Though, what is considered as immorality will be otherwise in other societies, being morally upright enable individuals to occupy a special space and earn respect in the eyes of respected members of society.
Even with the multicultural and multi-religious nature of our contemporary societies, morality exists and those people who are morally upright are duly respected and worthy of emulation.
However, due to unrestricted and unlimited access to social media platforms, people now consider it as the norm to disrespect people of the their parent’s age, making derogatory statements and attacking their person because of mere differences in political ideologies.
There are many ways to present your thoughts and ideas about burning issues in society without necessarily making pejorative statements against respected individuals. One can criticise constructively with facts to sell your ideas, opinion or thoughts about contemporary issues.
Public office holders or politicians could be criticised for their actions and inactions but constructive criticism can deliver the massage well in praising what is good and condemning what is bad.
However, politicians understood that people are wise enough and can no longer embrace the idea of political thuggery as it used to be. Therefore, they now consider sponsoring educated thugs and social media ranters to disrupt the information flow of cyberspace by creating false and misleading information for their political opponents, in an effort to paint them black in the eyes of respected members of society.
Unfortunately, the highest level of our moral decadence leads to many people making posts on social media attacking religious clerics and disrespecting their persons because of differences in religious sect or other thoughts and controversial religious ideologies.
Those involved in this unfortunate act should know that the internet doesn’t forget and should be ready for the possible disastrous consequences of their actions. A word is enough for the wise!
Mustapha Bashir Dungus,Department of Mass Communication, University of Maiduguri, Maiduguri, Borno state.
