Words by Ireho Aito

I just listened to Reggae crooner Orits Wiliki advocacy song for the coming elections trying to encourage the Nigerian electorate to be wiser and stronger in choosing their leaders. It’s so unfortunate that such a song is coming at the wrong time for the wrong people.

Electioneering process today is even worse off when you compare with the 1983 elections. We are a bunch of compromised people already. I can feel a legend like Orits struggling emotionally in that song, pleading for a society to get it right. Damn so sad. Recent happenings have shown that the Nigerian society is not listening to such songs, admonishing them to be thorough in their decisions is untimely, we are in the era of vote buying. And the vote buying or personality buying is not just among the common people but also among the people claiming to be in upper cader.

I remember that young and enterprising artist like Innocent Ujah Idibia , known as 2baba tried to encourage his generation with a peace walk using two of our decaying institutions The National Stadium and the National Theater respectively, a beautiful way to look at our history and asked ourselves a salient question; where did we get it wrong? Instead the young man received a lot of backlash, even from his own industry.

For Orits Wiliki, I feel the struggle in the song. I heard his pains in the song. But I walked away so fast from the song just because the song is alien today to our way of reasoning.
Sorry for Orits.