Lord, they are just selfish, self center and greedy!

Dear Father:

You know, it’s so shameful and disgraceful for people who consider themselves our village chiefs to be so selfish, self-center and greedy, focusing on what is of more benefit to them than the people they claim to be representing.

It’s like a father taking his family to town well dressed and good looking, while his wife and children look like retagged refugees following after him-yet he claims to be the reflection of his family with such huge visible gap and difference in appearance and outlook.

This is hypocrisy and broad day robbery in the 21st century, my son.

Father, you know, I could not help but to laugh my guts out the other day when I heard our chiefs fighting tooth and nails on one of our town criers station to defend the kind of free money they are milking from our village. And nothing made me laugh out the most when I heard one of them justifying that although he could not remember his actual salary but the amount is very huge because the people they are representing at the village Traditional Council love to beg them for alms.

You see Father, had I been this chief, I would have just shut up my lousy big mouth if I had no contribution to make towards this debate.

This guy should have been ashamed of himself. Let me give you another simple example from the family setting.

If the Father eating bowl in the home is three times the size of the rest of the household combine, while in this world his children will not wait on him to come home and wait on him daily to give them his left over? This is simply because the children are just not having enough. What should have made up for the gap are emptied in the father’s bowl.

My son, you seem to be basing all your examples on the family today what is going on?

Father, the family is the nucleus of the society. If selfishness, self-centrism and greed are absence from the homes it will reflect on the larger society.

So, you see Father, if that huge money being pocketed by our chiefs were reduced and good policies were put into place that will ensure the trigging down of some of those huge amounts to the village people, nobody would be knocking at their doors for anything. But once they have chosen to get the lion’s share of the village cake, they should also expect those who are less than half full to be begging them for daily meal.

That is while I also see it as being deceptive when the chiefs stand in public places and say the hamlets and fiefdoms in our village are let hellholes. The fact is that they have concentrated on their personal needs that that of the needs of the people with the average budget of one chief exceeding 1.2 million Uncle Sam’s money per annual, what do you expect?

So, even if the entire constituent were to gather at the door step of a chief, I don’t blame them, because they have made them so. The chiefs in our village cannot escape being part of the increasing hardship being face by our village-period!

They are all helping to create a village with the cassava leaf mentality, where their hands are always stretching out begging.

It is the same problems we the town criers are also facing with the Old Lady’s kitchen cabinet. They speak of the town criers here being freed and independent, but we are not. The town criers here are being oppressed on a daily basis.

Why do you say so my son?

Father, if the town criers do a piece of job and will have to wait for 8-9 months or even a year of two to be paid, what would you expect?

Anybody, who can help that institution with two to 300 Uncle Sam’s money just to buy fuel or appear on the newsstand the next day, becomes untouchable-because that town crier will always be reminded of that help and would not want to hurt that friendship. Thus the independence is lost. On the other hand if the bills owe the town criers are paid on time after said jobs are done, there would be no need for any town crier to beg any member of the Old Lady’s kitchen cabinet for alms.

But because they would want to continue to dictate to the town criers they keep them very poor and make them appear like hustlers just to call them all kinds of names. It is like proverbial saying: “giving a dog a bad name just to hang it.”