Transcript
No, no, no.
Change your info and you are your phone's do
I'm a prisoner
You're a prisoner
Mr. J-Love
I am free or die too
Life is beautiful
You think it's a J-Love
We part, we, Mr. J-Love
Kill all my point of view
Mr. J-Love
Mr. J-Love
Marketplace
Very good evening to you again my fellow Nigerians.
My name is Omar Castro but I have a lot of aliases.
Some call me Omar Scariot or that's called me Omar DeBigot.
And the finest of them all but unfortunately the saddest is Omar DeTif.
Over the course of the last 24 hours, you must have had a lot about me,
a lot of what I said, a lot of what I tweeted, even as far back as 2013.
According to some people, I'm already dead, I'm buried.
But in the ground scheme of the Nigerian conversation, let's be honest, I'm totally relevant.
However, those of you active within the political side of Nigerian Twitter are familiar with this voice.
Many have told me it's my greatest gift.
Yet I've also been told that the ability to string words together does not represent any form of intelligence.
Well, you may agree, even if I choose to disagree.
As I believe that when the Great King Solomon acts God for wisdom, knowledge and understanding,
or a true proest was part of the gift in the package marked intelligence.
This explains why he was able to write a book as brilliant as the book of Proverbs,
where he posited that my son do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight,
then you will go on your way in safety and your foot will not stumble.
In the cause of my education, our journey, I was privileged that never to be part of any cult group.
And I consider that it prevailed because the temptation was huge.
The illusion of protection and the sense of belonging that such groups provided
were definitely alluring to my young mind.
So I consider myself lucky not to have fallen into that pit.
Unfortunately, life is full of many pitfalls.
And you can never predict at what stage you'll find yourself in one of them.
In 2013, as a young mind using this social media app, then referred to as Twitter.
I found myself in one of them, where I made a number of tweets that largely came
from a harmless place of sharing a myopic football in opinion on a public platform.
I grew from it.
But not long after, I fell into another pit.
This time, on another social media platform called Clubhouse.
Oh, I missed that place.
It was crazy.
I made a number of fierce submissions that in this day and age can't be considered tribalistic.
I choose that word carefully because I believe there's a distinction between that word.
And one of my latest publicly ascribed aliases.
Oh, my, the bigot.
Those comments were based on my extensive study of Nigerian history from 1966 or 1960.
You may say up until the end of the military regime in 1999, there's no way to justify these things.
Neither can I excuse them.
90 days in an excuse.
Needless ignorance.
I was a young, passionate and enthusiastic mind as I still am.
But this time, with the greatest sense of discernment and restraint.
But jumping from the present would mean skipping another stage of life
at which I fell into one of these pitfalls.
As I mentioned earlier, the part where I found myself in a pitfall of a courtish setting
that I had money to avoid during my educational journey.
This time, I felt deep and hard.
The various administrations in aptitude are done in number on me and many young Nigerians.
They deserve for a complete tear down of the existing political order.
I was right at the forefront of my thought process.
At the end of the Overwatch transpired during the police brutality protest of 2020.
And you might be able to come to terms with my deep disdain for anyone who supported the Buhari government.
Particularly, those who support and may be willing to find his way to the highest political office in the land.
At the top of this short list of perceived villains was the current president of Nigeria, Ashiraj Buhlamet in Ubu.
He's desire to play the political long game and his support for eight years of the Buhari administration.
Made it easy for me to see his presidential ambition as an unfortunate continuation of the existing political order in Nigeria.
His excellent track record as the governor of Lega State was convenient for me to ignore.
Instead, I wanted every bit of dirt, society, hard-to-name, and gallantly locked up every piece of information I could dig up that maligned him.
Well, as they say, an alternative name for karma is the B word.
And that karma has rolled out a red carpet for me to walk on shimfully in the present day.
Is Buhlamet a noble perfect? Hell no.
Is he a perfect president?
That subject to individual assessment of the nation's progress since he came into office.
It's difficult to gauge his achievements using general metrics.
However, I want to make the opinions of his performance among ordinary people on the ground in Nigeria may be.
There's a common consensus that every region feels represented in one way or the other.
Another is culminated in the non-partisan support for his second term in office.
But the demonization of Ashiraju wasn't the main pit I fell into.
My deep participation in a court-like political movement that championed Peter Ovi as its candidate.
And my subsequent association with some men of questionable character within that court movement could be described as the greatest before of my adult life.
Of course, I didn't see them that way at the initial stages.
This way, quote-unquote, boys who appear to be brilliant men with a shared forever to bring about change in a country that desperately needed it.
We wanted change. Volatine Bo was offering hope.
But Buhari had offered hope eight years earlier.
So why should I buy into Ashiraju's renewed hope agenda?
After all, the holy book says hope-deferred makes the heart sick.
But a long game fulfilled is a tree of life.
The obedient cult-like movement felt like a fulfillment of that long game to bring to office a president voted for by young Nigerians.
I was wrong.
Not because Peter Ovi is a bad man. Don't get me wrong.
I don't think he is. However, a platform is extremely confusing political choices and alliances.
A number of these band of supporters, whom I consider the brotherhood of well-many Nigerians, turned out to be a band of hate-filled merchants with zero tolerance for independent thinking.
It was only a matter of time before a free spirit like mine realized I was an epit.
While on this beat, contrary to what you might have heard, I did not become a millionaire.
In fact, according to some, I became the most impoverished member of this group of wannabe Nazis.
To others, I went from being the most impoverished member of the group to an overnight millionaire.
Wow, they had their peak of choices.
How I wish that were true though, because with the benefit of hindsight, my refusal to enrich myself, monetize my platform,
and even spread my tentacles across other monetizable platforms, as the great Mr. Saddam has done, could safely be considered an act of pure folly.
Now that I've been carefully tied a 1 million narrative, I can't help but look at the cultist pitfall as my greatest exhibition of poor judgment.
What can I say other than the fact that I'm sorry.
Firstly, not to anyone, but to myself.
And then to young Nigerians whom I misled with my poor judgment.
However, if I apologize for my misdeeds in the most recent pitfall, it's only fair that I do the same for the misdeeds in the previous ones.
To the people of different ethnicities across this British creation, which I aptly refer to as the Land of Lugar.
I'm also sorry for casting a blanket expression on all of you because of the DLC of a select few.
If you can find forgiveness in your heart for me, I'd appreciate it.
And even if you can't, I still apologize.
After all, there are many shades of Omar.
So let's say this is Omar, the tribalist, expressing deep felt remorse.
The only shade of Omar that refuses to wear is that of a thief.
You know me with Jalili, me with any Jalili, like, after all, our people would say,
didn't look to tambour a jacol till you get to gaidje.
I'm not wealthy, but I'm not poor.
I'm not fool.
Neither am I hungry.
I don't have much, but I do not lack.
While I was in that court-tished pitfall, a donation was made by a person
who had developed a personal relationship with me.
In the usual manner of the court, they were usually maligned figures within the movement.
It could be B-shop, it could be Chigosier.
Around this time, it was both.
They were perceived to be corrupt and dodgy.
Still, together we shared a belief that Peter O'Vee was the candidate who would give us a new Nigeria.
My perception of them was that they were allegedly dodgy according to what I've heard and the things people have said.
However wrong or right that might have been, I believe that someone a new person,
making a direct donation to him or to these guys at the time, was ill-advised.
After all, this was someone who's motivation for contributing financially to this movement was...