A Third Alternative to PDP and APC

Months after the 2015 elections ended, Nigerian youths are
still hung up on those elections. Nowhere is this more
obvious than on social media which our youths have turned
to a battle ground divided into pro People Democratic Party
(PDP) and pro All Progressives Congress (APC) youths. So
ingrained is this animosity that each group targets elected
officials and party chieftains of the opposing parties and go
after them just on the basis of their party affiliation. Things
reached a comical stage when a youth attacked me for a
tweet on Twitter and hours later was praising a popular
youth for his tweet. Unbeknownst to him was the fact that
the youth had merely tweeted my exact words but had not
credited me with the quote!
These shenanigans makes me concerned for our youth.
Where they should be getting closer and breaking down
barriers, they are holding a candle for politicians who in
reality are not as divided as they lead these youths to
believe.
For instance, Senator Bukola Saraki is the Senate President
and Chairman of the National Assembly today. He could not
have been elevated to that exalted seat were it not for the
votes of senators of the PDP. What does that teach us? It
teaches us that all politicians are divided by a common
interest which united them when the conditions are right
and temporarily divides them when they are wrong.
I advise youths not to look at Nigeria from a pro PDP or
APC perspective. They should see the country from a pro
youth outlook. Their future is greater than a party. Nigerian
youths should not believe and act as if the only options
available to them are either the PDP or the APC. There is a
third alternative.
This third alternative is patriotism.
I am reminded of the wise words of Mark Twain who defined
patriotism as “loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the
government when it deserves it”. Our youths have to imbibe
this wisdom from Mark Twain and refrain from saying and
tweeting nasty stuff about each other and their religions,
regions, tribes and ethnicities.
Those who engage in this do not understand that foreigners
follow Twitter trends and when our youths are disrespecting
each other’s ethnicities and religions, they must realise that
foreigners do not see us as Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo. They
just see us as Nigerians. I therefore advise our youths and
indeed all Nigerians to speak of Nigeria in a way that shows
the world that we value her. If we put a small price on
Nigeria, we should be rest assured that the world will not
raise that price.
We should not come on social media to abuse one another
on partisan grounds. That to me is an abuse of the
platform.
I am sure Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan
Williams, who founded Twitter, did not found it as a platform
where we come to outdo each other in raining insults on
those on the opposite political divide from us. Speaking for
myself, I am on Twitter to release my ideas for scrutiny and
receive ideas of other Twitter users for contemplation,
because none of us is as smart as all of us.
Our youths need to understand that we are living in an idea
age not an insult age. It takes interdependence and
interconnection to create the atmosphere that inspires
brilliant ideas. Our youths are short circuiting this
interconnection when they alienate each other.
And I am aghast as to what to say to those elders who
come on Twitter and fan the embers of division amongst our
youths by retweeting them when they retweet insults and
destructive criticism against their political opponents. Even
worse is when they praise them by calling them intelligent
for engaging in this behaviour.
We really need to watch it. Nigerian youths are beginning to
define intelligence as the ability to come up with the most
sophisticated insult and criticism. We urgently need to
redefine intelligence in Nigeria. Mudslinging, cynicism and
criticism are not acts of intelligence. Ideas and creativity
are. If you are truly intelligent, you won’t be on Twitter
lobbing insults on political opponents. Instead you will be
tweeting ideas that inspire solutions to Nigeria’s
challenges!
I want to urge these elders, who I have come to be aware
are called Twitter overlords, to remember that true elders
plant trees of peace even though they know they may never
benefit from the shades of those trees.
President Barack Obama, Senator Hillary Clinton and former
President Bill Clinton are some of the most criticised
political figures in the world, but they do not use social
media to react to the criticism they receive. Instead,
conscious of the fact that their role is to set good moral
standards for the youths, they constantly tweet uplifting and
inspiring tweets which have the capacity to unite people.
That is what we should do as elders in Nigeria. If we do not
do this, we should consider that a time may come when
those attack dogs have savaged all our enemies, and
having nothing else to savage they may turn on us.
This is Ben Murray Bruce and I just want to make common
sense.
• Senator Murray Bruce is the senator representing Bayelsa
East in the Senate

i will read when it gets there

copy and paste properly