Always looking forward to repost or reblog Etcetera's write-up every Saturday but the truth is, you can always read from his website ETCETERA WEBSITE HERE whereby all his article on Punch newspaper are being kept for reference purposes and some other unpublished articles that might interest you.He is at it again. He just fired at his colleagues
as usual. In what seems like an open letter to Mr President,
Etcetera is advising him the number one man of the country
to stop wasting his resources on entertainers who have little
or no influence on Nigerians concerning the forthcoming
elections. According to Etcetera he says some of these
entertainers can’t even influence a vote in their family not to
talk of a whole country, so why waste so much time on them.
He ended by telling Mr President that service, not celebrities,
delivers vote. What he said after the cut......
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.