Nigeria: The inhabitants

By 

Isaac Sagay

WHO can say, two thousand years after our redemption, and yet we continue with evil, that even now, these same thoughts are not again in the Mind of God, as he looks down on the 21^st century inhabitants of the world, particularly the Nigerian man - full of grace, and yet possessed with the basest thoughts? Thankfully, we have the assurance of His eternal promise in Isaiah 43: 25 "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions, for my own sake, and will not remember thy sins" Deus Miseratur! It will be something of a metaphysical conceit, to suppose that Shakespeare had the character and image of the Nigerian man in mind, when he wrote: "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty!! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, no, nor women neither. " (Hamlet 2:2). And yet, how apt! It is not without justification, that the Psalmist also queried God thus: "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" All of this, simply go to show, how terribly complex and unconscionably contradictory in character, the animal called man is, and none more so, than the species called the "Nigerian".

Evidently, many Nigerians are good people, and also God-fearing. The problem is that the wicked few, have infected and overwhelmed the majority with their evil ways, thus spreading an aura of evil everywhere, and making it seem as though every Nigerian is at least, potentially, an evil doer or criminally-minded. With this as background, I wish I could be kindlier and more flattering in my portraiture of the archetypal Nigerian man, but that would be dishonest and counter-productive. There is wisdom in the saying, "Man, know thyself", and this is not a term of abuse, even though it may be a bitter pill, for some to swallow.

It will have become apparent by now, to all those who have read my "Nigeria:" series, in this column over the last three months (and this shall be the last in this particular genre), that I have had a fixation on the short - comings of our national leadership. This is a leadership that has not led by personal example, and with it the consequential misgovernance of the nation, that we Nigerians have been compelled to endure these forty odd years. We ought to be able to say, at this stage, regarding their misgovernance that, "enough is enough". But what hope is there for a brighter future, unless Nigerians, one and all, are truly "born again", spiritually?

It may be comforting to salvage our conscience, by heaping all the ills in our society on the leadership of our country, although to some extent, this is a valid position to take, but then we must also ask ourselves, whether out of the crooked tree of humanity, such as we all are, any straight and virtuous specimen, can be carved out? Should the struggle for national salvation be left to the leadership alone? I think not- particularly as they possess no extraordinary qualities or superlative virtues.

The average, ordinary Nigerian man and woman, is a carbon copy of those who emerge from their ranks into leadership limelight, sporting the same character defects-aggressive individualism, incivility, and afflicted with the same greed, and propelled by the same blind ambition. The result is a largely schizophrenic society, provisionally under the rule of law, but not rulable because people feel that laws can be violated with impunity, for lack of will, and enforcement capabilities by the law enforcement authorities. This has resulted in widespread moral and ethical decay, low incentives to do what is right, and cynicism-to the point where patriotism is now regarded as a much-discounted virtue.

Such is our pre-occupation with material success - at any cost - that not to be "successful" materially, is considered a failure. All of these have horrendous ramifications for our life-style and national outlook and values, and what we see of ourselves collectively, does not make for a pretty picture. There are three sources of the ethical and moral decay in our society. There is the personal, one-on-one, then there is the community ethnic-fueled group action, and lastly the corporate or official act of repression, discrimination, victimization and exploitation. All three are in full throttle gear and venomous operation in this country, so much so, that there is scarcely a hiding place, or hope of respite.

And to make matters worse, there are no reliable and effective avenues for the redress of wrongs; neither the Police, the Ombudsman nor the Courts, provide any credible shield of protection from wrongs and injustice, with the result that we all feel vulnerable, insecure and perpetually threatened.

I have heard it said in extenuation of the boorishness and atavism in our society, that the root cause is poverty. Personally, 1 rather think that the root causes are congenital indiscipline, the absence of the rule of law (crime and retribution) and the pursuit of unbridled materialism. There is poverty in all the surrounding ECOWAS states and in India (with a population six times that of Nigeria) and yet life is not lived as on a knife’s edge, nor as frenzied; and people are not as irrational and hostile as most people are in Nigeria.

For example, in nearby Benin Republic, Togo or Ghana you will not see a motorist, or for that matter Molue or Okada operators, driving against the flow of traffic in a one-way street, or discharging and picking up passengers in the middle of the street, as one finds every where in Lagos. Similarly, the level of unprovoked aggression and incivility, by those who serve the public are unparalleled in any other country with any pretensions to civilized behaviour. Also, incidents of the naked perversion of justice or of official corruption, are done with less bravado in these equally poor and backward African countries, than is done in Nigeria where such aberrant behaviours are more or less tolerated.

In any event, there can be no alibi or extenuating pleas for being what we are seen to be, a lawless and corrupt nation, in the eyes of the international community. For instance, the traffic insanity in Lagos, and the depredations of its "area boys", cannot be dismissed as isolated occurrences, because for good or ill, Lagos is still our "window" to the world, and it has a way of either infecting or influencing the rest of Nigeria, and peoples’ opinion about Nigeria.

However it began, ours is today a society where undisciplined and expansive desires run riot, typified by the lust for power by the few rich, who wish to lord it over the rest of society, in total disregard of the law of fairness and equality, on which any social contract is based. In short, we are witnessing the triumph of destructive egotism, over ethical individualism. Whether in our circumstances, some humane restoration of an ethical society is possible, will depend largely upon the leadership quality of the ethical few, "the saving remnant" who have learnt to discipline their emotions, by observing the law of "measure". The most pernicious of our societal ills, is the deification of wealth, and the pressure from society itself, to be seen to be "successful", no matter the means-fair or foul- particularly as there is no stigma or sense of shame, attached to corruption or the acquisition of dubious wealth.

At the metaphysical level, material progress is almost invariably equated with moral progress, so much so, that there is no moral condemnation of the tyrannical concentration and use of power, in the pursuit of spiritually blind objectives. If real moral progress is to be made, side by side with material progress, we need to demystify and de-venerate wealth, particularly wealth that has been obtained at the expense of others in society. Wealth that is thus obtained, not only oppresses society, but is also the source of much collateral corruption, that cumulatively aggravates the disequilibrium of means and opportunity in the society. We must abjure our perpetual and restless desire for power after power, at all levels of society, if there is to be a sense of sanity and proportionality - which should be the basis of a national threshold of personal or individual contentment.

Over and above these, our society is replete with those who have acquired obscene wealth - even beyond the dreams of avarice - and they constitute a centrifugal force for peace and stability, and for the economic harmonization of means and opportunity. By their example, they also discourage the spirit of competition and high endeavour, as a means of obtaining success. Justice itself is jeopardized, impaired and compromised by those who are able to buy their freedom from prosecution, and thus indurate the application of the law’s due process.

Because of our inordinate and slavish veneration of power and wealth, we are overshadowed by a Hobbesian mentality, which enables our leaders to feel that they are entitled to do anything they please, with the people, instead of the people being in a position to do as they please, with their leaders. This is nothing short of the vertigo of the abyss. Despite the President’s new moral evangel of transparency, accountability, discipline and frugality, the countervailing "prosperity gospel" of the avant garde televangelists, has, unwittingly tended, in Bossuett’s phrase, to put "cushions under the elbows of sinners," who now see poverty as inconsistent with God’s desire for man.

So that from every angle, our society is driven to venerate and desire prosperity, in pursuit of which much evil is visited on many members of the society, including ritual murders, as a means to wealth. The issue is not, strictly, whether riches or wealth are desirable, the real issue is whether those who in any particular society, are allowed to enjoy wealth that is not the fruit of their own visible toil, should be allowed to also corrupt and undermine the moral fabric of the society, through their Epicurean, self-indulgent and unexemplary life-styles?

The deep criminal division, between the "haves" and "have-nots" in our society, can only be bridged, when those with power to acquire and possess, begin to set limits to their desires for material possessions - that are patently beyond their needs. For as Aristotle has said, the only remedy for economic inequality is, "to train the nobler sort of natures not to desire more, for it is not the possessions, but the desires of mankind, which require to be equalized". It is the type of "devil-may-care" individualism which is applauded by our society, that has bred monstrous inequalities, characterized by the ever rising growth of a raw plutocracy. We either put in place, measures that will put an end to this malady, or it will prove to be the death of us all. For there presently issues forth from the hearts of many over- ambitious Nigerians, flames of greed and avarice, that cannot be satisfied, even if they were to devour the whole resources of the nation; such is their unsatiety!

The fate of our nation today is in the hands of self-acclaimed leaders, many of them with unbalanced minds, provincial outlooks and who harbour visions of hysterical Utopias, all based on the foundations of a chimerical conceit, of their own importance - without reference to any objective standards. Needlessly, we all seem to be contemplating along with them, the greatest tragedy in the history of any post- World War 11 developing nation. There is no national harmony, as we drift away from our traditional moorings of constitutional freedoms, in preference for the unsound and suspect liberty of a merely formalistic and quantitative democracy, which had been decreed by an ethically -unsound "military" constitution.

Without a proper constitution to guide and regulate governance, we continue to engage in a scramble for money and material success, instead of moral progress, until more and more millionaires emerge from the shrouds of the "voodoo economics" we are practising in support of the proposition, that in our democracy, all men are not created equal! Surely, if our form of democracy means simply the elimination of competition, and the subjugation of standards, in celebration of a laissez fair equality for some, in order to divert attention from the encroaching neo-imperialism by the powerful few, the end result will not be qualitative equality as is claimed, but a sort of inverted aristocracy, that allows mere money-bags to rule the roost, by using their money to control the political process.

And this can no longer be permitted. But the real threat to the growth of a virile, sustainable and fructifying democracy, is the complacency of the Nigerian people, who find it easy to justify evil, and even palpable injustice - because of their spiritual laziness and disinclination to look up to a higher standard - mediocrity has become their most comfortable operational milieu. These sort of Nigerians, complacent and lukewarm, are those whom Jonathan Edwards has described as being a "particular smoke" in God’s nostrils. With this attitudinal mind-set, there can be no hope for the mobilization of "people power", as a potent democratic counterpoise, against creeping institutional no- imperialism, misgovernance, injustice, corruption and oppression. For even within, and among the ranks of the oppressed, who presumably share a common fate, and therefore a common desire to be liberated, there are ethnic fifth columnists, who are prepared to sacrifice their souls on the altar of ethnic solidarity and loyalty, than fight for the common cause of liberty. This is what makes Nigeria unique, and unlike most other emerging democracies, where people are prepared to take risks in defence of their democracy.

All of the above character defects, discernable among many Nigerians, (and no one or nation is perfect) could, with time, be overcome and rectified - if only we will swear unswerving allegiance to the "Truth" - which is the basis of justice. But as the Danish Theologian Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) has observed, "The Truth must essentially be regarded as in conflict with this world, and the world has never been so good, that the majority will desire the truth". In our society today, what-the majority believes, is the truth, and to survive we lie, betray and compromise, if we must - just like the pitiable creatures described by Archibald MacLeish in his poem, "The Black Day".

By our heedless and irresponsible pursuit of personal material prosperity, this nation has lost its moral soul, and we have enthroned wealth as the national deity. The result is a centrifugal nation, largely divided against itself, and now, in the words of W. B. Yeats, popularized by our own Chinua Achebe,. "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" Now grimly but glumly, we face a future in which, as Woodrow Wilson observed, "The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of their bosses and their employers, the special interest. An invisible empire has been set up, above the forms of democracy".

A curtain of moral deliquescence has descended on the nation, and no one can say, when this dark veil, that shrouds the glory of this otherwise great nation, will be lifted. Feelings and emotions have long been brutalized, that people everywhere have lost their sense of feeling. So much cynicism has taken hold of our lives as a result of the people’s inability to influence the way they are governed, that people neither hope, nor believe any longer, in the possibility of a better life, as promised by this government. There is widespread despair and a sense of panic is abroad, in the nation.

Meanwhile, a pall of spiritual lethargy and ethical inertia have made captives of our national spirit to resist evil, or to insist on standards in the conduct of the nation’s affairs. And so the wicked grow bolder and stronger, while the rich are richer and meaner, while the vast majority of our people slide deeper and deeper into poverty and evil doing. The great, as Proudhon said, are only great because we are on our knees." But all is not lost. All "we the people" have is the courage of our conviction, which if we have and hold dear, should enable us, in the words of French General Castlenau (at Verdun) to stand up and tell those who would subvert the people’s democracy that come Election 2003, "They shall not pass."  

December 2001