Reporting News and opinions
So far, so dazzling. We have been unchained from the desk, from the camera, from the petrol pump, and soon, apparently, from the steering wheel itself. Progress has been relentless, elegant, and profitable.
It issues pronouncements, launches programmes, commissions projects, publishes budgets, announces reforms and produces an endless supply of political speeches. Ministers hold press conferences. Governors commission flyovers. Presidents announce ambitious economic transformations. Political parties publish manifestos promising a better Nigeria.
Scotland has a parliament, a flag, a football team that loses with tremendous dignity, and roughly the population of Lagos’s Ikeja Local Government Area. The Yoruba nation and I use the word advisedly has an empire’s worth of history, a written and oral constitutional tradition running from Ile-Ife through the Oyo Mesi and the Alaafin’s checks and balances, a diaspora spanning three continents, and something in the region of forty million native speakers. One of these is routinely described in the Financial Times as a nation debating its constitutional future. The other is routinely described, by the same publication, as a tribe engaged in an ethnic dispute. I invite the reader to spot the empirical difference. I have been looking for thirty years and have found only prejudice wearing a monocle.
At moments of peak frustration, one is tempted to conclude that Nigeria has become a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah; a place so committed to self-destruction that even the gods have abandoned any rescue plan and are simply waiting for the final chapter.
The post discusses the controversy surrounding a letter from Abdul-Hamid Mohammed, the Director of Works and Housing at Toro Local Government, which accuses a young man of participating in partisan politics on social media. The author argues that while the letter highlights issues of meritocracy and corruption in hiring, it should be viewed in the context of the young man's potential impact on the youth and the civil service. The post emphasizes the importance of understanding and adhering to public service rules to avoid disciplinary action, and calls for greater awareness and research among civil servants to navigate complex situations.
