Read and stop being played around like a ball. The Arewa Social Media space over the past few days have been trolling comrades and comradeship. Meanwhile, most of those involved in this trolling game either do not know who is a comrade, or they do it with some motives. We have also learned from Dr. Muhammad Hashim Suleiman that;
“The trolling of a comrade actually started by paid APC political vuvuzelas to deflect the mountain of criticism of the current government’s failures”.
“It is not a joke. A political comedian that habitually runs ‘for president’ and later collected money from government started it from whence it was picked up by a lady a lady who is well connected in APC”.
From the above assertions, the aim has been achieved already, because a region bedeviled by persistent insecurity, poverty and underdevelopment, its social media users ought to be trending burning national issues such as kidnappings, Boko Haram insurgency, and banditry. Just recently, in the same region a train was attacked by terrorists which claimed about nine lives leaving scores injured, and scores kidnapped. And of which a cleric was sacked for speaking against the level of insecurity in the region. The trends of these unfortunate events in our social media space was indeed a hard-knock on the leadership of the nation. But the oppressors of the masses will always device a means of distracting the people from the realities of the consequences of their ill actions through propaganda, sports, or music.
I therefore deem it necessary to clear the air on who is a comrade and what comradeship is about.
The term comrade generally means ‘mate’, ‘colleague’, or ‘ally’, and derives from the Spanish and Portuguese, term camarada, literally meaning ‘chamber mate’, from Latin camera, meaning ‘chamber’ or ‘room’. It may also specifically mean “fellow soldier”. Political use of the term was inspired by the French Revolution, after which it grew into a form of address between socialists and workers. Since the Russian Revolution, popular culture in the Western world has often associated it with communism.
When the socialist movement gained momentum in the mid-19th century, socialists elsewhere began to look for a similar egalitarian alternative to terms like “Mister”, “Miss”, or “Missus”. In German, the word Kamerad had long been used as an affectionate form of address among people linked by some strong common interest, such as a sport, a college, a profession (notably as a soldier), or simply friendship. The term was often used with political overtones in the revolutions of 1848, and was subsequently borrowed by French and English. In English, the first known use of the word comrade with this meaning was in 1884 in the socialist magazine Justice.
South African usage:
During the 1970s and 1980s, comrade emerged as a popular revolutionary form of address in South Africa among those involved in anti-apartheid political activities. For example, members of the African National Congress and South African Communist Party frequently referred to each other as comrade.
~Sourced from Wikipedia
Now, going by the global perspective of a comrade, we can construe that a comrade is a person who is involved in a struggle for liberation or a cause with others individual colleagues which seeks to alter a faulty status quo, legally and tactically to build a more egalitarian society. A group of students union in institutions of higher learning do address each others as comrades, in as much as they are engaged in the same movement. For instance, National Association Of Social Science Students (NASSS) could refer fellow social scientists involved in a struggle as comrades in as
much as membership exists amongst them. Comradeship does not necessarily mean one must be an executive council or parliamentary member of such unions, but are comrade in the spirit of struggle for the same purpose.
Unlike the commercialization of unionism by some university students and students of other tertiary institutions, true comrades are men and women of ideology, principled, and disciplined, who don’t waver nor relent when issues of rights of students and the society at large is at stake. We can therefore agree to the fact that comradeship is also about fighting for freedom for the weak. Comrades are mostly learned group of individuals who apply knowledge and wisdom in making sure justice is served through a lawful means.
In unions such as the Academic Staff Union Of University (ASUU), ASUP, and the Nigeria Labor Congress etc, individual members in these unions refer to each others as comrades, example of such are Comrade Ayuba Waba, Comrade Professor Exco Toyo, Comrade Senator Shehu Sani (the president of Nigeria Civil Rights Congress NCRC), and Late Comrade Balarabe Musa of PRP former Kaduna State Governor. These are all comrades and are appreciated by the society or colleagues who share common vision for the ways of life and struggle for the oppressed people.
From the people listed above you can see that we don’t just have comrades but also Comrade Professors.
On this note, we should therefore know who comrades are and how comradeship is, and stop being played around like a ball. Those trolling comrades have an ulterior motive for what they do, though we cannot discredit the fact that there are those who only troll for fun and not really to denigrate the comrade. But we must be able to ask questions and be critical on matters that should trend which are of importance to our nation. For now we should leave comrades alone and hold our leaders accountable on the matters that matters most which is insecurity and bad governance.
