Nigeria: How Patriotic Is the Whistle Blower?

25 May 2017
opinion

IS the 'whistle blower' who gets paid also a 'patriot'? Or do true patriots have to be paid to blow the whistle on crimes that put everyone in harm's way? A Pentagon whistle blower, Ernie Fitzgerald, was the one who described 'whistle blowing' as "committing the truth". It was his own way of stating the reverse of 'committing a crime'. Those who pervert the 'truth' by perpetrating an 'offence' are said to 'commit a crime'; and for which the law exacts punishment. Conversely those who 'tell the truth' to expose 'crime', -in the vengeful perception of those that they expose- are said to be guilty of 'committing the truth'. And often too they are also made to pay for their 'truth'. And this is what 'corruption' is reputed to do whenever it gets into 'fight back' mode: it seeks to punish those who have dared to 'commit the truth' by exposing graft.

In a sense therefore 'truth telling' is essentially at the heart of the 'whistle blowing' novelty. Exposing falsehood, or squealing on wrongdoers. And which by the way, should be the duty of all true lovers of country, who should be prepared always to 'commit the truth' in order to expose those whose 'perversion of truth' puts society in harm's way. But any people that will -for sectional motives- imprudently look the other way when the extravagant sons of the land deliberately put their country in harm's way, is doomed inevitably to stew in its own blitheness.

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