09 Apr 2006 |
|
|
"Always be civil
to the girls, you never know who they may marry" is an aphorism which
has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian
widow" - Nancy Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate (1949). "A civil question deserves a civil answer" - mid 19th century proverb "From hence, let fierce contending nations know what dire effects from civil discord flow" - Joseph Addison, Cato (1713). "Civility costs nothing and buys everything" - letter to her daughter Lady Bute, 30 May 1756 in Robert Halsband (ed.), Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1967). There is no bigger challenge facing the idea of citizenship in Nigeria today than the absence of civility in the conduct of persons and institutions at all levels. Many of our compatriots are discourteous, wilfully disorderly, institutions are brutish, leaders are brusque, there is so much scarcity of the virtues of gentlemanliness, ladies are no less guilty, but nowhere is this dilemma most evident than in inter-personal relations and the content of public discourse. And yet, it is difficult to build a sane and safe society if the citizens behave and speak as if they are potential patients for the psychiatry ward. Psychiatrists are perhaps in a better position to tell us what is wrong with the collective mind of Nigerians, but by merely looking around and comparing the Nigerian character at this moment in history, with the standards of civility in other societies, it is confounding that the biggest threat to humanity in Nigeria is this absence of civility. It stands in the way of everything. It has heightened the tension in society. It destroys inter-personal relations. It makes communication impossible. It has turned every Nigerian into an animal of fear. It has built distrust into the Nigerian equation as a permanent feature. It is at the root of the disunity in the land, since it is in every circumstance a centrifugal icon. It is a veritable illustration of a certain disconnection between public and private morality. Nigerians are very religious people, they know that which is right from their study of the Holy Books and their interaction with other communities and even from their understanding of the rich depths of the resources of traditional African culture, but in the public arena, all that is suspended, a certain animal consciousness takes over and what emerges as public morality is a deracinated form of conduct and reality which points to the contradictory nature of the Nigerian existence. The character of a nation is the sum of the character of its citizens. One Kenneth Oji summarises this dilemma as follows when he observed that "People want money without work; few Nigerians feel they own Nigeria enough to want to fight for it; except for personal reward, not to save its name or its National assets and social infrastructure. There is no fellow feeling among citizens as brethren of one nation: every one is simply rude, angry at everything and abusive to all. Nigerians can never take their turn in anything, but must scramble disgracefully to get attention in public places, or offices, to take a bus, to board an aeroplane, or just move along the road, always in a hurry to grab for self, and never thinking of the rights of others... No laws are diligently enforced for social protection, but are rather freely compromised for personal aim by those engaged to enforce them..." The biggest challenge that we face today is that we need, as Nigerians to establish a proper concurrence between private and public morality: our people must begin to translate into the public arena all that piety and rectitude that they demonstrate when they go to the mosque, when they partake in Holy Communion, when they meet at the Lodge or Temple, and whenever or wherever they seek the eyes of God. Sadly, this is not yet the situation. Even civil servants are not civil. They behave rudely. They call themselves civil servants but they are the most uncivil of all Nigerians. One way to reform the civil service perhaps is to explain the meaning of the word "civil" to everyone who shows up in the corridors of governmental authority. Go to any government department, you would be shocked at the sheer hostility of the officials from the receptionist to the secretary to the big chief himself, all of whom have turned government into a fortress. It is for this reason that hapless Nigerians who nevertheless need government in their lives because government remains the most important factor in many African countries have to pay bribe to receive any form of official attention. If you are not willing to do this, you may be abandoned by uncivil servants on the queue, your file may be declared missing, so much agony may be introduced into your life by the same men and women who are being paid to help run the machinery of state. Civil servants have no kind words in their dictionary. They are the face of the Nigerian government and the face that they project to the public is truly an unkind one. To get a Nigerian passport, you must pay bribe, to clear your goods from the ports, you must grease the palms of officials, to pay electricity bills, you have to be nice to the officials as well, to receive attention in a hospital, you are also required to part with gratification, and although you do all this, you still cannot be sure that basic courtesies will be extended to you. Any woman who has shouted too loudly in a maternity ward in a public hospital while giving birth would recall how sometimes the nurses act so cruelly as they instruct her to stop disturbing the rest of the hospital. One lady was told: "when you were enjoying the thing, did you not know that it will get to this stage? Please stop making noise and push. Now pu-uu.sh!" The population of such discourteous nurses and doctors who treat patients as if they were intruders is one of the reasons why many Nigerians avoid any kind of contact with the public health system. Your health condition could be worsened by the general lack of compassion in the environment. What is dying in our community through the scarcity of civility is the culture of service. In restaurants, cafeterias and even fuel stations, waiters, attendants and managers treat you as if they are doing you a favour. Don't be surprised if you walk into a well-appointed restaurant and a waitress asks you: "Yes, what do you want?" In many places, waiters refuse to bring your change. When you give tips, the waiter may collect your money, say nothing and simply walk away. For the most part, Nigerians find it difficult to use those simple but weighty words: "please..", "Thank you", "Excuse me", "May I..." The average Nigerian is in a power bind. He considers certain expressions a sign of weakness. There is a big struggle for power at all levels; it is as if the more uncivil you are, the more powerful you seem to be... So, we now have a country where it has become fashionable to behave badly. Receptionists and Secretaries may be somewhat polite because they have been told that their job requires them to smile all the time, but if you make the mistake of asking too many questions, or you try to ask for attention, you could receive a long lecture on how to behave in another person's office by a Secretary who has never met you before, and with whom you do not have any cause to start a quarrel. Nigerians are masters of non-verbal cues: one look at you from head to toe, if you follow the receptionist's eyes, you would know immediately whether you will be allowed to see the boss or not. On the road everyday, there is so much anger on display. Nigerians are in a hurry. Everyone is busy doing something, nothing or everything. Drivers do not respect traffic rules and regulations. Nobody respects the right of way. Motorists and motorcyclists struggle to drive each other off the road, every driver's hands are permanently on the horn, much of the traffic hold up that result in the loss of precious man hours are due to this lack of civility. One man may use his car to block the road: he is making a phone call, or he is chatting with a friend whose car is on the other day lane. If you challenge him: he tells you, "are you blind, can't you see that I am busy?" He is busy conducting his personal business while disturbing others. He gets away with it because the security agents who are supposed to enforce the law do not want to disturb him because he is a big man driving an important-looking vehicle. It is difficult to drive on a Lagos road in one day without having curses rained on one's head. Nigerians take slander for granted: it is the stuff of daily life. Poverty is often advertised as the reason for this lack of manners. Nigerians are wont to announce that "a hungry man is an angry man". And because they are all living in a dispossessed society, where the quality of life is on the decline, everybody is busy being angry at other people's expense. Once in the United States, three of us, all Nigerians had started a conversation about Nigerian politics. We spoke in turns with characteristic passion, banging the table, smacking each other on the back or the chest to make a point, or having dramatic handshakes, squeezing each others' hands whenever we agreed on a point of view... Unknown to us, a colleague had gone to report to the Programme Manager in the College of Journalism that she thought the Nigerians were fighting on College premises. The poor Manager ran to us and indeed met us in an animated mood shouting and punching the air. When we explained that we were having a friendly discussion, she was confused. "You call what I have been watching a friendly discussion, with you guys abusing each other?", she said. "Oh, that is how we do it back home", one of us explained. "Oh, that's fine. But please could you lower your voices a bit, and please can you make the discussion a bit more peaceful. When other people hear you shouting and using words like "stupid, nonsense, silly, rubbish", they are likely to be bothered." Poor Programme Manager. How could we have convinced her that among Nigerians, the more uncivil a conversation is, the more exciting. You can't have a clean conversation with anyone on a contentious issue in Nigeria without being called names. The average Nigerian assumes that a mere conversation is the equivalent of a war situation, and a power contest. In offices, superior officers naturally assume that their important-sounding title means that they are wiser than others, so at what is supposed to be company meetings, no quality reasoning takes place; superior officers do all the talking and impose their views, oftentimes by asking subordinates to shut up. Uncivil persons are invariably intolerant. But it is not poverty that accounts for this lack of manners. It is a problem of ego, and the failure of a sense of citizenship. The simple rule of civility is "do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you". But we do not seem to care enough about our duty to others. Public discourse in Nigeria, among individuals and between persons and within government is marked by the lack of civility; what obtains is at best a shouting match, reason is replaced by passion, character by ego. Politicians and powerful officials prefer the vocabulary of abuse. Our leaders are not setting good examples. They treat the people with contempt, they treat themselves with greater contempt, they speak without thinking, they act without moderation; they are intolerant of the opposition, they are abusive in their style. As we enter the season of political campaigns, this particular omission is becoming even more evident. Public communication by the Presidency, by Governors, by public officials has become an exercise in verbal pugilism. Party leaders behave like persons who have never been to school. To save our politics, and to improve the quality of public thought, Nigerian leaders at all levels must take lessons in the art of civility, so they may set a necessary standard. For the rest of society, religious institutions and schools must rediscover their values; the family, the most basic unit of society must be reinvented.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
# 
# 
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.