Confab: Before Gerontocracy Smiles

When the list of the so called Delegate to the Confab crept into the square, I laughed to the point of busting. Initially, my preferred choice was to cry but I realized that my excess reserve of tears went bankrupt last time GEJ gave Late Sani Abacha a saintly toga and made him a saint of 'national unity' to mark his pedestrian and thoughtless frivolity in the name of centenary celebration. Thank God GEJ is not a Catholic.

Morealso, a Nigerian of his ' colour and content' will never make it to the Papacy. If not, the way the menu of falsehood gushes out of Aso Rock under the command of Reuben Abati one may wake up one morning to hear that the 'Dameless' first lady and a major actress in the political film shooting in River State is now her 'jesusness' .

It is a pity that the follies of old men have been raised to an idiosyncratic height and praised as façade of wisdom. If not, how can the college of old men who are collectively responsible for the mess we find ourselves decide the future of a country they have abused and raped? I am not trying to be a pessimist or a jeremiad but the morning tells the day. Is it not funny that our wise men who are selling their 'wisdom' for 70 billion tax payers money nearly spent two weeks fighting, dying and sleeping? Right from day one, I have maintained that the 'confab' is not a messiah that GEJ wants us to belief in. While I have a huge respect for respectable elder statesmen, the current near collapse of the entire strata of the Nigerian society cannot be cleared from doorsteps of majority of the 'socrate's and plato's' in Abuja.

Why should I not mourn Nigeria and pity Nigerian youths if men far above 80 years who should be thinking of their graves and the hottest part of hell where they will struggle with the devil over the certificate of occupancy and sleep with girls old enough to be their grand daughters are the 'sages' planning the road map for the liberation of Nigeria? Please, why did GEJ send vulture to buy meat from the 'ogbete' market? One wonders why some of these ruinous men like the array of knives that surfaces the day the elephant dies have refused to get tired or retire.

If you think these men are saints, show me the sinners that for long have promised Nigerians to catapult them to where they can sing uhuru, raised their hope and feed their expectations only to dump them in unimaginable misery and poverty. Yet it pleased GEJ to excavate these dying men and give the task of shaping the future of Nigeria. What happened to the likes of Prof. wole Soyinka, Prof.Pat Utomi, Prof Charles Soludo, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, Okey Ndibe, Chimamanda Adichie, Dr.Oby Ezekwesili and the host of other men of great conviction, character, competence, and compassion in NIgeria? If not for the presence of Prof Dora Akunyili, Prof. Msg Obiora Ike, Femi Falana, Olu falae, Pastor Tunde Bakare, Bishop Badagori of Kafachan ,his Brother Felix and Chima Onudo, Nigerians could have thrown the baby with the bath water.

Where is patriotism, where is sacrifice? The fact that these men will smile to the bank with four million Nigeria each for a three months national assignment speaks volume about them in our precarious and corruption infested nation with unemployment, poverty, insecurity and lack of basic social amenities. Anyway, I have no doubt the few sheep's among these wolves will do the needful with the money.

As FG continues to pour new wine in old wine skin it is good GEJ realizes that you can tell a blind man there is no oil in the soup and not that there is no salt. We cannot claim that the youths are leaders of tomorrow and still deny them the right to build their today. What a contradiction; a beautiful hypocrisy?

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Articles by Eze Martins-hassan Esomchi