THE AUCTION OF AREWA CONSCIENCE: HOW OUR SO-CALLED INFLUENCERS SOLD THE NORTH FOR CRUMBS
It is a shame.
A big, unforgivable shame to see what our so-called Arewa X influencers have become. A group of young men and women who should be the voice of the poor Talakawa, who should be holding power accountable, have now become the official megaphone of a failed government.
APC has bought them. Cheaply.
They will sit with their iPhones and ring lights and defend a government that has failed to secure the lives and properties of ordinary Nigerians. A government under which villages in Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Kebbi and Niger are being emptied every day. People are killed like chickens, women raped, children kidnapped and our Arewa influencer will still come online to tell you the government is working.
Working for who?
This is a government that met fuel at N210 per litre and took it to N1,500. A government that met the dollar at N465 and pushed it to over N1,400. A government that met a bag of rice at less than N30,000 and today that same bag is over N80,000. A government that has turned the middle class into beggars and the poor into destitutes.
And these are the same people our so-called Arewa influencers want to clap for, all because of personal gain. Because of monthly stipends, because of invitations to Abuja, because of contracts, because of data money.
They have no ideology. No shame. No conscience. They don't feel the pain of the Almajiri whose parents cannot feed him. They don't hear the cry of the farmer who cannot go to his farm because of bandits. All they see is their own stomach.
Let us be honest, this is not influencing. This is betrayal. It is the highest form of betrayal to the region that made you.
The North is bleeding. The North is hungry. The North is insecure. But on their timelines, the North is "making progress" because APC paid them to say so.
We have raised a generation of stomach infrastructure influencers. They will defend failure as long as they are paid. They will promote suffering as long as their account is credited. They have sold their platforms, and they have sold our future.
I weep for the next generation of politicians. If this is what our youth have become “praise singers for failure”, “defenders of hardship”, then we have lost it. The next generation will not know what it means to speak truth to power, because their mentors taught them to lick the boots of power.
History is watching. The Talakawas are watching. And Allah is watching.
The money you collect today to whitewash failure will not save you tomorrow when the same failure consumes you.
We must condemn this in totality.
Jabeer Writes from Sokoto.