By Adamu Bello Mäi-Bödi
Upon realizing that if youths are liberated, they would have difficulty in milking the country dry and feeding fat on the commonwealth, Nigerian politicians resort to catching sycophants the same way Monkeys are caught in Brazil.
Brazilian hunters put a nut in a bottle and tie the bottle to a tree. The monkey grasps at the nut, but the bottle’s neck is too narrow for the monkey to withdraw its paw along with the nut. You’d think that the monkey would let go of the nut and escape, wouldn’t you? But it never does! The monkey is so greedy that it never releases the nut and always gets captured.
Nigerian politicians wittingly buy off the loyalty of greedy youths and make them their die-hard followers that can go to extra miles to protect their(politicians) interest, simply by giving them some amount of cash and little other things after which all that would follow are empty promises and lies with which the greedy sycophants are caught.
Whenever such sycophants decide to withdraw their blind loyalty and set themselves free, time and again, the greedy part of them reminds them of the juicy or relatively empty promises made to them. This chains them to the sycophancy forever, which means their future is finished.
If you happen to be one of those bootlickers, remember the little amount of money the politicians offer in exchange for your full-time puppet-ship would not take you half a mile on the inevitable journey to the future that awaits you. The danger ahead is; when these self-enforced masters of yours are dead or out of power for some reason, you’re done for good.
As succinctly put by the thriller maestro of the generation, James Hadley Chase, “Greed is a dangerous thing, if you give way to it, sooner or later you will be caught”.
Adamu Bello Mäi-Bödi can be reached via adamubellomaibodi@gmail.com.