Dear Nigerians, before we share sensitive and provocative pictures, videos, fake inciting news and comments on social media, let’s ponder on the possible crisis it could trigger somewhere else. Before we foolishly play into hands of our scavenging political elites who have always benefited a great deal from our miseries. Let us consider the dire consequences of our actions on us.

 

Last year, in one of his articles titled, “A sickening country of conscienceless people”, Tunde Fagbenle, a veteran journalist, did a critical analysis of Nigeria, bitterly lamenting the different challenges confronting her.

Frustrated by what the parasitic political class has turned Nigeria into, Fagbenle charged Nigerians to wake up.

“… Sectional or ethnic frustrations were largely merely cries against what each considered situation(s) of unfair treatment or uneven access to the “national cake”, be it share of national income, federal appointments, or blatant ethnic (political) discrimination. None, I daresay, had been on account of disaffection with the pathetic underdevelopment of the country or its continuing lack of direction.

“We cannot put it all to the leadership. No, we the people are ourselves mumus. And there must be a time when we all must rise up and say: our mumu don do!”, he wrote.

Of course, ‘mumu’ is a common derogatory word in our local parlance. A mumu is a brainless fellow who lacks the ability to think and act wisely even when circumstances demands that he acts. A mumu never learns from experience and could be easily manipulated and exploited.

So, beyond literaliness, Fagbenle’s piece only a charge to Nigerians to forsake our mumu ways, and act smartly to break free from the unending manipulation and exploitation of a few political oligarchs, by taking advantage of our political power as citizens.

But the hard question is, how can we break free from our “mumu culture” when we fail to realise that once we crawl into our different regional, religious and ethnic enclaves, we vacate our powerful office, subjecting ourselves to becoming citizens powerless against the endless exploitation of our parasitic political class?

To be specific, the way and manner some of us are drumming for war, spreading hate on social media, tinkering with issues that could trigger fatal inter-regional skirmishes and possibly disintegrate Nigeria, without seeing through the wicked politics behind it, suggests that the mumus amongst us outnumber the wise.