This probably gonna be a short essay. I was just watching a
show I love to hate and listening to sentiments I also love to hate. But half
way through the show I wondered; why do I keep watching this, I don’t like it
and it doesn’t add anything to my life?
At this moment something just came to me and I thought its
good I share, so I ran to my laptop to type it down. It’ll probably seem bizarre
but bear with me. It quite interesting.
I was just wondering why as a country we seem to have a lot of
hatred, lack of appreciation of our accents and everything we have –the grass’
always greener on the other side- whether its Maghuli, we think he’s better
than our president, we talk of Buhari we think he better than our president.
Even the other day watching a channel I love to hate airing a program I
passionately hate, they insinuated that probably what we need is not a good
constitution probably we need a strong good president like Buhari –so stupid, I
thought.
But then again why is this so, we seem to hate corruption,
extremism, tribalism, hate speech and all those bad things that any sane person
ought to hate; how then is it that things always seems to get worse?
While this may seem a rhetorical question, I came up with an
answer –it’s because we love to hate them. We love to hate corruption, I mean,
those people who speak against corruption are so passionate they make me want
to hate corruption even more, whenever I hear some corruption dealings, I
comment and express my disgust, and I feel good when those news anchors point
to my tweet expressing my disgust.
If I only hated this TV station and its programs I would
have just switched to another station, but now I love to hate it. So I watch it
and I hate it even more, they trigger my inspiration and I write such articles
as this one. Other people love to hate corruption so much that when it happens
they are inspired to draw cartoons and caricatures of it; others pen down
passionate articles; while others do investigative journalism to uncover the
truths –very noble things, or so I thought.
You know, now I understand why Jimmy Gate would write a song
about sponsors –he just hates it with a passion, and after months and years of
listening to people talk about it and do nothing about he got inspired by his
love to hate the “sponsor phenomenon” that he wrote a song about. Yes, I know,
you feel a bit confused right now –I am too. But there is something here.
If only we hated corruption, then we would be able to switch
and talk about the good governance, Mohamed Ali would be investigating and laying
praises upon policemen who have done great job. But now we love to hate
corruption, so Mohamed Ali have to investigate and show us how corrupt our
system is, on this one I also comment and state my disgust.
We are able to justify our continued hate on corruption
because it’s a vice and we should hate it. But we have tipped over, we love to
hate corruption or in other words we passionately hate corruption, tribalism, and
all those other vices. And we also love good governance, nationalism,
patriotism, and we wish we could achieve them.
But now I’m wondering, what would be the case if we loved to
love governance, nationalism, and patriotism. Would that spur us into action as
our love to hate corruption has spurred us into numerous tiny and big actions?
