Dreaming away my time with Venatius Ikem, and his legion of black critics          

Be Wise          
by Paul Ojeka 

To a layman, leadership is a responsibility of a few. There is no harm or crime in presenting expressions from opinions that fall below sound reasoning since a high performance brain is not so common. However, it is unfortunate to develop passion for products of a shallow, hollow reasoning. It is indeed clear that it is easier to appreciate what is harmful to consume than how to produce what is better for consumption. For instance one who may lack the skills on how to prepare pizza, may not be constrained in identifying pizzas that lack essential ingredients due to lack of professional skills by the producer of the sausage. It therefore defies logic to feel that one who has less knowledge on how to produce pizza should equally lack the requisite knowledge on how to spot the spots on a poorly prepared pizzas.

Poor criticisms on my mind.  

"You can fool some of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the times" says Bob Marley.

Reckless and lethal critics whose criticisms are restricted to their enemies are not friends of the society. They are the category of people that Jesus Christ admonished to pull the log of woods on their eyes before asking their neighbours to take away the specks in their eyes. Verily, impartial critics open wide their eyes to trace errors across boundaries of interpersonal links ; their eyes do not close until they see that the right thing is done by everybody irrespective of personal relationship. This is not so with egocentric, arrogant, reckless and myopic critics. These pseudo critics have grown so wild in recent times in our social media environments. Most of them belong to political parties. They are only good at seeing the spots in leaders from other political families , their eyes are configured to trace and magnify any micro mistake in a leader that does not belong to their party. In other words you are a sinner so long as you disagree with their warped judgement against anyone that they resent merely on differences along the line of political affiliation. One would have avoided describing these guys as hypocrites if they do not parade themselves as Social Activists and ambassadors of the poor. How would you call them ambassadors of the poor when they fight against any plan of government that is meant towards poverty alleviation? On the other hand, why would they support any programme that is meant to uplift the poor from poverty so as to close the gap between the rich and the poor; or how can they be comfortable with leaders who would help the poor to regain their dignity and automatically demand freedom from the shackles of the slavery that is imposed on them by this few rich, reckless critics of good administrations which focus on putting food on the table for the poor; housing the homeless; and clothing the naked? How can the selfish well-to-do see building of free houses for the poor or abolishing tax payments for low-income earners as noble projects when they dine with the kings and have their GOLD MINDS? What business do they have with bad roads when they fly first class airlines to all the nook and crannies of the world? In this age of enlightenment, criticisms that are borne out of personal interest hold no water; now it takes even the deaf and dumb to differentiate between a personal attack on individuals that is triggered by malice (triggered by jealousy and lousiness which is fundamentally designed to keep the poor down). Now is a time to easily detect who the friends of the society are in the strictest sense of the word: the true friends and ambassadors of the poor do not need a megaphone to make a noise about what someone is not doing right.Actions speak louder than words. Show the society what you have done to prove that you are equal to the task. The citizens of the global village are now so enlightened to be hoodwinked by the blackmail of blackmailers and disgruntled elements in the society who team up to misinform, mislead and fan the embers of social crises in our social environments.