He celebrated his birthday a few months ago and his family took to their social media handles to wish him a happy birthday. His name is Fewa Otedola and he is billionaire Femi Otedola’s only son. He is a handsome young man who is also autistic. Autism is a developmental disorder that impairs the ability to communicate and interact. It is a disorder that impacts the nervous system.
And some Nigerians came on the family’s social media handles to say horrible things about the young man. They insinuated that Otedola used his only son for money rituals and that is the only explanation to why he’s autistic.
I literally shed tears reading through those comments. How can humans be this mean, insensitive and backwards in both reasoning and actions? Don’t tell me it is ignorance, what happened to empathy? Have we lost our humanity and senses to erroneous religious/superstitious beliefs or were we brainwashed by some Nollywood movies?
It left me in deep thought as to the amount of damage some religious/superstitious beliefs and some Nollywood movies have done to our psyche as a people. This is exactly what happens when people grow up seeing movies and television programs and even some religious institutions portraying rich people with children incapacitated or dying for whatever reasons as ritualists.
This issue needs urgent tackling. Research has shown that at birth there are chances that a particular number of children will have one medical condition or another. If so, then how do you feel the rich are immune to such challenges? But because you have chosen to remain shallow, as well as refused to reason you continue to wallow in ancient error that even formal education and logical thinking has not liberated your mind from.
Something is wrong with your mind and how it works if you are you always looking for ways to demonize people who are perceived rich. If it does make you feel better when you go on such smear campaigns, then you are plain mean, sadistic and toxic. You are the real definition of witches and wizards.
In fact, you have so gotten comfortable with poverty and mediocrity that you make unsubstantiated claims just to hate people doing better. You just want to find excuse for your poverty and lack of progress. Yes! and it’s either out of jealousy, envy, or self pity. You subconsciously hold the rich responsible for your situation and therefore look for every avenues to trash talk them.
It’s the reason when an expensive car hits a bike man, the crowd gathers to burn the expensive car down, that is if the occupants are lucky to escape with their lives intact. There’s just this anger amongst the poor against those who are comfortable.
If you are rich, help the poor as much as you can but from a safe distance, If not, they are very comfortable to see you at their level. They are ready to drag you down physically and psychologically to the extent of even making up unsubstantiated stories. It is the reason the poor always suspects every acts of kindness by the rich or those doing better than they are. They conclude easily that one is either showing off or trying to use their destinies.
You don’t need to bother about them trying to blackmail you with their pull him down syndrome s4rories. Let them continue to romance poverty and demonize people who are busy securing their future. Continue to do well and provide them topics for discussions. You can’t resent and demonize people doing better than you are and expect to do better yourself. Your subconscious mind would thwart every effort of yours at doing better.
It is heart breaking the way we treat or perceive people with physical and mental challenges in our clime. It’s the reason when an adult driving a big car all of sudden stops the car in the middle of the road, jumps out and takes off every piece of clothing on his body is instantly called a ritualist or Yahoo boy instead of checking him into a mental home. It’s only the rich who suffer mental breakdown, the poor are safe according to the mentality of poor people in this country.
In this society, we only pretend to be educated. The malice in our hearts has stolen our humanity. We don’t believe people should or can become rich through hard work and working smart, so we demonize prosperity whilst secretly wanting it. We are the problem with our country. We have no empathy and wish nothing but evil for our fellow man. We need reorientation, so as to discard jealousy and negative vibes. Above all, have empathy.
We must change our ancient reasoning ways. You have no right to call a woman barren because she is yet to birth a child, neither do you have any right to brand him/her a wizard/witch because he/she lost all their children to death in questionable circumstances. He is not a ritualist either because he’s unable to get a woman pregnant or his child/partner or himself is raving mad all of a sudden.
We must wake up to reality, show every child/adult/family bearing the burden of raising a child/adult with special needs love, it is not a piece of cake. People are already dealing with so much and you trying to paint a picture of what you know nothing about is evil. Grow up!