By Martins Oloja
This thing called integrity is the
most powerful weapon of mass distraction General Muhammadu Buhari’s point men
used to win most supporters’ hearts in 2015. Yes, their intangible but lethal
missile got us at our very point of our need as a nation. We had then really
needed a man of integrity, a good Nigerian indeed in whom there was no guile.
We wanted a clean and strong vessel who could rescue us from the years the
locusts had eaten at least up to that point. And most of us found a man we
could trust in the lanky General from Daura. And in March, 2015, the election
agency we all believed said he (PMB) defeated the then incumbent President,
Goodluck Jonathan, who also meekly joined the nation in congratulating Mr.
Integrity who trounced him to the delight of many.
*Buhari |
But is appears that barely two and
half years after the election, the arrogant illiterate of the 21st century
around ‘the man of integrity’ are making most of us to have a rethink that the
integrity of the taciturn former head of state may have been massively
overrated after all, just as Collin J. Browne, an organisational culture
expert, noted in a 2015 classic titled, “Integrity is massively overrated”.
Meanwhile, the concept of “the
illiterate of the 21st century” is not original to me too. It is to Alvin Toffler I have
quoted several times here. The sociologist and writer on organization
development and leadership says, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not
be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn”.