BETWEEN THE BRAIN AND THE PAPER

Life is full of many ironies. The hilarious paradoxes of life brings into it, many dimensions that leave life nothing but a misery to ordinary, undiscerning minds. One of such is the old popular fabble of how little tortoise made the giant elephant fall into a deep pit and thereby killed it by simply playing a lofty trick on his victim by making him, the elephant, feel on-top-of-the-world. Such hilarious paradox has not seized to play out even in our polity now. Ours is a society that celebrates and honours certificated mediocrity at the expense of uncertificated excellence. Ours is a society that ululates and praises to high heavens, criminal and under-performing achievements even at the risk of relegating and denigrating obvious intelligensia sagacity. Our political atmosphere is charged. The volume of political electrons running in the veins of the major actors have escalated of late. Hence, the debate about the brain and the paper. The ruling party has presented Buhari, the opposition's presidential candidate, as a stack illiterate, or at best, a failed educated fellow who has been unable to produce, not even the least of his certificates as required by law(?) The hilarious part of it all is that the people have aptly compared Buhari and Jonathan, the sitting certificated President, in terms of performances, and the unanimous decision is that Buhari, the "illiterate" is better than our doctorate degree holder. The paradoxical element in this whole saga is that Buhari, the uncertificated BRAIN is cruising, while Jonathan, the celebrated PAPER is cringing politically as the campaigns proceed. If Buhari wins, that aspect of the constitution will have to be expunged to allow our uncerticated brains exhume this country from the dark doldrums into which the certificated papers have plunged it.