Dear Doherty Jim-George, before I reply you in full, let me bring to your notice that the post you attempted to uproot from the internet actually went viral, and has since secured its worthy place in the logarithms of the worldwideweb. Your parameters for deleting messages are clearly questionable.
When I read your reason for deleting the post, I took a closer look at your face and discovered that you and I belong to the same generation, a generation being a thirty-year bracket of time. Please take note. We are not in the 1960s when you walk up to the blackboard and wipe off any chalk script with a duster like an overzealous class monitor simply because you don’t like the handwriting of your classmate.
We happen to be riding along the information superhighway, and there’s nothing you can do to limit the flow of traffic. The internet is like the open sky. Every bird is free to fly, without colliding into each other. And you don’t have to go around with a dane gun attempting to shoot down every bird like a village hunter on the prowl. If you don’t like a script, somebody else adores it for the lessons contained in it. You just go on to the next story. As Chinua Achebe rightly put it, if you don’t like my book, write your own.
Please resist the temptation to delete my post. I didn’t beg to be on this platform. I was invited to write for it from the beginning, to relieve your boredom and spice up your day. It is unfortunate that you do not have the capacity to appreciate the story of a young Nigerian who rose from humble beginnings in Africa to establish a school in England, and was a rallying point for fellow Nigerians in diaspora.
This young man’s patriotic love for his country was so remarkable that the government of his state invited him home and gave him a befitting line of duty. He was so exceptional that he was recruited to start the University of Africa, Toru-Orua, Bayelsa State, and he equipped himself even further to become the professor who supervised the maiden matriculation ceremony of the university.
By all standards, that is a heroic story that enriches the knowledge bank of the world, and it was told with appropriate empathy, especially because the man died in the prime of his life. If Professor Prince Efere were alive today, he would be a member of this Elders’ Forum, and many more. The reasonable gentleman who started this platform, Elder Moses Onate, a retired Custom’s officer, will bear me witness.
And there you are doing your best to delete a princely parable from the memory of the world. What was so offensive about the story in question that it did not meet your standards? Did it insult your intelligence in any way? Would you rather have me write about the woman that cooked the largest pot of jollof rice in Nigeria? Do you know the meaning of people journalism? Do you know that it is the individual stories of people that make up the composite story of the world?
What you did was like tearing up a noble chapter from a book already in the hands of people simply because the tone of the writer didn’t meet the requirements of your breakfast copy. The way I see it, you might end up deleting your name from the Great Book of Life currently under construction. I put it to you that you erred. You did what you shouldn’t do. You were not the first administrator of this platform, and you will not be the last. Be well advised in future. Be more reasonable. Feel free to read the story again, and get your bearings right.
