Criticism, The Nigerian Way

By Jimmy Johnson

Criticism comes from the word – criticise – which the Oxford Dictionary defines as ‘discuss critically,’ ‘censor.’ A critic is “one who pronounces judgment,’ censurer,’ or ‘one skilled in textual criticism,’ while critical is defined as ‘fault-finding.’ Criticism should not be made to destroy but to repair, make good and even better to achieve the best. That is when criticism is meaningful and useful.

There are people whose pass time it is to criticise anything. Some of them are not known to be creative rather they find faults in what others have created. They do not have original thoughts of their own on what they criticise but will tell us why    the original thoughts of other people are faulty. In other words, a critic may not originate a topic until someone brings up an idea, then the critic goes to town to tell us what is faulty about someone else’s idea which he did not originally have. When they have registered enough of criticism of others, they are referred to as critics. My own name for them, bringing it down from high vocabulary is,  ‘busy-body’.

In our country those who are die-hard critics of government gain popularity in the name of fighting for the poor. They never see anything good in any government. They look for any reason to discredit government policy. In fact some of them do it so much to give the impression that they have the monopoly of knowledge and wisdom. Yet they do not and will not formulate any policy nor proffer solutions. Taking a closer look at some of Nigeria’s critics, one finds that they use it as a stepping stone to achieve something else. One example comes to mind. A popular legal practitioner who had registered himself as a die-hard critic of government, a relentless human right crusader and a democrat, at the peak of his fame, jumped into politics, believing he had done more than enough in defense of the poor and should be elected governor in his home state.

The result was total failure. He was not elected as he failed to win the vote of the people.

While he tried criticism as a means to an end, some other critics do not see it that way. All they are concerned with is to prove that they have the monopoly of wisdom and to assert themselves in this position, they do not in any way condone criticism of themselves by others. No one has the right to criticise them and anyone who does, is washed down with the most acidic words.  To my mind, these kind of people are nothing but dictators in disguise and they are first to label a head of government a dictator.

Another set of critics are the ones in politics, you can find them in opposition and also in the ruling party. The style of criticism in this category is nothing else but to destroy. Say anything to destroy your political enemy completely. They never see anything good in any other party. Here is a grand example of criticism in this category.  Members of one party can deny their own names only because it was announced by a member of the other party. All they want to prove to the public is that members of the other party cannot get anything right which includes even the names of members of their own party. They can, to show a proof of such an incredible falsehood, deny their own names. This is how aimless politicians can be in their criticism. To them, no credits should be given to other parties.

Criticism, The Nigerian Way