Good Ole Mr & Mrs Critic

Some people have a knack for teaching or preaching. Some for writing, sports, cooking whilst some just love criticizing – the good ole Mr & Mrs Critic - I tell you, these negative critics just can’t seem to have enough. I’ve got nothing against constructive criticisms ok, but criticism for the fun of criticism – well that aint right you know. Take for instance, a girl walks into a bank wearing an above the ankle short skirt and almost trips on 5 inches high-heeled shoes, if you’re sitting beside Mrs Critic, she’s definitely going to make a sarcastic comment, preceded perhaps with a hiss, “why is she wearing such high heels to the bank?” and complete it with a disdainful 180 roll of her eyes.

What about in church. I was invited to an Anglican service and to my utter amazement, while a man was testifying about how God saved him from an accident or so, one of the girls sitting behind me said “see his eyes like frog eyes, how can he see well with it.” I couldn’t help myself, I whipped my head around so fast that I suffered a cricked neck for some days, and I eyed her and shushed her up too for good measure. She didn’t stop though. She stopped briefly only to continue with a roll-on commentary about every aspect of the church service – some mothers do have them!
In church again. One of the female choir members, who happened to be the lead vocalist for that particular choir ministration, was belting out a beautiful worship song and erm, apparently, the pitch sort of went out of wack, ok, it was kind of funny, (and I smiled inside of me) you know but definitely not the kind of goof that you mouth out in the congregation but Mrs Critic, who was sitting beside me would not let it go. To my chagrin, she turned to me and said with a conspiratorial wink, “No be by force say some people must join choir na. If she no get voice, sanitation department dey na.” Choi! Well, I also whispered to her, to give the lady a chance to perfect her God-given-vocals, to which Mrs Critic gave me a smooth unbroken 360 roll of the eyes that seemed to say “wetin this one dey talk na.”

Enter October 1st 2013, I’ve been reading through lots and lots of comments about Nigeria. I tell you, you gotta give it to Nigerians, we are one articulate people and we can win a war on twitville hands down! Some comments were downright hilarious & deserved the ‘LWKMD’ responses they got. Some were quite optimistic & hopeful - I really loved when my friend Jenny remarked that “I celebrate Nigeria, I recognise that we are very far from where we ought to be, but I choose to celebrate Nigeria today, at least we have not yet broken up into many different parts…” Still, Frank Edwards tweeted “Am a proud owner of a green passport.” Not bad from Nigerian hopefuls.

But some comments were downright nasty, I shuddered. Some people even threatened to un-friend anyone who as much as mention any good about Nigeria while others bluntly told him to go ahead and do so. Some were obviously angry and rightly so about the not so great conditions in Nigeria. Some rained down curses on her while others went ahead to bless her with beautiful words of blessings.
I love opinionated people anyway, nothing wrong with that. Why take the 5th amendment, when you can jolly well exercise your freedom of speech. As someone once put it, it is not the freedom of speech that is in question in Nigeria, it is the freedom after speech. Hmmm – I can hear the threat and fear and almost a word of caution there.
Let me conclude by saying that free speech is a good thing. Positive speech is even better but words spoken to correct, to build, to heal and to impact is damn better! I shall end this with one of the tweets I loved from @damilolaonline: “Be the change you want to see. EMBODY THE VALUES you desire to see in Nigerian leaders and citizens. Happy independence fellows – Nigeria is 53, Huha! :) 