03 Jun 2009 |
|
Okafor Dodo Okafor Ask a definite element of the Nigerian space and you are sure to get one straight answer- woes-could come in different guises though. This unflattering adjective has remained the single most visible component of the geographic frontier called Nigeria. Here’s one country where the greater majority of the citizens are daily pushed to the edge- compelled to ask- why am I part of this misconceived idea greedily labeled Nigeria? We shall spend less time on needless preambles; one can only hope that the reader lives in Nigeria and interacts with Nigerians, and ultimately shares in the Nigerian experience which has been rightly described as the worst in nationhood. If however you operate from a saner clime, you only can come to appreciate this depth of continuing disaster, if you spare a few moments to go through the expansive volume of literature that dwells extensively on the calamity that reigns in Nigeria. A visit to few places in Nigeria would be helpful in your understanding the reason a Nigerian called this place “the capital of hell”. Apart from being man-made, the most painful realization one makes of the Nigerian quagmire is that a greater number of populace have come to take the ugly shape of things here as part of their destiny; to them- with good reasons anyway, the situation can only get worse as remedies are now out of human scope. Of greater agony is that there appears to be no depth in the series of human-imposed calamity that daily is thrusted at creatures of God resident in Nigeria- it certainly is an infinitely elastic series. Go through the pages of newspapers and magazines and what you get is an intense marvel at the sophistication of Nigerians- high and low- in authoring endless misdeeds. The description of Nigeria in vivid terms as the capital of hell by Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh strikes me as the best and only adjective that truly captures the scale of inhumanity that defines the daily life of many here. Nigerians lack substance- (there definitely are still a few men and women who though in the tinniest minority continue to through their stellar conduct inspire hope in a few of us who look up to them for moral direction and leadership. They simply have refused to be part of the mess that has ravaged and continues to wreck untold havoc on Nigeria). Apart from the boundless capacity to author eternal mischief, most Nigerians are empty and devoid of character. They worship anything and everything; they not only worship money- the source certainly is no one’s concern; trend- often imported from foreigners- is their god; fashion to most is akin to self-fulfillment; new cars and fine houses-the technology they are most ignorant of- are mainly rated higher than human life and that’s why in Nigeria, wherever an accident occurs, sympathizers are more interested in estimating the extent of damage to the cars than they are in offering assistance to the human casualties. In the space called Nigeria, sacred values are held in disdain; many more depraved fellows have gone beyond contempt for religious worship and indeed taken the additional step of creating an obscenely lucrative business out of God’s name. Nigerians who live in Nigeria are allergic to any modicum of sanity and orderliness; they waste no time in displaying the very beast in them. Watch them urinate freely along the road, answer phone calls at public gatherings- even during solemn worships, manipulate to disrupt a queue, bribe to have their illegitimate wishes granted, shout at the slightest provocation, sing and trumpet the vile character of criminals who spare them a few proceeds of demonic trade, noise making at public functions is an essential norm in Nigeria. You don’t have to talk about lateness and other manifest display of social indiscipline- they too have come to offer valuable insight into the attitudinal bend of our people. An author once alluded that office holders understand lateness to mean a way of advertising their importance to lesser mortals. A finer description of the magnitude of ill-conduct that pervade the geography of this nation space is certainly beyond what this piece can do proper justice to; one can only add that negative behavior- social and private has an extensive operating space in Nigeria. When a we watch foreign movies here, our interest is hardly in emulating a few of the very fine conducts at play- we mainly are on the watch-out for the very despicable- the nudity, crazy fashion sense and other such misdemeanor. Any discourse that seeks to analyze the mindset of persons in Nigeria without a full-scale exploration of the adoration of European soccer leagues on Nigerians- young and old would be guilty on two counts- inability to take accurate watch and missing out on what perfectly has come to personify the profundity of frustration amongst the populace. Nigerians love to talk about the leagues in Europe; not because they have any sound knowledge of it but that is one possible way of playing down the huge scale of disappointments that greet their daily affairs. Young Nigerians enjoy donning the jerseys of top clubs- it does birth a feeling of freshness in them. Now, because they are endlessly creative at matters of zero-productivity, these young chaps spend valuable time at locations where video games are played- having a pre-play of all major matches. Reading in other places is done to enrich the mind; not so for students in Nigeria. When you observe them read feverishly, you simply can bet your life that an exam is at hand and hopes of blatant cheating- minimal. For university students, reading is nothing but a means of amassing grades and nothing more- knowledge acquisition through extensive reading is a strange tale here. It also should not sound odd to any that one singular evidence of system collapse in Nigeria is the truth that most persons who pose as lecturers in institutions of higher learning actually have their callings at the motor parks. Going to university in Nigeria is never for self-improvement; odd but true it is- a good number of our undergraduates are in school on account of societal expectation and ego thumping. Ever wondered why many Nigerians make inhuman sacrifices to get their kids and wards admitted to study high sounding courses like medicine and engineering? One can only guess that their understanding tells them that- it’s one way of being socially relevant in a society that’s largely defined by bottomless frustration. Does it not bother any that young Nigerians waste prodigious talents and the scarce resource of time because they want to have the prefixes of dr. and bar. attached to their names- I am telling no new story. In the end, a good number who parade university degrees are no better than touts. It’s a big scandal but true- a university professor may under the same circumstance react like a street urchin when provoked. The slight difference may be in the choice of language for the professor- may as tactics to intimidate resort to some kind of esoteric grammar; the man at the park because of his huge limitations in formal education can only make do with Pidgin English. Vulgarity is the language of many; they simply can’t resist the temptation to curse and rain abusive languages on any that cross their path. If in search of evidence, drive along the poor roads around the country specially where there are traffic snarls- you certainly would have ample stories to tell. Insults are gratuitously hauled at fellow road users. There may be no exhaustive description of the length of agony decent persons go through on Nigerian roads. On the domestic front, etiquettes are thrown to the dogs. Kids are not trained to be functionally responsible. No, they are given very wrong orientation about everything. They are trained to cheat, disrespect others- perhaps see the poor in the society as being cursed; lie and manipulate their way through. In homes, parents are hardly role models, kids are taught the rules of the jungle from a very tender age and they grow to become masters of the jungle game. House-helps are treated with maximum disrespect; parents openly quarrel and physically abuse each other in the full glare of their innocent kids. Some of the social dislocations that have continued to plague the society may be traced to this. Sex is a staple in Nigeria and when it can’t be gotten through some decent means, they waste no time in calling up those beastly elements in them. There are verifiable reports of highly placed individuals who have effectively turned their hallowed offices to brothels-I mean company directors and heads of government ministries and agencies- in these offices, immorality reins unfettered. Accounts of such unholy affairs on university campuses and even churches hardly cause any stir amongst keen observers of the Nigerian decay. Is it not a taboo that self-styled men of God are regularly enmeshed in some of these sordid sex scandals? What of university lecturers who torture their female students simply for failing to yield to their lust? Any questions about the proclivity of the average person to indulge in nasty affairs were perfectly erased when some time in 2008, newspaper reports gave a bit by bit account of how the then president-(some call him the beast) made sex a necessary condition to grant “favor” to any woman- married or not; the account came from no other than the ex-president’s own son (Gbenga) who also did allege that the man could not resist the temptation to sleep with his daughter in-law (Gbenga’s estranged wife). Let’s get this straight- Mr. Obasanjo may have just a few competitors when it comes to being physically unattractive; but he in more ways than one captures the fundamental attitude of most Nigerians- brash and unaccommodating, dishonest, arrogant, cynical and infinitely sinful. In sum, Obasanjo has many imitators or put much succinctly, the old corrupt ex-leader has mass followership amongst his compatriots who may apparently dislike his over-bearing attitude as an individual but are in very many respects, like the man they love to hate. In the midst of these grim realities, what does one foresee of the future; the tomorrow we love to talk about with some ting of magical glee? What does this much awaited future hold for a population that sees itself as victims of wicked circumstance? In a country where the youths are aggressively hostile towards everyone and oppressing even their likes all in an extortionate bid to survive, what real justification has any one to think any good of the future? And now, for a people whose elected and unelected leaders have spent close fifty years of her existence in pursuit of absolute emptiness, would any expectation of a glorious future not amount to sheer delusion? Nigeria has spent close to five decades in the propagation of negative seeds and funnily hoping to reap bountifully from the future- what better description could we give to extreme madness? This country has criminals as her leaders and because they (leaders) are thieves, they lack any trace of shame and thus cannot inspire hope amongst the youths who of course understands the coded language of survival in Nigeria- violence. Because the only leadership lesson in Nigeria is absolute insincerity, young persons who occupy one elective position or the next are adept at helping themselves with all the material and non-material wealth found anywhere within their office. Student leaders in all the universities in Nigeria are most effective at this. Because of the manifest system failure that stare us in the face everyday, do we need to employ any prophet to explain why most young persons have more faith in the English premier league that they do of the country they are told belongs to them? Answers to these posers shall be the focus of an entirely new discourse. Do however permit me to quip that even while one can lay no good claim to possessing the gift of clairvoyance, it only can be inferred that in the midst of the abundant decay (all made by persons that should have shown better capacities for trust and sound moral judgment) that defines social existence, Nigerians and Nigeria may likely be experiencing the very last phase of a tortured pattern of forced existence. It’s difficult to say but the truth may not be farther.
|
|||||||||
# 
Your Comments
Please make The Square an enjoyable experience for everyone by refraining from gratuitous ad-hominem contributions, defamatory comments and off-topic posting. Such posts will be removed.