Weekend Arena - Nigerians Should Leave American Politics Alone And Face The Problems In Nigeria

Every culture has a cliché that stresses the need for homegrown glory. The English people use, ‘charity begins at home’ but in Nigeria, it appears that charity, begins from the Diaspora.... 

That is the most cogent reason to explain why we ignore the log of wood in our eyes to grandstand over the speck of dust in someone else’s. 

 The ever vibrant social media space in Nigeria lets us feel the pulse of the nation over certain issues. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are some of the familiar social platforms that readily tell us how concerned Nigerians are (or appear to be) about issues. Under such instances, one would see the trends and the long threads of arguments, insults and in some cases, bitterness. The fault lines of our nationhood readily and easily show as everyone struggles to rationalise his or her elemental interests.

Some make enemies and profess heresies of others’ ethnicities on account of these, making one wonder what is in that argument for the person. Many events have left Nigerians divided, but that between who was right between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the two leading candidates in the 2020 Presidential election in US had its toll on many Nigerians.

 The politics of Trump and Biden, of course, trended on several instances in Nigeria in spite of the fact that we have very insignificant stakes in what the outcome is. I say this with all sense of modesty because neither Trump nor Joe Biden would come from the White House to patch the pothole on the Onitsha-Enugu Road. None of the two personalities would ever come down to Nigeria to help our weakened Naira. Though they may scream to high heavens about the evils of corruption, our stolen funds, would continue to find its way into the developed countries of the world, where they would help their banking institutions to build their aspiring entrepreneurs with our funds as loans to drive their economy and generate employment for their youths, while our boys languish here. 

The two personalities may have openly professed their hatred for terrorism, yet weapons from their territories, probably more sophisticated than the ones our armed forces use, would end up in the hands of Boko Haram terrorists in the north east, driving our insecurity above thresholds. So it befuddling that some of us are insulting one another over Trump and Biden, who don’t care about us. Yes, the world has been bridged a great deal with modern communication tools, which are availing us information at the speed of light, but that does not mean we should be ‘drinking paracetamol for other people’s headaches’.


In actual sense as we engage one another over US politics, several issues in our country have remained where they have been with no solution in sight and no one to talk about them in a way our government would be moved to sit up.


In Lagos, has anyone spoken out about the preponderance of light arms on the streets, which is making life insecure for citizens who move very early in the morning and late at night? It was this situation that exposed our promising star, David Ntekim-Rex, an IT engineer to death, when he was reportedly shot over a laptop at Jibowu. There have been reports that passers-by who could have helped by taking him to the hospital were busy taking pictures and making videos of the young man groaning in pains and incidentally, we have not engaged one another in an argument that would trend on Twitter over how such attitudes towards people in trauma could be criminalised in our laws like it is in certain counties.


As we engaged one another over Trump and Biden, what have we done about the way the masses are suffering at NIMC offices across the country, exposing everybody to COVID-19 in order to forestall their phone lines being disabled? Why have we not made the incompetence of the guys at the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy trend since they failed to realise, or deliberately brushed aside the fact that there are IT solutions that can generate our NIN from the seclusion of our houses and mobile phones, had efforts been made to synchronise our existing data with the biometrics from our BVN?


Since we have turned ourselves to OPP (Other People’s Problems) over Trump and Biden, have we made the growing insecurity around Edo-Ondo-Kogi axis, where armed gangs have apportioned parts of the areas to themselves for the purpose of collecting ransoms to trend? Or are we waiting for Joe Biden to sign Executive Orders from White House to restore normalcy there? 

Abeg, let Romans worry about Rome…