Once again, Nollywood and President Jonathan are
disconnected from the priorities of Nigerians. Millions are hungry and the
country is headed off a cliff and what we get is the President having weekly
dinner with celebs at Eko Hotel. Mr. President should know that all
entertainers in the country won’t amount to a spoon of water in the bucket of
our population.
I agree that our entertainers judging by recent behaviour
are now seen as hungry men and women with insatiable appetite, but Mr.
President, the larger part of the society are equally hungry and should be fed
as well. Why feed just the entertainers? Isn’t that discrimination? What will
the entertainers say to Jonathan except the usual lies and half truths? Can a
man with a mouthful of undeserved food speak or say the truth?
An assessment of the
lifestyle of these entertainers gives a false picture of the situation of
things as it affects the society at large.
I got your invite for the first
dinner which held at Eko Hotel and I boycotted it because I felt that any event
by the government at this point in time should be about reassuring the people
that the government feels their pains deeply with promises of working
tirelessly to bring an end to the underlying causes of such situations in this
country, not getting together to eat small chops and samosa while most
Nigerians are languishing.
It was very embarrassing waking up the next morning to see
our shameless celebrities posing with their invites on social media which
invariably means they are telling their fans and the masses who brought them to
fame that they are enjoying the good life and everyone else can go to hell.
One entertainer jokingly asked why the President is having
these dinners with (the same set of) celebs all the time. I wanted to attribute
it to youth empowerment but on a second thought, If Mr. President has a genuine
interest in youth empowerment, hosting a few entertainers doesn’t cut across as
empowering the youth.
I think Mr. President
has been wrongly advised that entertainers can be used to influence the
Nigerian youths and electorate. These entertainers can’t influence votes within
their families. Another thing is, if Mr. President must have an interactive
session with entertainers, he should consider a larger representation of
entertainers from all parts of the country, not just those who ply their trade
in the south. It will seem to most people that Mr. President is only interested
in entertainers from the south. It is called the Nigerian entertainment
industry not the South South and South East entertainment industry.
Has Mr. President taken over responsibilities of the Lagos
State governor because he currently seems to enjoy greater visibility in the
state than the governor and these visits come with a heavy cost to the state in
terms of lost man hours caused by traffic along the routes to the event venue.
Streets are usually cordoned off by security personnel and a strange difficulty
to use mobile phones in such areas, possibly because of the deployment of radio
signal jamming devices by the operatives on guard in those areas. Residents of
Lagos shouldn’t go through this because their President is in town. I’ll love
to tell Mr. President that service, not celebrities, delivers votes.
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