By Shomoye Abiodun
Back in in 2012, a friend of mine Bamgbade Ayobami by name forcefully dragged me to create an account on twitter for the soul purpose of experiencing the best of social networking. Not that I was new to social network, Facebook was just my preferred platform. On activating my account on twitter, I was filled with the euphoria of simplicity in networking socially, flabbergasted by the easy way to link discussion worldwide with a simple hash tag. “This is what have been looking for” said my mind. The story with twitter Nigeria is now in opposite of what I experienced earlier when I joined. Probably what I saw back then depleted faster than Ozone layer resulting to the new twitter Nigeria’s atmosphere.
For those who became a member of twitter recently because they were told they can throw jabs at people old enough to be their father without any repercussion, let me quickly remind you what social media entails
“Social media (SM) is a platform that allow people or company to create, share, exchange information, career interest, ideas e.t.c”
But what do we have in Nigeria
“SM is a platform where worshippers of personality (Buharists, Sarakists, Gejites e.t.c) come to attack each other base on difference in personality supported”.
It is embarrassing that the latter definition is what we have limited a progressive tool like twitter to, we now sees it as an avenue for thuggery, display of anti-cultural behaviors and vices of the form. We have forgotten that access to twitter Nigeria is not restricted to Nigerians alone, we are internationally advertising our shame but we don’t care, overloads are giving us what to retweet.
Reports even says one of the twitter overloads is being threatened by another chapter of Personality Supporters Association of Nigeria (PSAN) because he is perceived to have large followership on the same twitter o, what can we term this? Is this our level of maturity? Anyways let me digress back to my scope before I deviate to elaborately discuss the gullibility of some of our people on twitter.
Twitter as an independent platform that should have been a safe atmosphere to discuss political issues and economic policies as they affects our life style and living in general has now metamorphosed to a shrine to worship overloads. Wow! Wow!! Wow!!! All I can still say is Wow! Overloads create trend, minions joins, trends becomes popular, and our numerous national problems become ostracized. Sorry o, who are we doing (In Yoruba style)?
Every day on twitter still looks like campaign season but this time in a different version, a particular section of PSAN vehemently defends their small god when campaign promises are being denied and if you attempt to criticize such, you will get your portion of QWERTY punishment in wholesale quantity. The other section of PSAN will unabashedly come on twitter to celebrate a governor and his limited achievement as if the next presidential election is August 2016. There are topics that arose each section of PSAN to unleash their power on you; on mentioning the generally believed bad economic policy of this present administration – You are a wailer, just don’t talk about the technical defeat of Boko Haram – You are a liar. The twitter cabals are ready to attack you immediately you crossed their line, they will so praise you with lots of retweets if you navigates their direction. One question am begging to get answer to is; is there no cabal that discusses national issues with fairness? If there is and you know one, please feel free to copy me @MrShomoye.
Should I say we vociferously went against direct gagging of social media and silently settled for indirect gagging with overloads as the intermediary? I won’t be wrong to assert such, as overloads who vehemently propagated political twitter have also successfully debased us to discuss inane issues about political personalities. They are now interested in throwing vulgar words at Senator Ben Murray Bruce, they finds it joyous to call the Vice President a ghost worker and so many immature topics. The days of coming online to see #SayNoToSubsidy is gone, even when electricity tariff was increased by 45% with no single increase in delivery and availability, we chose to mute and found it more necessary to generate trends to mock others. We have limited our social networking tool to a formidable social abuse group (FSBG), are we not abashed? In the lights of many salient national issues to be discussed, what caught our attention includes; #PDPHouseOfHunger, #TwitterOrubebe and the likes whereas this same country has a looting proposal or more like debt repayment plan as BUDGET but that is not mighty enough to discuss I guess.
It is disheartening to conclude on this note but the point to be made is the reality. It seems the upper class who are callously sucking our national glory have found their route to social media. The freedom to discuss salient national issues is no more there, the days of discussing national issues without being tagged pro-government or anti-government has become history for the unborn children. Those that controls TV and radio station are also controlling social media, days of seeing instant pictures from scenes of incidents are over, especially if it will embarrass the government. To the minions who believes their opinion is useless if it does not align to one overload’s own needs to wake up from their slumber. No overload is an authority, in fact overloads are using you to beg for government’s recognition. Be free to say it as you wish, deliver yourself from overload’s bondage.
#LetsBeBringBackOurFreedom
Shomoye Abiodun can be contacted on Twitter via @MrShomoye
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