PARENTS look the other way when problems of students’ crises within and outside the university occur, allowing cultism and examination malpractices to mature and foster.

The teachers are on a field day on industrial actions on issues that are really none of their business.    Students posit as if character and learning have become obsolete values in the making of a student and embrace the negative values of violence, cheating and immorality to the detriment of their persons and the society.

Doctors go on strike with little regard to their hypocratic oath, walking out on their patients only to divert them to their private hospitals.   General Hospitals are like mortuaries waiting to receive the living dead.

Yes.   I dare to speak up. The bane of the Nigerian society now is that those who should speak out remain mute for fear of one consequence or the other, and through our conspiracy of silence, allow evil to foster and become legitimised.

All because we have no commitment to ourselves, our future or our nation and have stopped to care for the wholesomeness of our institutions and our society.   Nigeria is not a failed state.   It is the people who have failed Nigeria.

Religious organisations with millions of followers, be they orthodox, Pentecostal or revivalist Islamic sects, keep mute.   No one wants to stand up and be counted for Nigeria.

Oh no!   The era of martyrs is gone.   The real thing now is to edge closely to the powers-that-be through whatever channel or means to be their soothsayer, determining whether the man in power sleeps, or wakes, travels, talks to his wife or children.

They all look away or preach some other values.   All the tenets of their religion which centre on the humanity of man to man, or that everyone should be his brother’s keeper had gone with the wind.

All the armed robbers, drug traffickers, corrupt politicians, shameless voters, manipulating agents, bribe-gulping civil servants, fraudulent and disloyal employees are all members of these soul-saving institutions.

How I wish they could postpone one of their conventions for a march on the National Assembly to force them to stop making a fool of Nigeria and destroying our value systems.

At times, we talk about the ordinary Nigerian, the starving, the unemployed, the deprived, the aged, all that sit idly by as life oozes out of them.   They are not even committed to their own cause of destitution and poverty.

They live in hope and prayer that, sooner or later, one of their own kind will come to play, and their time will come.   Let me remind them of what awaits them by telling a little story:

The story is told of this exquisite Circus Master who has trained an Octopus to play all forms of musical instrument.   Indeed, the Octopus performed for years to its audience delight and his master’s satisfaction, and bulging pocket until one day that the waterloo came.

It came in form of a cynical Scot who, unimpressed by the performance of the Octopus for vaunting his prowess on simple musical instruments, dared him to play the Bag Pipe – the famous Scottish musical instrument.

The Circus Master laughed the Scot to scorn, in full assurance that the dexterous Octopus will play the Bag Pipe with ease.   He handed over the Bag Pipe to the Octopus.

For minutes, the Octopus fondled and played around with the fingers of the pipe, pressing the Bag closely to his chest and caressingly trying to blow some air into the pipe.

Unfortunately, no sound came out of the Bag Pipe.   After several attempts failed to yield the desired result, the Circus Master left the scene in shame and walked away with his Octopus.

As they walked home, the Circus Master asked the Octopus why he let him down so badly by not producing sound from the Bag Pipe.   The Octopus answered: “Oh!

That one.   I am sorry.   I thought I was playing with one of my own kind.”

By Dr. Bayo Akinnola, a high chief, is the Lisa of Ondo Kingdom.