By Odi Ikpeazu
Wait a minute. I’m supposed to feel guilty because a teenage girl student is guilty of forging an examinations result? These past days, I have been unfortunately subjected to reading a whole lot of ultra-liberal, ‘woke’ opinions on the matter. I have been cringing continuously at the profusion of cavalier stuff, with people taking their political and ethnic bias completely overboard.
You won’t believe the number of people who have acquitted the offender in the court of their conscience on the basis that Buhari and Tinubu forged certificates, according to them.
Examinations fraud in Nigeria, you must know, really took off in 1970 with the infamous ‘Expo’. That happened despite the profusion of intellectual role models available at the time, such as Zik, Soyinka, Balewa etc.So I look at these disingenuous mental gymnasts who somehow attempt to make President Tinubu responsible for the girl’s behaviour and I think it’s very sick, to say the least. As they might say colorfully in American inner cities, I have been looking at them muthafuckally!
How about calling her out for what she is instead: a cold, calculating cheat? On the contrary however, some characters – questionable in the end – are scrambling aboard the bandwagon, competing for who would reward her with a scholarship in any school from America to Mars.
And how about actually sparing a thought for Precious, the poor, pretty bright kid, who genuinely achieved the best result and giving her all this publicity instead?
But no. Precious’ story is neither a dark melodrama nor a cheap tragicomedy and does not support the mischievous narratives that our toxic, masochistic citizens so much love to promote. Or did Precious perhaps grow up in Germany or Jupiter, where there were presumably no certificate fraudsters to inspire her?It’s this same neurotic mindset that causes a man to be undergoing trial in Abuja and his folks subject me to a false imprisonment of forced solidarity in Onitsha on Mondays and any other days that catch their fancy.
By that convoluted logic, a Yoruba man could as well annoy me in Lagos and I would wait till I get to Onitsha and then beat the living daylights out of my wife and children in retaliation.
Like I hear them say in Youruba tongue, ‘Oshey!’ Very smart generation we have here.