There is really no point discussing any failure in Nigeria, Zero. Every failure is the repeat of some earlier folly which has probably morphed and expanded in severity. We keep saying the same things over and over and over again. Fela sang 2018 news 40 years ago.
What is going on now is that we are locked in a holding pattern, waiting for a miracle. Like we were when Abacha expired in 1999. He was riding on to become a Gaddhafi, And as sure as rain, Nigerians would have adapted to being a Libyan clone if he’d succeeded. The really damning truth is that, if we take an honest look at ourselves we must admit that most Nigerians are the very leaders we claim to despise.
Look around, at places without politicians. Schools, estates, businesses, etc. By degrees, we act the same. Every Street I lived in Nigeria has a residents’ exco which closely mirrored NASS, including every confounded horror we have now come to expect. Just yesterday, Ugochukwu Mbamalu and I went to buy Fried Yam and Potato in Bwari, the Woman clearly ignored us and attended to everyone that could speak Her native language irrespective of the fact that we came before them; Tribal factions, sloth, incompetence, corruption, you name it, has eaten deep to our roots.
We talk a lot about the economy, the political institutions, and so on, but we do not talk enough about values, norms, cultures, beliefs, people. In a word, SOCIETY. I must say this: our society is in decay. That is a remarkably arrogant statement to make, and you would be on good ground to challenge it. No single individual decides what the state of thing as important as SOCIETY is, But consider this country of ours. Nay, consider our people, our social norms, our values.
We are fundamentally a low-trust society. That’s a fancy way of saying that everybody must ‘shine their eye’ because the next fellow is very likely a crook, a con man/woman, or a scam artist. It is worse for the leading lights of society, those who do not have the benefit of poverty as an excuse for any conduct. One day you are the Nigerian oil titan hanging with Jay-Z and Naomi Campbell, the next you are an international fugitive from justice. There is nothing normal about thinking the next fellow is out to get you; about preachers being venal examples of immoral living; about a country where the word SCANDAL or WRONG has no meaning.
I simply do not know what wrong conduct is in Nigeria. The word WRONG is meaningless. Does that not frighten you a little bit? We do not even have the language of social justice anymore. We do not know justice. Yes, JUSTICE. I’ve often reflected that this is the thing most wrong with our country, that there is no JUSTICE. That there is no equalizer But of course, we do have an equalizer. It is money. Money is the equalizer, It is the point of our Nigerian existence. Growing up this sort of thing was considered vulgar, yes! I was taught that contributing something, helping society, being a model citizen was a good life. Not so anymore.
We have abbreviated our value systems to money. Yes, this is, by and large, the Nigerian value system summarised. This is Nigerian justice. This is Nigerian happiness. This is Nigerian truth. MONEY. And this may be the worst legacy of our history. By design, sloth, or carelessness, we have ensured that the Nigerian is a flattened organism. He does not appreciate anything beyond how much he can earn. And do you blame him? We like to blame our ‘leaders’ for these things but that is a lie we tell ourselves to allow us live guiltlessly. We are complicit in this, We snigger when we should be outraged, We break the queue when we should maintain it, We shrug when should be angered.
I used to visit Ugo in Anthony Village many years ago, where Gani Fawehinmi had his chambers. I used to walk past there and marvel that this giant I read in TELL and other publications, railing at the military, was so close. It was a sort of temple for me. I never saw him in person. I think about Gani a lot. I think about his life, about the courage he had. I think about his legacy. I think about the common lesson which this generation has adopted, ‘Gani shout tire, go peg.
My brother shine your eye.’ Every morning while in Lagos, I drive through Obalande, down bank road on my way for school run. On the right is Dodan Barracks. Dodan Barracks! That was where he marched his mother’s corpse to after the military sacked his home in Kalakuta. He did that in the era of the military, when all that was needed was a phone call from a general and he and all his supporters would have been cut down with machine gun fire. A Nigerian did this. A Nigerian. A Nigerian.
It is not about government changing, That is necessary but government is built on something; Society. Our society is sick. We need to heal it. We need to remember what iniquities are, what justice is, what honesty means, what fair-dealing is. I think the big fights will be easier when the small ones are fought. The one in the residents’ exco. The one at the office.
The one in the danfo. The one at church. To do the right thing, to be the example of leadership you want in the nation. That shift in consciousness usually bleeds into the real structures of society. It is not easy. But individually, it is possible. The problem, my dear friends, is Us. We can repeat this for another 40 years, or start with honest conversation and small battles.
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