When considering the multitude of ills that appear to have taken permanent residence in the part of the world populated by black people, there is an easy temptation to succumb to the erroneous stereotype that our lack of meaningful progress in life is due to our DNA; that underdevelopment, bribery and corruption, indecorum, political instability, insecurity etc are all concomitant of and derivable from our colour and gene. This is of course arrant nonsense as there is no empirical evidence to prove this. The molecular scientist James Watson, recently controversially asserted that black people are less intelligent than their Caucasian counterparts and said that ‘…all our social policies are based on the fact that their {black} intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really". The piece is not about whether he is right or wrong, but rather about how poverty and want can turn otherwise well-behaved people into self-centred ruffians. I will use examples of three incidents that took place in the UK between 2005 and 2008 to support my theory.

On the 7 July 2005, the city of London witnessed a series of co-ordinated bombings across the London transport system that killed 52 commuters and injured over 700 people. The incident led to extreme disruption of the public transport and telecommunication system that otherwise work with clock-like precision. As a result of the incident, transportation across London became chaotic and came to a stand still; the entire train network stopped working and buses were conspicuous by their absence from the streets. This writer was in Stratford, east London and was trying to get a bus home to Essex. At the Stratford bus station, there were thousands of people waiting for buses that were not forthcoming. We had been waiting for over an hour when behold, about 4 buses made their ways to the stop. Once these buses opened their doors, there ensued a scramble to enter them that shocked me into bemused inaction. I stayed back and surveyed the scene and I saw people of all colours {but overwhelmingly whites}, sex and age engaged in violent struggles to enter the buses. Gone was the usual consideration for the elderly, the pregnant or women; everyone was hell-bent in making their ways into the safety of the bellies of the buses. It was a scene that I had thought not possible amongst the ‘civilised’ people that lived in London.

The second incident took place in the summer of 2007 when the Yorkshire and Midland areas of England suffered serious flooding. This led to the death of 13 people and thousands of people were displaced and made homeless. In addition to this, the flooding damaged the water supply system leading to cessation of water supply to homes in the area. The government immediately set up emergency water supply outlets in the affected areas, but this did not appear to have helped as prices of bottled water automatically went up. Bottled waters began to sell for more than thrice their usual prices and ‘area boys’ saw an opportunity to make brisk business and started hawking ‘pure water’ at exorbitant prices in the areas. The idea that people would seek to profiteer out of the misery of fellow Britons was so shocking to many that  Mike Goodhand, head of logistics of British Red Cross said in exasperation that ‘while I assume that profiteering could  happen in such circumstances, I never believed it could ever happen here’.  Well, it did.

The third incident happened this year. A combination of factors has led to unprecedented rise in the price of petroleum in international market. This has led to gradual but sustained increase in the pump prices of fuel across Europe. As a result of this, fuel tanker drivers embarked on strike actions across Europe and because of the strikes and also because of the fear that continuing oil price increase will ultimately lead to increase in the prices of food items, people started to panic buy foods and fuel. There were reports that in Spain and Portugal, most supermarkets were empty as people decided to stock their homes of foods and petrol in anticipation of further rises. In the UK, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown had to make a national broadcast appealing to people to stop panic buying fuel. This writer saw long queues in petrol stations that I have not seen before and many stations displayed the ‘No Fuel’ signs, having run out of supplies that ordinarily should have lasted them for weeks!

The point of this is that when people are comfortable in a society where the system works, it is not awfully difficult to be civil. There is no need to rush into a bus when the commuter knows that another bus will come in 5 minutes; and no need to stock pile foods or fuel because these are easily available 24/7. It is a comfort zone that brings out the best in human beings. What the above scenarios thus show is that poverty and wants tend to bring out the beast in all of us and can easily turn us into ‘animals in human skins’, irrespective of race, colour or gender.

Some generations of Nigerians who grew up in the 80s and 90s, especially in our municipalities are entitled to assume that incivility and inefficiency are natives to Nigeria.  They have grown up knowing nothing but obsolete infrastructures and a system verging on collapse. It is one of the abiding tragedies of our country that as the country has grown richer by way of incomes accruable from oil and gas, most Nigerians have, in the same periods, grown progressively pauperised. Compared to our brothers and sisters who grew up in the 80s and the 90’s those of us who had our formative years in the 70’s and those who grew up in the 60’s actually lived in relative paradise.

This writer grew up in Agege, a slum of Lagos, but enjoyed the quality of life easily comparable to what obtains in the ‘big men’ areas of Lagos today. Although power supply was not uninterrupted, the ECN {the precursor of NEPA} was not as notorious and power supply was definitely good {at least a lot better than now}. The public transport system was good, with LSTC buses taking children to school in many areas.  The LSTC buses were numbered so that you knew the ones going to your destination; commuters entered through the front doors and exited via the back, and people did queue up: unbelievable, but true! The public school system was fine then and at a time there was such a huge upsurge in the numbers of students that there were two sessions of school attendance: morning and afternoon. The manufacturing sector worked at installed capacity and the middle class {yes, there was a middle class then!}, was really fuelling the economy. Middle level civil servants could buy new vehicles and if you hear Tokunbo then, it was in relation to somebody’s names and not a reference to second-hand imported vehicles!

What is thus clear is that we are not born fraudsters, crooks or self-centred people. Na condition bends crayfish! When consecutive governments abandoned their obligations to the people, they created a survivalist system where people think only of themselves and their immediate family. It is the duties and responsibilities of the present and subsequent governments to reconnect our people with our lost sense of communalism, decency and decorum.

Adebayo Kareem

Solicitor, Stratford London.

omoalufa@hotmail.co.uk

Robot  # 1 | 01.07.2008 19:10

What is thus clear is that we are not born fraudsters, crooks or self-centred people. When conse...Read the full article.

Austin  # 2 | 05.07.2008 12:24

Thank you. Thank you very much, for your message of hope and upliftment.