But, you see, unlike Omojuwa and his passionate young friends, they actually end up doing nothing. It’s all sound and fury, signifying nonsense, masking their own impotence. They are glad to point at his flaws and laugh at his errors, and then sit back, rubbing their bellies.

On Sunday, he did it again: channeling anger, over the unfortunate events at Aluu in Port Harcourt, where four students were killed senselessly based on accusations of theft, he declared with all the pompousity of a balloon: “I will never set foot in Aluu!”

What nonsense! It doesn’t make any sense to smear an entire community because of the offence of a handful of bloodthirsty animals; and really, who cares if blogger and activist Japheth Omojuwa goes to Aluu or not? What impact or lack of it will his presence or absence have?

So yes, it is difficult not to get supremely irritated by the sometimes-obstreperous young man. He has once threatened to shut down the Twitter accounts of people who disagree with him, he has used severely gender-specific pejoratives against a woman who disagreed with him on Twitter, and he finds it impossible to ignore or forgive any slight, real or imagined.

He brings the same baggage to the issues he is passionate about – crying louder than the bereaved. And oh of course his critics are there, always ready to point out his excess, his grandiosity, his arrogance, his tweet-to-noise ratio, his constant sniping for what they call attention and relevance. Indeed, it can be difficult to make any sense of the noise that the likes of Omojuwa make, or to see any redeeming value apart from more people paying attention to them.

So maybe the critics are right.

Or maybe not.

They abused him when he took up #ABSURape along with others. They said he was a Twitter champion, hiding behind his handle and making noise that would lead nowhere. All he wanted was attention they said: this Twitter generation! All noise! No action! The collective noise he fed however led to an international outcry and forced the hand of the Abia State, as well as the Federal Government – soon enough, NGOs had stepped in to save the girl.

Occupy Nigeria came, and they said he was a lightweight. An agent of the opposition. Ineffectual! Unable to do anything! They will make heir noise and nothing will happen, they said! Nigerians in Lagos and Abuja cannot come out to protest. Nothing can be organized based on social media. And yet again, with a name derived from social media and networks built through social media, the hugest rallies that Nigerians have ever organized swept the country and beyond, rattling its president till this day.

They took a look at the #SaveOke campaign, and said ‘This boy again’ – people are tired of donating money. You people should stop wasting time on my timeline. They called it the; cause of the week’, a passing fad, which would lead nowehere and soon die down. Until Nigerians began to donate. And donate. And donate. And then the Delta government did. And Oke was sent abroad, and Oke was treated.

#ArikWhereisMyiPad, an inchoate, sometimes confusing campaign was meant to be his Waterloo. The critics cheered, hoping incongruously that this one time Arik’s intransigence and total disrespect for the customer would shut Omojuwa up.  You will be blacklisted for life, they said. Arik has no time for this small boy, they sneered. Shameless futile blackmailer, they smeared. Then one day, like a thief in the night, Arik calls the 28-year-old for a peace meeting and replaced his iPad with apologies and a request for him to sheathe swords. Even more importantly, the way that monster Arik treats the small guy has most certainly been changed for good.

But the job of the cynic is never done.

The matter of the #Aluu4 is here again, and they have come out of their shells – throwing stones, sharing blame, speaking wisely and sagely from their thrones about what the activists and campaigners are doing wrong. How much more effective they could be, why their passion is mis-channeled. Why they should shut up and not show any rage – because the rage will lead nowhere.

All of this, while they change nothing but their status updates, while they stand guilty of that same thing which they accuse everyone else of; dirty sharp tongues, aimless wit and sarcasm, reloaded. They have come again.

But, you see, unlike Omojuwa and his passionate young friends, they actually end up doing nothing. It’s all sound and fury, signifying nonsense, masking their own impotence. They are glad to point at his flaws and laugh at his errors, and then sit back, rubbing their bellies.

They try nothing; they risk nothing. And because of this, so they change nothing.

Newsflash: I have no use for them. Neither does Nigeria.

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.