If you are in your thirties and
above and anybody is deceiving you that the just and fair Nigeria we are
struggling for will happen in your life time, please do not deceive yourself.
If you are in your thirties and
above and anybody is deceiving you that the just and fair Nigeria we are
struggling for will happen in your life time, please do not deceive yourself.
Struggling for the dreamable, refusing to relinquish the imaginable, hanging on
stubbornly to the possible, as some of us are doing 24/7, are all praxes that
must be rooted in pragmatism and an acknowledgment of the degree of the rot.
Pius Adesanmi The rot that will
prevent you and this writer from seeing a reimagined and remade Nigeria is not
corruption. It is not Boko Haram. It is none of the unending dysfunctionalities
and irrationalities of statehood that have turned the Nigerian tragedy into a nightmare
from which Africa struggles to awake.
Again, this is not why I will not
see the Nigerian renaissance. I will not see the Nigeria of the promised land
because we have too many citizens who have been so deprived of civic education
that the mere mention of the crime owned for the Nigerian state in South Africa
by Nigeria’s irresponsible rulers is sacrilegious and unpatriotic. The mind
that has been manufactured to constantly justify, rationalize, explain, and
identify with every horror while criminalizing the faintest manifestation of
critique is the greatest threat to the emergence of a new Nigeria. The mind
that mistakes a fetid personality cult of the incumbent for patriotism is the
greatest obstacle to national becoming. It has taken the rulers of Nigeria some
five decades of abject postcolonial statehood to produce this mind. It will
take four to five generations to undo the damage because it is easier to
destroy than to build. I repeat: if it took them five decades to destroy the
Nigerian psychology and produce the mass mumufication we witness today, it will
take five generations to demumufy the Nigerian psychology. And that is where
there is the will o.
I have written time and again that
the collapse of Nigeria’s educational system is not an accident. It is
deliberate. It is purposed. A state that is going to be run based on ethos and
practices deemed crude by the standards of Orangutan society needs a sedated
and diseducated citizenry that is hostile to critique in order to survive and
perpetuate herself. And when that state succeeds in manufacturing a critical
mass of consent and conformity such as we see in Nigeria, the triumphant ruling
class has only one responsibility unto itself: the sustenance of a
wrongly-wired psychology in a vast majority of the citizenry.
That is why I pity members of the
Nigerian community of conscience who are fighting corruption without paying
attention to public instruction. Without civics, the diseducated – and I have
deliberately created that word, diseducated, to imply deliberateness on the
part of those doing the diseducating – citizen is in the pocket of his
oppressor. He will identify with his oppressor on the basis of ethnicity,
faith, language, etc. If you insist, he will abuse your father and abuse your mother.
He will ask you: “wetin be your own sef? Na your money e steal?” You struggle
for Nigeria in vain in the context of this sort of mass psychology.
Public instruction is therefore the
place to start. A sustained struggle in the arena of public instruction may
create the conditions that could facilitate the emergence of the Nigeria of our
dreams five generations from now. Time is of the essence. Every teachable
moment must be grabbed to work on the Nigerian psychology. Yes, it has been so
damaged, so corroded, so wrongly wired that you don’t even know where to start.
But start we must.
An occasion presented itself to me
today. In the fevered brain of the leadership of APC, it is somehow okay to ask
aspiring presidential candidates to cough out twenty-seven million naira for
nomination forms! I thought this was madness. I thought that this constantly
fumbling political party has bungled yet another opportunity to stand apart
from the ways of PDP. I issued a statement on my Facebook Wall condemning the
fee. I zoomed in particularly on three of the party’s aspiring candidates:
General Muhammadu Buhari, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, and Mr. Sam Nda-Isaiah. If
these men succeed in paying twenty-seven million naira, I enjoined the party to
insist on an open declaration of the source of the money as a way of showing
that they are different from PDP.
As reactions flowed on my Wall, one
compatriot preferred to send a private note to me by email. He identifies with
the spirit of my argument, he says. In fact, he likes my submissions a lot.
But, as a Buhari loyalist, he is somehow irked by my suggestion that “General
Buhari, a whole former Head of State”, may not have twenty-seven million naira
and may need some help to find it. Haba Prof, he says. Twenty-seven million may
sound like big money to you guys out there, he continues, it is weekend party
money for boys “around here”. Of course, I am familiar with the fact that
certain layers of Nigerian society crawl in loads of easy, free money.
I pondered what to say to him, realizing
the immensity of this teachable moment. I wondered where to start since the
opinion he expressed is a window into a mindset that is deeply rooted in the
Nigerian psychology – and there can be no progress until we reteach and rewire
this psychology. Do I begin by telling him that in responsible democracies, the
fact that General Buhari has held that office is the first and loudest reason
why he should find it difficult to afford twenty-seven million naira? Do I tell
him that the fact that Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdusalam Abubakar
occupied the same office and ended up with hilltop mansion way beyond the
totality of their entire earnings in their military careers is the first reason
why they both ought to be serving life sentences in Gashua prison? Do I tell
him that public office is a huge sacrifice in responsible democracies because
you foreclose the possibility of making money? Do I tell him how long it took
the Clintons to get out of debt after office? Do I tell him about the student
loan and Chicago mortgage of the Obamas? They finally paid off their student
loans but I am not sure about that Chicago mortgage.
Do I tell him why people resign
after a short stint in the cabinet in serious democracies? They resign to go
and make money. They cannot make money while serving in public office. Ask Ari
Fleischer how much he was making on the podium in the White House and how much
he now makes as a conservative pundit. Do I tell him that Karl Rove makes more
now than he could ever have made working in the White House? Do I tell him that
in France, our friends, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, are struggling with
legal bills - and all kinds of bills?
Do I tell him that if anybody comes
out of public office rich and comfortable, it is your duty as a citizen to
raise eyebrows and pester the tax authorities until they open an investigation?
Do I tell him that the mindset which produces that famous Nigerian sentence, “a
whole so and so cannot be expected not to have such and such amount of money”,
is a function of the psychology that the Nigerian ruling class is sustaining in
order to mass-produce a citizenry that permanently justifies looting? Haba!,
goes the Nigerian, how can you expect a whole State Governor not to be able to
afford such and such? How can you expect a whole Senator not to be able to
afford that house? The man don arrange o. You better keep quiet, you hater!
And we ask no questions even when
they brandish stuff beyond their legitimate income in the public sphere. Not so
long ago, the outgoing Governor of Ekiti state, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, made a lot
of noise about students he was sending for University education abroad from his
own pocket. More than a dozen or so students enjoyed a personal scholarship of
Dr. Fayemi to go to OxBridge in Britain and Ivy League destinations in the
United States. People who ought to know and people who don’t know went to town
celebrating and praising Dr. Fayemi. Nobody bothered to think about a year’s
tuition as an international student in an American Ivy League. Nobody bothered
to weigh the tuition fees of the students he sent to Britain and the United
States from his own private pocket against the backdrop of Dr. Fayemi’s
legitimate monthly income as a state governor. Why did it not occur to anybody
to ask questions? You guessed right: howu, how can you say that a whole state
governor cannot afford it? Na poverty mentality dey worry you!
So, dear friend, when the candidates
of APC begin to pick up presidential nomination forms for twenty-seven million
naira, your responsibility as a Nigerian citizen is to ask questions about the
source of the money. And if any Stockholm Syndromed compatriot abuses you,
saying, “how can you expect a whole Lagbaja and a whole Tamedun not to be able
to afford twenty-seven million naira”, do not abuse him or her in return. Show
some sympathy. Show some understanding. Show some love. Show that you know the
origins of his or her psychology. Remember, unless you act and teach this
wrongly-wired psychology, you will not witness Nigeria’s renaissance in your
life time. For the greatest tragedy is that the consequence of ignorance is
democratically suffered. Those who know suffer the consequences of the
ignorance of those who do not know in equal measure. Alakoba ni won.
Therefore, you must educate that
psychology so that your children’s children may stand a chance of witnessing
the beginning of Nigeria’s renaissance. And if they abuse you as you try to
educate their psychology, shake off the dust of thine feet in testimony against
them.
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