I don’t see the possibility that my generation will kiss the navel of the moon as far as Nigeria is concerned but I also don’t buy the idea that we are a shithole country. For me, the experience has been dualistic. While there are many who have given us enough reason to give up on this country, there are also few persons who keep us going. The nurse in the hospital berates and tortures the woman in labour but inside the wards; a good man is busy paying off the debts of the poor. The blind bats on camouflage blind the masses and Amnesty International tries to help out. The two year old is called a witch and cast out of the home but an Anja Ringgren Loven comes to the rescue. It has always been like that — a battle between good and evil and good is often subdued by the selfish desires of men who pretend to be working in her favour.
Humans want change to begin at the macroscopic level and seep into the microscopic because we do not want to be held responsible for our actions. Our actions, by our interpretations, are the product of some erratic behaviour exhibited by another person and not a product of our tainted personality. The Yahoo Boy blames the government for stealing, even though he also steals from the same people suffering the consequences of the epileptic government. The drug addict blames his habit on lack of jobs even though his sole reason for taking the drug is to have the ‘morale’ to intimidate others. The ritualist blames his actions on the devil even though the needs he wanted to eradicate are supposed to go to him alone. Change had to be abstract, in our world, and even though we cultivate habits and thoughts that change us every day, admitting that the effects of our actions is what defines a state is difficult.
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Nigeria is
in peril but the blame is solely the leaders’ and we the masses, faultless. The
civil service is filled with people who have little to no desire to offer service
but in the blame Olympics; they run marathons around the government and forget
about the first person. Every December, the businessman increases the prices of
his goods and when he meets the transport companies who are simply emulating
his attitude he speaks of strange things like the wickedness of man and vice
versa. The tailor who never took her apprenticeship class seriously also blames
the government for not using qualified persons in executing projects. The
hypocrisy is not really seen as hypocrisy. To these blind and confused
Nigerians, the government, for simply been the government, is wrong and guilty
for everything that goes bad. They have committed evil even before committing
evil and the people, no matter the enormity of the things they do wrong, can
never be placed on the equal pedestal. A Nigerian outside government is a good
Nigerian while a Nigerian in government is the bad Nigerian that should be done
away with. Only the government is capable of evil. Our logic is gold!
There is new form of attack on the Yahoo Boys symptomatic of this problem. The
Yahoo Boy is not stealing from the government and in essence whatever thing he
is doing, is wrong and cannot be said to be for the masses. What does he do
with the money, the argument continues? He boys a Benz, a house and when he
goes broke, he sells and the hustle continues. Can you see the erroneous thinking
going on here? It is assumed that if he steals from a politician or the
government, it is not wrong and wouldn’t be as bad as those who steal from the
people. It is also assumed that if he steals and helps the people around him,
his hometown, that is, it wouldn’t carry the same weight as someone who steals
for himself alone. In essence, what this means is that these set Nigerians are
just jealous of their hustle and the only problem they have with the Yahoo Boy
is that they don’t carry everyone along.
Today, the President, Muhammadu Buhari, is blamed for everything. To the myopic of his people, who are often beneficiaries of his malevolent sharing formula, he is working for the North and a good man and to the myopic southerners who see his sharing formula as a concave one, he is not responsible enough. The responsibility expected here is in making sure whatever loot the President distributes circulates evenly. While we blame the government we are guilty too. We fail to see that our sins take the government to horizons of epilepsy. When we corrupt our environment, it becomes difficult to wage a war against a system that is similar to us. All the manipulators of the system simply need do is to speak in our tongues and we dance in their shoes.
Why don’t we respect queues in Nigeria? Do we blame Buhari for this one too? The man who came last wants to be the first person to be attended to and you don’t expect rational or even irrational people around to be quiet and when they speak it always ends with you not knowing who is rational or irrational. There are few ways to approach a mad man and not seem mad yourself. Do we expect the government to enforce sanity in all the queues across the country? It is simply an act expected of sane people but what can the government do when people behave this way? Monitor all the queues in Nigeria? Punish people for jumping queues? What can they do when a man creates tension in a queue simply because he expects the rules to obey some ten (10) years age difference?
Someone poured spoilt Beans on a lonely road, another person threw banana peels on the same road, a third person threw pure water sachet on the same road, a fourth guy disposed used diapers on the same road and all these happened when no one was watching, how exactly can the government stop these? The student who got good grades needs to pay money to seal an admission in a university his grades already qualified him for but the government is the problem with everything. The taxi drivers and other motorists create a third lane on a two lane road and the traffic gets even worse but on that same road, in the same guilty taxi, a driver blames Nigeria for the jam as though Nigeria is a person. What can Buhari do to make adults stay on the queue? What can he do to stop people from messing up the roads when no one is watching? What can he do to stop over 50 million madmen? Nothing.
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