Sir: While the social media was awash in the past few days with the viral video of Seun Kuti, the popular Afrobeat musician and son of the “Godfather” of afro beat, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, a common thread emerged was that a lot of people were outraged by the act and rightly so.
But a more disturbing trend was the self-serving hypocrisy by a few middle class Nigerians usually loud on social media the same class that talk and abuse without decorum, anyone with an opposing political ideology.
In their mind Seun Kuti had committed the crime of the century. Where was this outcry when about five police officers were killed by the EndSARS protesters?
Where was this outcry when unknown gunmen were killing police officers and bombing police stations across the country?
Righteousness they say exalts a nation but we live in a country riddled with hypocrisy.
The same outrage was seen with the Ike Ekweremadu saga. While Ekweremadu has rightly faced justice for his actions, I worry that the loud outcry against Ekweremadu had more to do with his ill-timed interview with a TV reporter shortly before he embarked on the trip to England that would lead to his eventually arrest on charges of organ trafficking. That interview where he stated that his “people” would vote for the PDP all but sealed his fate with the social media mob.
The outcry amongst Nigerians, these same Nigerians who employ underage “slaves” from neighbouring Togo and Benin Republic to work as house helps, with some paid through dubious third party agents and definitely below the national minimum wage.
Some inherit blood relatives who may have lost one or both parents from the village only to bring them to big cities like Lagos and subject these relatives to substandard treatment compared to their own children.
Stories abound of these kids eating with plastic spoons, unable to go to similar schools with the children of their benefactors while generally subjected to second class treatment in such homes.
These are ingrained in the Nigerian society. Yet we cry “murder” while not looking and examining the very acts in our immediate environment.
Yes violence in any form should be decried and more so against uniformed personnel.
We should apply outrage against ALL forms of wrong doing and introspect.
For in the bigger picture, the underlying principle that will make one individual import another human from Togo or Benin to work in Lekki is not much different from the mind-set that will make another ferry a street boy from Lagos to harvest his kidney in London.
Righteousness they say exalts a nation; there’s a reason the country is where it is despite the multiplication of religious houses.
• Lagundoye Ayo
