“In
a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – George
Orwell
A large noise from a large man inside Aso Rock Propaganda
Empire echoes across an imposing cacophony rising above all critics of
President Goodluck Jonathan.
But hold your breath. Let the man introduce himself in
his own modest way:
“I’m Doyin Okupe, the Big, Fat, Idiot. I’m the
President’s Senior Special Assistant on public lies and propaganda with half my
brain tied behind my back. My subject is political propaganda. My stance is
distortion. My persona is Jonathan comic blow-hard.”
From a moral perspective, frankly I think Okupe is not
even a political problem. He is a psychiatric problem. Remember, it’s
impossible to cite all the maladies of the Jonathan administration as
interpreted by Okupe – Jonathan’s brain. Here is a small sampling:
Okupe has become renowned for his penchant for the
outrageous. He demonstrates the absurdity by being absurd: On the merger of
opposition parties which formed APC, Okupe boasts “Call me bastard if they
don’t crumble and disappear by 2014.”
He’s very obese and vulnerable-looking than he sounds
when defending Jonathan. He once described Jonathan as the “Mandela of
Nigeria.” “I have checked through the history of Nigeria, among our past and
present leaders, the only one we can call our Mandela here in Nigeria is
President Jonathan.”
The president’s spokesman who lacks casual, intimate
style, sounds like he’s in a soapbox. He’s intoxicated by lies, especially
those flowing from his own lips. He sounds like a real braggart. On
electricity, he forcefully defends Jonathan: “Don’t blame Jonathan for power
failure.” He claimed that government efforts were being sabotaged by
politicians who sponsor vandals to attack gas pipelines.
He has never shown any signs of being a serious or
thoughtful or earnest guy. He’s a degenerate rodeo clown – a toxic provocateur.
He should be kept far away from civilization. Making case for the ineptitude of
Jonathan, Okupe compares Jonathan with Jesus Christ. “There is no offense to
compare ourselves with our Lord. People do not understand the burden this president
is bearing. He’s like Jesus Christ. He’s bearing the burden of everybody.”
To describe Okupe’s lies and propaganda as dishonest and
demagogic would be equal to promoting it to the level of respectability. To
regard Okupe’s pieces of craps would be to run the risk of a discourse that
would never again rise above the excremental.
Fuming from both sides of his mouth, he threatens social
critics who dare criticize Emperor Jonathan. “Insult President Jonathan to your
peril,” the oracle warns. “Social critics who insult President Jonathan
henceforth by calling him drunkard, clueless, etc., would risk being punished
by the Federal Government,”
He crudely disguises his lies as an exercise in
seriousness. Fact is, it’s a sinister exercise in moral frivolity. Okupe
exhibits a spectacle of abject political cowardice portraying himself with
dissenting bravery. Looking at his crystal ball for the 2015 presidential
elections, he predicts landslide victory for Jonathan: “The choice in this
election is crystal clear, it is either good luck or bad luck. This Goodluck
Jonathan is the very best that we have seen … it’s impossible for Jonathan to
lose election.”
Okupe as a liar and propagandist, he whips up emotion and
excitement directly by violent exaggeration and by manufactured lies. He relies
on symbol and sentiment, he strives continually to paralyze critical analysis
and stimulate all tendencies to thoughtless and slavish acceptance. Evaluating
Jonathan’s 4-year presidency, he said: “The best since 1960. Those who call GEJ
clueless are biased or uninformed. He has achieved more than any president in
Nigeria history.”
Like Hitler, Okupe believes the “intelligence of the
masses (Nigerian people) is small,” and their forgetfulness is great.” His
enemies are the Nigerian people. His goal is to annihilate them. The whole
basis of his lies and propaganda is based on the fallacy of ascent –
essentially fabrication inflation. On the economy: “… The Jonathan
administration has courageously and innovatively been tackling with measurable,
obvious and clearly tangible positive results in the last two years,” says
Okupe.
Okupe represents a fool operating without insight. He
attempts to control reality like a magician. His choreographic lies with
elaborate stumbles follow the idea of the apotheosis of the absurd. Okupe is
nothing. As soon as he starts behaving that he is something, he becomes
precarious. No surprise, he ceases to be mindful and mistake fantasy for
reality.
Okupe is a fool at the center of the great Aso Rock
conspiracy to sell poison as cool aid. His thoughts and pronouncements are
fallacious, essentially a paranoid construct, one of interpreting reality for
what it is not. His blind defense of Jonathan amounts to ultimate paradoxical
joke of presenting Jonathan and his administration as the Fool of the future.
Okupe is a man who doesn’t shift his brain into gear
before putting his mouth into motion. With his half-baked fantasies and loaded
bias, no reflective or informed person can possibly believe his lies. He’s a silly
and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it
because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause in front of
credulous audience is everything.
I would like to remind Okupe that propaganda is only
meaningful and believable when it can show positive results. Just show us the
positive impact of Jonathan’s Transformation Agenda on Nigerians who are
unemployed, hungry, sick, homeless, hopeless, and helpless. Show us water
flowing from the taps, uninterrupted electricity for just 30 minutes or one
hour, etc., etc., etc.
Name names of big time looters in the Jonathan
administration including you who escaped justice for stealing N800 million
meant for road construction projects which never took place. Reel off list of your
colleague thieves jailed for looting our treasury.
Cook up a new story why government of the largest economy
in Africa couldn’t pay salaries of federal civil servants for the past three
months? Mount the soapbox and face the nation why the Chibok Girls are still in
captivity for nearly 300 days? In short, why is everything falling apart in
every sector in Nigeria?
Mr. Okupe, a true leader comes from the people and
represents the people. He forges the opinion of the broad masses. That is the
reality of a true leader. That is the source of his power. He is the
personification of public opinion. He doesn’t need a liar or propagandist like
you to win the hearts of his people.
Fellow Nigerians, as the race for 2015 shapes up, brace
yourselves for more of Okupe’s Rapid Response Rabble (RRR). We can all agree no
matter how the RRR is blended, crushed, pureed, cooked, and packaged, it’s all
flat-out phony baloney!
byolu@aol.com
*This article was first published in saharareporters.com
