People find the responses to this tweet hilarious, some even say the man is getting a well-deserved roasting, not me. I think the responses are tragic, the same way as many by Nigerians on Twitter.
The horde of Nigerians on Twitter seem to be generally driven by a single ambition -how to outdo one another in swift, caustic, stupid retorts. The sillier and more pedestrian the retort, the better. If it has the ability to ridicule, (not necessarily discredit) the tweet in question, the better chances it has of going viral and making a celebrity of its originator.
The first person to drop such a reply gets huge retweets and becomes an instant attraction -the ultimate dream of many social media users. Facebook people hear of it and rush off to take screenshots for onward sharing and re-sharing while cooing how bloody Twitter Nigeria has become and how Nigerians Twitterians have zero chills.
Everywhere you turn you’ll see the silly, unfortunate thing being shared by everyone bereft of real amusement. Senator Ben Murray-Bruce is their regular customer. They call it a clap back, or something like that. They have tried it on Senator Shehu Sani too. Perhaps I am getting too old because I find many of these things patently stupid.
Take this one on Atiku Abubakar for instance. His tweet interrogates a legitimate question on behalf of Nigerians, yet the same people on whose behalf Atiku made this intervention turned his intervention into an opportunity to insult, ridicule and mock him.
“Stop this holier than thou attitude” went one reply.
“How many hospitals have you built?” asked another who became the winner as everyone turned his reply into the refrain for the rest of the thread.
“Do lecturers in your school use the sick bay in your school?” On and on the clap backs went drowning the entire tweet in vomitus from near-psychotic, humour-bereft Nigerians.
What they forget is that Atiku Abubakar is not the president of Nigeria and has never been and so is/was not in a position to provide Nigerians with the needed health care facilities.
Another thing these irritants forget is that the former vice president will never until he dies, be at the mercy of the horrible healthcare system he tweeted against. If any gains are possible from his tweet, the beneficiaries will be these same unfortunate mockers.
And let’s say that Atiku Abubakar is part of our problem in this country, let’s agree that he was and is a major contributor to the ranks of our oppressors, but tell, who intervenes when his enemies are readying their sabres to maim each other? -if not a fool!
Atiku Abubakar raised a crucial query that should be looked at critically, has nothing to do with him (ulterior political ambitions or not) yet the supposed beneficiaries of his query turn it into some joke and free for all insult ride.
I can’t find the humour here. It’s rather unfortunate and to me actually, the kind of frustration that informs why/how former supporters of the people, aka activists or those who side with the masses to speak truth to power quickly take sides with power against the people the moment they themselves get power.
The people don’t seem to deserve any better. They love their oppression. It gives them something to talk about, something to complain about, something to be righteously angry about. And who is more prone to easy anger and yet easily satisfied with an outpouring of righteous indignation than the impotent, perpetually dispossessed?
Yes, when a nation is bereft of things to laugh about, when mirth and laughter and joy are only remembered as long gone memories and pain and agony and gnashing of teeth roam like conquistadors over abandoned plains, citizens will try to finagle humour even from their own mothers graves, but can’t there be at least that faint flicker, one last smouldering stick to spark that redemptive combustion? Must we all perish?
We have to pause the promotion of this culture of making nonsense of crucial interventions -no matter who makes them on our behalf. We might not trust them, we might not by their interventions, sincere or not, wave away their former sins in a single gesture of absolution but does a sick man have the luxury of rejecting herbal interventions no matter its source?
