Political "Bats"

The story broke of Boko Haram prisoners in the East. Not much facts were sought before even some seeming intelligent minds went to press. The clandestine intentions of this government's sympathetic slant with terrorism was blown up and harangued. Those who still feel deeply pained by their gargantuan loss at the last polls, bared fangs, talons and canines.

The accusations were wild and variant. Baba-Go-Slow was disingenuously charting a devious plan to allow Boko Haram make inroads into the South East for one nefarious intent or the other. It was a field day for all biased comers without restraint. All stops were pulled to cast aspersions on the government and anyone who as much as dared to counsel for caution. You were thought to be a Buhari apologist (or "Buharist" for short). And if you were of Igbo extraction, you were a sellout. Period.

Then, the wind of facts blew. Clouds of misdirection receded. Clearer skies revealed that those prisoners had been moved to the East within the life of the previous government. And just like it was in the story about El-Rufai's asset declaration, those who ran to town with the story in the morning had gone underground in the evening, seeking to be hidden under the cover of darkness, their natural and comfortable abode. Fangs covered. Talons retrieved. Canines shut.

We must of needs participate in government actively as guardians of our democratic practice. No doubts. But it is of necessity, extreme nonetheless, that such participatory activism be informed. Band-wagonism will only yield unsavoury outcomes and be as counterproductive as passivism. Crowd-thinking that isn't based on facts but on biased jerky condemnation of what we are led to believe by junk journalism and media sensationalism will not help us. We must try to avoid these political "bats" who neither help us nor themselves.

Now, they go back to lie in wait until the next series of sensationalism. Till the next season of news items that agree with their self-induced pain of biased sensibilities. Then, they'd spring out again, shouting themselves hoarse and dragging some unscrupulously naive Nigerians along for the ride. As far as it works to prove their point that Baba-Go-Slow is an accident waiting to happen, they don't care for consequences. Let the nation be wrecked as far as they're proven right, it is well. Let us all be damned so that they can be right.

And their proselytising wins converts. Until it fails again. Then, you don't hear a blip from them for a while. But it's brief. We know what will happen. Another opportunity beckons. Then, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, we know what each of them will say.

"I'd be back."