-Blank NEWS Online (NIGERIA) – By:Austen Akhagbeme:

Nigerians are interesting People: and this makes us so special. Sometimes,(depending on which side of the buttered bread one is standing on) our logic of argument can be so illogical one wonders whether the rules have become the exemption.

But that’s the eerie beauty of justice in any jungle where rights are determined by might and true survival is for the fittest.

I have observed, with bated breath, how Garba Shehu, the presidential spokesman, tries to convince a disquiet and dissenting population of the ‘triviality’ of accusing the President of any wrong doing by allowing his ace photographer daughter, Hanan, the unofficial usage of the hallowed Presidential jet.

This is why nations are governed by mutually agreed documented provisions to avoid the tragedy of the true order, dancing to the whims and caprice of any defacto leader to the detriment of the collective common sense of his people.

The conversation on the totem pole has been whether or not the president’s daughter, acts within the ambit of the law and morality or a mere display of Africaness and sheer impunity.

There were those who reduced the argument to a comparison of a government official who sends his driver with the official car on an errand to drop his ward in school. In our clime, little offences are no offence at all: they constitute no danger to the system until they are big enough to attract attention of all and sundry. That’s the way we role.

A video went viral soon after President Obama left office. Mrs Mitchell Obama told a story of how that they spend personal income on entertainment outside their official line of duty as the first family. Who knows if Hanan’s dad personally fuel the jet to Bauchi and bear the general cost of this all important ‘field trip’ of the ace photographer?

Why I wouldn’t want to join the arguments and their many tributaries, I would like to draw our attention to the real crux of the matter: the very faulty system that makes such argument possible in the first place. The social media is full of pictures of other children of renowned Presidents who freely junket the globe on Presidential jets.

Whether it is right or wrong , moral or immoral, constitutional or unconstitutional; like any other thing Nigerian, ours must not be viewed from the point of view of political animosity but a wake up call to address the monster of over bloated cost of governance and the prudent use of the tax payers’ money in our clime.

Every young, hungry and unemployed girl of Hanan’s age will definitely frown at the matter in question. And every young female photographer in Nigeria will never stop dreaming of the day she, too, will fly an airplane to a location, on assignment. And this is why we are Nigerians.

*:Austen Akhagbeme is a Columnist with Blànk NEWS Online