The gossips in a nation and the razor media they deserve

If you are in your teenage years and early twenties, I don’t want you to be fooled that our nation has always been divided along ethnic and tribal lines because that would be far from the truth. But two things that have always been found amidst us are gossips and fables.

I was a student in the 90s in the era of the President Babangida and the annulment of June 12 election of 1993 which had been adjudged the freest and fairest election. It was an era in which Nigerians threw away our tribal and religious sentiments to vote for 2 of our brightest minds way back in our quest to reposition a nation. I was living in the vicarage with my dad and I remember him saying clearly then that he had seen in a vision that MKO did not become our president. Of course if you knew my dad he was one blunt soul who never cared what people had to say about his differing opinion. I still remember how my mum was scared for him when he announced it in church and sent a message to the late chief and I remember clearly how members of SDP in our church labelled him a false prophet when the announcements of results started.

It was not lost on me how the same people thronged our house to see my dad after the election was annulled. One strange thing about my dad was, he had never believed in the concept a ‘Saviour’ who can solve all the problems of Nigeria; he always advocated for a system that works across board and if you knew my dad you’d know that he was a man who promoted a system of fairness and equity at all levels.

This is not a thesis on my dad but to call our attention to a significant event that we may have forgotten way back that happened at the height of the June 12 debacle. It was the emergence of a tabloid called ‘The Razor’. I am not sure I know the publishers of Razor but it was one newspaper that shared tales of what we all dreamt would happen. The Razor raised our hopes till our entire dreams were razed down. The Razor newspaper shared reports of how the American government was coming to invade Nigeria with bombs to forcefully airlift Babangida from Aso Rock and install MKO. Infact they shared how it was going to happen and guess what? Many of us believed that newspaper.

The razor simply showed the critical problem about us as a nation that we never paid attention to. A high level of illiteracy and a low rate of intelligence and critical thinkers because we all became frequent visitors to free readers association and I saw accountants and clerics who believed the Razor. I saw medical doctors who never understood the sovereignty of a nation succumb to the unreasonable ejaculation of The Razor.

The Razor became a beacon of hope for many of us even as students. We completely forgot everything we learnt in Government and began to perform fellatio on The Razor. I was in a town called Ikare Akoko and looking back I almost couldn’t understand how school students and that includes undergraduates believed the Razor. That should tell us something we have been afraid to tell ourselves. We are mainly a nation of gossips whose truth is depends on what is at stake and how it affects our interest. What that means is we would never bother to subject any news or instruction to critical thinking once it has a semblance of meeting our selfish desires.

June 12 went just like that but our nation never recovered from the gossips of The Razor because even though The Razor is no more but The Razor was the king of baby mama as the products of the razor are everywhere in our nation at the moment and just like in 1993 intellectuals and folks who should know have started romancing The Razor. All you need to do is concoct any message along tribal or religious lines and critical thinking is suspended and even men who should stand between the living and the dead suddenly take sides because the tribal interest in them has just been triggered.

We pride ourselves as a nation of intellectuals but how well can our intellectuals think and how well can they subject a post to a critical lense that is not skewed in the direction of race and religion. I ran a test 4 years ago in Abuja on a group of teachers in my early days as an educational consultant and I asked how many of them would be wiling to put on Hijab and crawl for 24hours with 1billion naira guaranteed after a week. Guess what? Not many hands came up. These were teachers saddled with opening up the minds of our students.
I troubleshot further to know why they would never wear hijab and the response was shocking ‘Why would I become a Muslim just to earn a billion, my religion forbids it’ when religious thinking makes it way into the educational system education simply becomes religious education and critical thinking is compromised.

This is a warning to those who love this nation because we seem to be back to the days of Razor. All sorts of messages are flying around online whose source can’t be verified and the leaders who should know better are buying into that script and believing the 2018 version of The Razor newspaper.

Our Nation has got a lot of good people and that is not to say we don’t also have the bad eggs fanning the flames of war. To say there is no agenda or there are no agendas from a minority to impose themselves on us would be naïve but to also lose our capacity to reason out every information that flies around would make us educational illiterates & promoters of war. Check the last 10 messages you have received on your whatsapp and subject them to critical thinking and you’d see exaggerations and fables. As a matter of fact you’d see a grand conspiracy to lead us to war.

A gossip separates the best of friends and that is the scrip we are starting to run. I think we must rise as a thinking force and start to spread love and truth based on facts. Truth must be truth once it passes the test of truth not when it is spoken from the mouth of the respected so whenever you see any broadcast you may want to do the following in case you have been hired by the modern day Razor as a breaking news agent.

– Pause and count 1-10 or slowly read the Lord’s prayer
– Ask yourself if this could be true and activate your thinking to reason it out
– Ask yourself if it spreads fear, love, gives an information or promotes hatred about a group of people?
– Ask yourself what could be the effect of sharing it forward and does it contain solutions to the problem raised?

Please note that any information you can not use or doesn’t contain any positive steps that can benefit humanity is often at best a gossip and Olakunle Soriyan defines gossip as intermeddling with an information you have no use of.

May God heal our nation and may we become a thinking nation raising thinking leaders who truly love God and humanity.

I honour you.