GOVERNMENT OF GIST, BY GIST, FOR GIST : NATIONAL THEATRE OF TALK – WHERE ACTION IS ABSENT, BY KEDIKUMO EBIKABOWEI 

– Where Rumours Wear Crowns and Lies as National Currency

In this land, talking has become a national sport,
And leaders chew stories the way goats chew grass.
The big seats are filled with small thinking,
And the parliament sounds more like a busy market,
Noise everywhere, but not one good idea sold.

They sip gossip like it’s fine wine,
Passing rumours around like trays of snacks.
The country is left standing still,
While leaders chase shadows with buckets of daylight.
Plans are forgotten,
Dreams are left in drawers,
And progress is a child abandoned at the bus stop.

When ignorance takes the driver’s seat,
The road is always the wrong one.
The government becomes a merry-go-round,
Plenty of spinning,
But no travelling.
Decisions are written in feelings instead of facts,
And offices become gossip rooms with shiny nameplates,
While truth wears a stranger’s coat at the gate.

Everyone is busy fighting ghosts,
While roads break their backs,
Schools faint from neglect,
And hospitals grow wild grass where patients once lay.
Money gets lost inside “planning meetings”
That plan nothing.
Problems are postponed until they become family members.

The leaders keep talking…
Talking so much,
You’d think words were the only national export.
A table full of gossip breeds corruption like flies on ripe fruit.
Teamwork disappears,
Replaced by team fights and blame games.
We chase our own tail like a confused dog,
Thinking it’s progress because we’re moving.

In power, they fear the truth the way cats fear water.
Critics are labelled as conspirators,
Facts as enemy lies.
The civil service sings praises with voices on a leash,
Smiling while the house burns down around them.

Pretty soon, the leaders turn into entertainers,
The citizens become the audience,
And policies become comedy sketches without the jokes.
When you govern with gossip,
One day you’ll run out of gossip,
And find you have nothing left to give.

The cure is so simple it’s almost silly:
Trade whispers for wisdom,
Trade bragging for vision,
Trade sweet talk for solid work.
True leadership is not about who talks loudest in the room,
But about who listens deepest in the crowd.
Power is not a plaything for idle hands;
It’s a gift meant for shaping lives.

Now here’s the long and short of it:
A leader who plays with talk and sleeps on action
Will leave behind only one inheritance,
A poor country filled with rich gossip,
And a nation famous for making mountains
Out of molehills every single tea-time.

EBIKABOWEI KEDIKUMO – writes from Ayakoromo Town, Delta State