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Of happiness and pessimism By Nigerians are the happiest people in the world. That is a truism. They are happy because they have no particular reason for being so. The country Nigeria is also filled with pessimists, bad belle, because they always have bad news to report, it follows therefore that they should look happy. Why this simple analogy evades our best minds is very hard to fathom.
All commentators who are denying the fact that Nigerians are the happiest people in the world forget that happiness is the pleasure you feel when one is too busy to be miserable. They point to the economy with double digit inflation, which is quite rightly my point. Happiness is one of the few things that do not go up in price during periods of high inflation. The moment our economy improves, we would become unhappy. Which explains why we are happier than the Americans.
If you take a look at Nigeria in the past nine months, what you see are series of quick changes in the succession of our problems and because we are not allowed to dwell on any one of them for a protracted period of time before being hit with another set of problems, that makes us therefore happy.
Recently, the president of the happiest people on earth was on the radio and television exhorting his happy citizens to shun pessimism. The president being a patriot obviously loves his country. It is his fellow country men and their negative mien he cannot stand. One of these citizens even had the temerity to call the president a liar. I submit that this level of abusive argumentum ad hominem is unbecoming of an Egba prodigy. I would advise all the young prophets of doom out there, to read the Bible like the president does, especially: 1 Timothy 5: 1. Do not rebuke your elders. It comes from an irrational psychological transference, rather than an appeal to evidence and logic. The president claims he is laying the foundation. That is a fact. Recently, there have been some snafus between engineers and quantity surveyors in the country. Would that not lengthen the time it takes to lay a foundation? The only flaw in our president’s analysis and thrust is that, if we are the happiest people on earth, we should also become optimists. But that cannot be. We are happy because we are pessimists. Nigerians are people who are never happy unless they are miserable, so the president is wrong but slightly right. If we are not pessimists, then we cannot be the happiest people on earth.
The president’s detractors are quick to list the achievements and wealth of individual Nigerians thereby acknowledging our self worth, but this fact also depresses them. The president tells us to hope, but the pessimists who are always without hope because they are constantly hoping for the worst, would not let the president be. Take for an example, the people of Nigeria do not want to pay high fuel prices, they do not expect the government not to increase fuel prices, and when the government finally does, they become disappointed. We always expect the worst and make the worst of it when it happens, that is why we are pessimists and the happiest people on earth.
Why on earth would this president ever want us to become optimists, I do not know. Attempts by the president to misapply the argumentum ad populum, that our pessimism is wrong, because it is unpatriotic are an exercise in ignorantio elenchi. This makes me feel that our president is always ready to lay down our life for the country. Our president loves us the citizens. We are his children. Does the leopard or lion not love his cubs? We are the happiest people on earth. Why, because, we are pessimists. The truth is, our president is afraid of his own success in making us the happiest people on earth.
I believe that what the president is trying to drum into our ears is that it might have been worse, but we already know this. That is why we are so happy. We are Nigerians. We do not care what happens in our country as long as it happens to somebody else. Look on the bright side, Tidjani, the car snatcher, tear gas; we have launched a satellite into space. We are hosting the Africa Games. We would be hosting the Commonwealth. The Swiss government is trying a little bit of arm twisting with our wealth, but that is alright, they would soon come around. All we have to do is allow the money to be transferred from one bank account to another, after a heavy interest yield the money would be returned. Forget all these unsonsy and pessimism. We have caged Taylor, we sat on Sao Tome and the boys in Guinea Bissau are fretting. We might have a couple of people with the tendency for empleomania, but that actually proves the point that Nigerians must be very happy people, that is why people kill to attain public office in the country. Since, once you are in, you do not have to do anything, the people are inherently happy and pessimists any way.
The president says, we should become optimists because our glass is half full not half empty. I respectfully beg to disagree, a half full glass would lead to a cirrhotic nation. What the president should have said is that, half an orange is as sweet as a whole.
October 2003
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