By Austin Emaduku
Nigeria is perhaps the only country in the world where people believe whatever is shared on social media and would share without subjecting same to critical thinking or reflection. It is one thing to copy and forward as received but to whole heartedly believe, propagate and vehemently argue in support of what is obviously implausible, is the height of gullibility.
Fake is the new trend. It is like we are on a vengeance mission to discover fakes. There is fake everything. There are fake or plastic rice videos trending on the net. Nigerians believe they exist even though they have not seen or bought any before. There are also videos of fake or plastic vegetables, eggs, tomatoes, etc, etc. Even our ubiquitous sachet water, sold on the roadside, popularly called “pure water” has a plastic variant. Yea, brothers and sisters, we have people who believe that we have plastic water because they saw videos of it on the net and it is not as if we import “pure” water! There is even plastic meat and chicken!
It is only logical that it was a matter of time before we had fake humans! So today we have a fake President. It is not surprising therefore that believers of this fairy tale mainly hinge their beliefs on scientifically generated internet images, as the hard and immutable evidences of the existence of this fake and are battle ready, instead of interrogating the plausibility of such a happenstance, to rain abuses on your entire generation or call you partisan names for daring to call them to reason.
Our gullibility and ignorance ranks! We should occupy the No1 position in the world’s most gullible people index. After all we are ranked amongst the world’s most poorest but happiest people. The contradiction between being poor and yet being happy shouldn’t be surprising. Fela sang it decades ago in popular track “Suffering and smiling.” This condition is better exemplified by a saying amongst my people that the imbecile will never lose weight or go into depression as a result of thoughts because he is incapable of thinking.