Once again, Nollywood and President Jonathan are
disconnected from the priorities of Nigerians. Millions are
hungry and the country is headed off a cliff and what we get
is the President having weekly dinner with celebs at Eko Hotel.
Mr. President should know that all entertainers in the country
won’t amount to a spoon of water in the bucket of our
population.
I agree that our entertainers judging by recent behaviour are
now seen as hungry men and women with insatiable appetite,
but Mr. President, the larger part of the society are equally
hungry and should be fed as well. Why feed just the
entertainers? Isn’t that discrimination? What will the
entertainers say to Jonathan except the usual lies and half
truths? Can a man with a mouthful of undeserved food speak
or say the truth?
An assessment of the lifestyle of these entertainers gives a
false picture of the situation of things as it affects the society
at large. I got your invite for the first dinner which held at Eko
Hotel and I boycotted it because I felt that any event by the
government at this point in time should be about reassuring
the people that the government feels their pains deeply with
promises of working tirelessly to bring an end to the
underlying causes of such situations in this country, not
getting together to eat small chops and samosa while most
Nigerians are languishing.
It was very embarrassing waking up the next morning to see
our shameless celebrities posing with their invites on social
media which invariably means they are telling their fans and
the masses who brought them to fame that they are enjoying
the good life and everyone else can go to hell.
One entertainer jokingly asked why the President is having
these dinners with (the same set of) celebs all the time. I
wanted to attribute it to youth empowerment but on a second
thought, If Mr. President has a genuine interest in youth
empowerment, hosting a few entertainers doesn’t cut across
as empowering the youth.
I think Mr. President has been wrongly advised that
entertainers can be used to influence the Nigerian youths and
electorate. These entertainers can’t influence votes within their
families. Another thing is, if Mr. President must have an
interactive session with entertainers, he should consider a
larger representation of entertainers from all parts of the
country, not just those who ply their trade in the south. It will
seem to most people that Mr. President is only interested in
entertainers from the south. It is called the Nigerian
entertainment industry not the South South and South East
entertainment industry.
Has Mr. President taken over responsibilities of the Lagos
State governor because he currently seems to enjoy greater
visibility in the state than the governor and these visits come
with a heavy cost to the state in terms of lost man hours
caused by traffic along the routes to the event venue. Streets
are usually cordoned off by security personnel and a strange
difficulty to use mobile phones in such areas, possibly because
of the deployment of radio signal jamming devices by the
operatives on guard in those areas. Residents of Lagos
shouldn’t go through this because their President is in town.
I’ll love to tell Mr. President that service, not celebrities,
delivers votes.
