Tag: #Agba Jalingo

Leadership is not a forever task. Any leader that wants to lead forever doesn’t have a target and does not represent the interest of the people. Real leaders go into the positions they seek, deliver their promises and exit.

Real leaders do not recycle themselves. They groom others to replace them when they leave the scene. They do not seek to obliterate the aspirations of novel entrants. Those who seek to remain in public office perpetually are not seeking public good. They are seeking personal aggrandizement and endless opportunities to pilfer public wealth. There is a reason political offices have terms.

Even traditional rulers, who are supposed to lead till death, abdicate their authority when they feel their roles have been accomplished. You couldn’t have been a senator for four years, become governor for eight years and still think you are the only one available and want to return to the senate as retirement. Statesmanship requires more elegance and panache. That has been happening in other parts of Nigeria, not in Cross River State.

I am trying to imagine former governors Ebri, Duke or Imoke returning to run for senatorial seats in Cross River state. It will be a big shame to them. Even if it is boredom, governor Imoke for instance is actively running the Bridge Leadership Foundation and building young leaders and mingling. Duke is even more popular amongst young Cross Riverians in retirement than when he was governor. Governor Ebri is silently working from behind the scenes. What exactly does former Governor Ayade want?

Is he bored at home? Then he should get busy with his teaching work again. Even if he claims he wants to go and serve, you do not serve people in perpetuity. Hunger for the perquisites that public office confers is ephemeral and cannot be termed ‘service.’ The earlier that is realized the better for personal sanity. There is even more honor in grooming others after leaving office than perpetually fouling the air with seeking to return.

It is a true test of character to be able to resist the temptation to perpetually control others and control public resources. Watching from the sidelines when the klieg lights have left you is very difficult but it is possible. Be mindful of cheering dependants and hangers on, who urge you on the path to Golgotha. Their pseudo panegyrics are usually veiled with hypocrisy. For they speak with twisted tongues while their hearts mock you.

If the cosmic has been gracious to you like it has, pay back by sitting back and watching others play in the arena. You are certainly not the best man available. No one is the perpetual best. Best men are only found in weddings, not in public office. There are even young people in their thirties, with brighter ideas, who want to become senators too. Don’t stifle their dreams. These are my thoughts this morning for my former Governor, Ben (no one knows tomorrow) Ayade.

Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.

Are you aware that, no matter how lazy, truant and unthinking you are, once you become a politician over here, and win a political position, you automatically become rich without doing any work? That’s actually the biggest motivation for most persons seeking political office today.

Regardless of the lies of our politicians that their job is not well paid, they are some of the highest paid politicians in the whole world, aside their corruption. They amass so much money while in office, such that they never want to leave those offices. The allure to remain or return is scintillating and motivated by memories of the lavish life they leave; funded by public money. The perquisites of office are too sweet to be forfeited. You get them, whether you work or not.

If not, how can someone complain or claim that there is so much stress and there is no money in the office he or she occupies, yet the person isn’t willing to exit the office. The person is still ready to fight, bribe, maim, and even kill, to remain or return to that same office, where you claim there is so much stress and no money?

What exactly is sticking you there or alluring you to return? Service? Big fat lie! What exactly have you served or did you serve? My view is that, Cross River in general and the Northern part of the State in particular, have remained stagnated for such a long time now that there is a need for intentional people with very strong imagination to emerge again as leaders that can spiral the rapid growth and development of the old Ogoja zone and not some rusty, high shouldered and over pampered society fellas who feel entitled to continually lord over us.

There are a litany of problems to be solved. We need problem solvers. Solution providers. We need people who can lead, not people who want to show off. People who can engage and solve our problems in the long term. People who have empathy and proven ideas on how to deal with what is challenging our communities. People who will be available to contain our onus, not those who will give us tokens. Tokenism and palliativism is not governance. It is see-finish. We need people that will govern us quantitatively.

That’s why I am asking you this morning, how much is your vote, if you are from Cross River North? Is your vote for sale or for development? If it is for sale, how much is it worth? Don’t make the mistake of giving power to misfits again. There is a conspiracy of a desperate power drunk coterie, who are preying on our intelligence and we must not fall for it. We must now deodorize their stinking egos.

We are already seeing the midterm results from those who are currently leading us in the North. I am deliberately keeping this to the North this morning. I hope you are keeping the records and scores. If you are not, I am. I am keeping every detail. It appears there are vacancies in some positions already and there are none in others. When the time is ripe, I will not sit on the fence. I will tell you where I stand, that’s if you don’t know already. I stand with development. I love performers.

Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.

Disclaimer: The opinion expressed in this article is strictly that of the author, Agba Jalingo, and does not represent TheLumineNews, it’s agent or the organization the author works for.

Till date, I do not think anyone will doubt the fact that the Nigerian Television Authority NTA, remains the largest single public TV network in Africa. That is a fact. But in the past decade, their audience has dwindled scandalously that even those who work with NTA, rarely consume any information from their own station.

The same station where kids used to rush with lightning speed to sit on bare floors to watch programs like Tales by Moonlight, Speak Out, Cockcrow at Dawn, Samanja, Mirror in the Sun, Checkmate, I Need To Know and many other very educative programs, has lost its appeal not just amongst young people but also amongst the elites who concoct the lies that the station churns out.

Using the NTA as a classic example, how they pointed fingers at the emergence of private media houses as the cause of their misfortune, in like manner, the downward spiral of the fortunes of some self-appointed journalism gate keepers, is making them think that popular media practitioners, who were not originally trained as journalists, are the reason for their woes. These classroom and textbook journalists are about town fouling the air and trying to tell us who should be practicing journalism as they teach us in the classrooms, even when most of them know little or nothing about the practice of impactful journalism.

I don’t want to mention some of the names of these self acclaimed pontificators, but I want to tell each and every one of them that; what you should be perturbed about is why the public no longer enjoys your kind of journalism and prefers to follow those who did not train as journalists enmasse? Why has the popular appeal shifted to individuals who may not be trained as journalists, but are practicing journalism? Why are those trained as journalists now incapable of serving the public the menu they enjoy consuming?

What is the quality, content, model and intent of the journalism curriculum today? Does it retain the capacity to produce pen pushers that can capture the imagination of the population? What is the quality and depth of those training the journalist? Comparatively, how many of those textbook journalists have been able to make impactful reports that brought measurable change as against those who weren’t trained as journalists but are practicing journalism?

If you are able to answer these posers frankly, you would have defined who a journalist is. The thing is that you are stuck with what the textbooks told you, what your journalism lecturers told you, what the professional organizations told you. Others who weren’t originally trained as journalists are targeting what the people need. They are serving the journalistic appetite and consumerism of the people directly. That’s why the people are running to them now every time they need the media. Not because they don’t know that you are trained as a journalist, but because they no longer need your services.

And let me now tell you what your problem is: You are angry from within. Just shout it out loud and say you are envious of the wave the person living rent free in your head is making. It’s that simple. You know it yourself. In the deepest recesses of your heart, na envy dey worry you. You are upset that even without what you think you know better, that person is ahead of you. If you say so, you would not break any law. You simply would have said the truth because, ENVY is exactly what is wrong with you.

People are risking their lives investigating stories you cannot, and risking their livelihoods asking questions you cannot dare to ask, yet all you classroom and textbook journalists fiddle with in your brain, is who trained as a journalist or not? There is a cliche in my place that; “the food of a cook who learnt cooking from a textbook, and the food of a cook who learnt how to cook from mama, do not taste the same.”

The few most popular TVs, Radios and Newspapers in Nigeria today are manned mostly by people who were not trained as journalists. While the most inefficient ones around are those manned by people who were trained as journalists. Most of them were only trained to earn salaries from practicing journalism as a career, while those who picked up journalism are using it as a tool to change society.

This is not in any way to detract from the argument for improved and continuous training to be more efficient in the practice of journalism. It is a very vital and essential requirement for everyone who wants to make significant progress in the field. This belaboring is to tell those who think that others must knock on their doors before picking a pen or gadget to practice journalism, because they sat in a classroom to study it, that they should all get out there, into the field and do what they were trained to do, make measurable impact, and they’ll be no space for others or shut their mouths forever!

Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.

Disclaimer: The opinion expressed in this article is strictly that of the author, Agba Jalingo, and does not represent TheLumineNews, its agent or the organization the author works for.