domesticating the budget at all levels of government. Just when he was becoming an institution, he fell to the hubris of activism. From a teacher to a belligerent, from a voice to a wailer and like pack of cards, he blew the beautiful brand called Onigbinde.

A big lesson to everyone, opposing government policies should not be done with venom, it is the duty of every citizen to participate in the government of his country, in doing so, we must be tact, introspective and civil. You don’t change a bad system with same bad approach. Our choice of language must be measured in the school of decency as only uncivilised people resort to gutter words in addressing normal human situations.

I am pained that Seun had to resign his job or asked to go because this is a lost opportunity for him to actualize what he had always canvassed for, now he has to stand afar and watch as someone else does the job as in a nation of 200 million, no one is indispensable.

Painfully musing