Amanze Obi And His Gang, By Yusuf Ozi-Usman

With the 2015 general elections over and winners emerged, it seems that some so-called senior journalists in some media houses are yet to get over the repulsive campaign hang-over. They not only continue to display their personal sentiment, via hate writing, but refuse to accept that Nigeria is still within the confines of democracy.
And above all, some of these hate writers have even gone beyond the ordinary, of calling the leaders names and using insultive words on them.
A back page columnist, Amanze Obi, with Broken Tongues as title of his column in the Sun newspaper, unfortunately falls in this gutter language usage category.
Of course, like I said, in democratic environment under which Nigeria exists, Obi has all the rights to defend the current minister of Petroleum, Alison Diezani-Madueke, as he did in his write up in the newspaper’s edition of April 30 (today), over the alleged missing N20 Billion as floated by the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. He has all the rights too to question and even attack the pronouncement by the President-elect, General Muammadu Buhari, as he also did in the same write up, to the effect that he (Buhari) will probe the missing money (N20 Billion).
But, Obi went wild and was obviously livid not only with anger, in the write up titled “Sticky Tales Around Diezani” but called Buhari all sort of names.
One feels ashamed that a highly rated and respected writer like Obi would allow his sentiment and hatred to protrude like sore thumb from his thought, by referring to the President-elect as “Buhari and his gang,” and “Buhari and his cohorts.”
It is obvious that Obi has lost touch with some vital aspect of African culture which prescribes respect for elders and of course, leaders. Or it is obvious that Obi does not know the meaning of “gang” and “cohort”? If he does and still went ahead to make such derogatory reference as “gang” and “cohort” on a man old enough to be his father or at least uncle, or his leader, pray, where is the sense of decorum?
And, in any case, what is wrong in General Buhari saying that he will revisit the issues surrounding the alleged missing N20 Billion? What offense has the General committed by saying so and even doing so? Does mere move to probe the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) amounts to, as Obi said, witch-hunting?
It is high time Obi and his gang of hate writers and or cohorts, began to understand that in democracy, there is limit to which freedom of expression can be used, beyond which you either incur the wrath of human and or God or drag one’s reputation as a writer into the mud.
That exactly is what Obi is courting. [myad]