Fashion Desginer & Entrepreneur Emmy Collins Shares His Thoughts as Nigeria Goes to the Polls

On numerous occasions over the years I have had accusatory fingers wagged in my direction just because I quit blogging. But I completely understand the feeling of betrayal that emanates from the eyes of those pointing these accusatory fingers at me.

There are many reasons why I decided to shut down my platform but none of them was intimidation as I don’t get easily intimidated. I haven’t confided in my people about this, but blogging makes me think too deeply and that leads to sadness/depression on my part. It is blissful being ignorant and thinking as little as possible. To blog, I need to research, and research takes one to uncharted territory where sadness and unpalatable discoveries often lurk. This election period is a red-letter moment in our collective existence, hence my decision to drop my fellow citizens these quick lines. So here goes:

I have passed that point in my life where I totally believed that the bane of Nigeria was entirely its successively inept governments. Okay, I guess you might be wondering what stage this skinny-ass, loud-mouthed and bald headed guy is now. Well, wonder no more – I’m at the stage where I genuinely believe from the bottom of my heart that the blame for Nigeria’s regressing-to-the-mediocre-level where an orange inarticulate toupee-wearing dude had the effrontery to tag it a “s***hole country” rests squarely on our shoulders.

All of us! Yep, you and I. We can either accept it now and deal with the situation, or kick that can further down the road. But at some point we must accept the inevitable or the nation called Nigeria will someday in our lifetime disappear into the abyss. It is sitting right on the brink of the abyss at the moment and can easily tip over with a slight nudge of the finger.

The politicians are humans. They are fathers, uncles, husbands, mothers, sugar daddies/mummies, mistresses and, oh did I mention, humans. Where am I going with this? They (the politicians) deserve fairness. We need to cut them some slack. You don’t load up a junkie with humongous amount of crack cocaine and then turn around and wonder why he/she is a crack head.

Off the top of my head, I find it impossible to imagine any armchair, social media-based activist can perform any better than the current crop of Nigerian politicians. These chaps are under immense pressure from the citizenry to provide below-par governance by our collective abdication of our rights to hold them accountable. No politician has ever claimed to be Jesus whom devil tempted and refused to fall for the devil’s BS. In my honest opinion, the politicians are over-performing; they are providing precisely what we elected them to do, so why are we feigning outrage? Where is the problem? I don’t see any problem. Remember the saying “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken”?

Ok, I’m kidding. I see the problems vividly but the problems are orchestrated by us because we don’t check the politicians enough.

Since I’m on the honesty lane here, let me say that I might even degenerate to a different level of nastiness if I am left unchecked with as much power as these guys have. You, the reader of this, might be a better person than I am and reckon you will perform better; however I implore you to ensure you are not being hypocritical.

Why this epistle? The Nigerian elections! Yes, the effing election was cancelled and we have gone up in arms but on social media, not and I repeat not a single soul is protesting on the streets of Lagos, London, Port Harcourt, Kotangora, Washington D.C., Johannesburg, Texas, Aba and, I almost forgot, our capital Abuja. Do you get the drift?

If you have tweeted or written anything about this election from the comfort of your home with TV remote in one hand and a glass of juice or some alcoholic beverage in the other, then you, my friend, are an enabler. By posting and not protesting in front of the Nigerian High Commission on Northhumberland Ave., I have inadvertently become an enabler as well and I hereby hold my hands up.

So, to you and myself, I say, congrats, we have done a great job bringing an enormously endowed country to its knees, hehehe!

I don’t know about you, but as soon I type the last word, I am just gonna find somewhere to bury my head in the sand and quite literally. We still have today left for us the electorate to exert superiority over the politicians. We are the bosses and they are our employees.

With this article, I have accepted responsibility for my part in the farce that our country has become; will you man-up and accept yours so we can move on to fix the rot?

Let me end by accepting that I’m not oblivious of the fact that I’m definitely in the minority when I say that I totally and categorically repudiate this awesomely flawed notion that Nigeria’s only option is either PDP or APC. I am sorry but with Kingsley Moghalu, Fela Durotoye, Oby Ezekwesili popping up on the political landscape, I find it implausible that Nigerians will allow themselves to be duped into shooting themselves in the foot yet again.

As I hunker down behind the desk, I am scratching my bald head and wondering how we as a people can allow someone/a group of individuals to convince us to act against our interest and that of our children and grand children. It just does not add up from where I stand.