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When most Nigerians discuss the problems with Nigeria, much
of what they say boils down to how much the average Nigerian suffers to eke out
an existence on a daily basis. You typically hear statements like "The
power supply situation is terrible", "Roads are in a state of
complete disrepair", "The price of food is so high - you are lucky if
you can have two meals a day" or "Can you believe that I had to trek
to work today because those stupid drivers doubled the fare?"
Obviously, what's common to all these statements is that
they try to describe a bad state of affairs. But what's more interesting is
that if you look deeper, each of the statements is making an implicit
comparison with something else. For example, the person who says the power
supply situation is terrible is only saying this because he is aware that it
can be much better. The person who complains about the price of food must
believe that it is possible in this world to have a situation where the price
of food is much lower than what obtains today.
This leads me to think - are the things that most people
regard as problems regarded that way simply because people's expectations have
been shaped by their experience? Assuming that people never had any idea that
electricity could be supplied for more than one hour a day, does this mean that
people wouldn't complain about power shortages? I believe they wouldn't,
because people do not use absolute measures to decide whether they are doing
well or not - they use comparisons. It doesn't matter if you are earning
N30 million a year - if all your friends and neighbours are earning N50
million, it is hard not to think of yourself as some kind of failure.
So it looks like the real problem we're dealing with here is
not only that Nigerians are aware of how much better a life they can
enjoy, but also that they are aware how far away from that life they are. Some
of this awareness comes from information about lifestyles in other countries -
this information is either found by browsing the web or listening to
descriptions given by friends and relatives who are resident abroad. This means
that implicitly, Nigerians may use conditions in these countries as a benchmark
for material well-being. Alternatively, this awareness may result from the fact
that Nigeria has regressed over the years so that many Nigerians still have a
memory of how much better things used to be.
Anyway, if I'm right about the discontent amongst Nigerians
being caused by the gap between what their current situation is and what they
believe their current situation should be, then there are at least four
approaches to making Nigerians more content about their lives:
Approach 1: Play catch up. This is the traditional strategy
that the Nigerian government claims to use and which most Nigerians advocate.
It consists of developing the economy by building infrastructure, enforcing the
rule of law and safeguarding property rights. The idea is that as the economy
grows, there will be more jobs and therefore more wealth to enable Nigerians to
buy the same goods and services that are bought in those 'benchmark' countries.
But I wonder. Surely, as Nigeria is growing its economy,
those 'benchmark' countries will be growing their economies as well. This means
that just as Nigeria has got to the point where they used to be, they will have
moved on to say, a point A. And when Nigeria gets to point A, they will have
moved on to point B. And as long as that disparity remains, there will always
be that discontent. Perhaps we will catch up - but it looks like it will take
an awfully looooooong time for that to happen.
So in the light of this, let's look at some other
approaches:
Approach 2: Pull them down. Like the first approach,
this approach recognises that the material well-being of Nigerians and citizens
of other countries must reach parity for Nigerians to be content. Unlike the
first approach though, this approach relies on sabotaging and destabilising
other countries to such an extent that their economies go into a tailspin and
they are eventually 'dragged down' to Nigeria's level.
Obviously, Nigeria does not have such military might that it
could achieve this by sheer brute force. However, the Nigerian government could
turn into a 'rogue nation' which would serve as a haven for all kinds of
international criminal activity. Such activity could end up creating all kinds
of havoc in the international markets and sending the world into a global
recession. In addition, it could send out economic sabotage agents to various
countries to wreck their economies.
Then after those economies are wrecked, Nigerians can offer
their services in survival techniques to citizens of those countries. Seminars
and workshops with titles like "Adopting An Energy Efficient Lifestyle On
An Hour Of Power A Week" and " Drinking Water Without Pipes - The
Pure Water Option" will become commonplace, and Nigeria may even enjoy a
bit of a boom. However, the temptation to expand too aggressively in this area
will need to be curtailed, lest other countries band together to pull Nigeria
down too.
Needless to say, this is a toxic option that does not bear
serious thinking, given the possible international isolation and opprobrium
that Nigeria would reap. Still, I've listed it just for the sake of
completeness.
Approach 3: Information lockdown. As I said before,
the reason that Nigerians are discontent is because they are aware of the gap
between where they are and where they want to be. This approach recognises that
the awareness is the problem, and sets out to deal with this by blocking all
sources of information that could lead Nigerians to think that they are not
getting as good a deal as they could get.
The problem with this approach is the sheer amount of
totalitarianism that would be required to implement it. Freedom of expression
would be the first casualty, as it wouldn't be acceptable to have people
peddling stories about how much better things are "over there". There
would need to be total control of television, radio, the press and of course,
the internet. Spies would be needed to ensure that people did not peddle
rumours of well being elsewhere. Spies would also be needed to spy on those
spies, not only to ensure that they were doing their work, but to ensure that
they too did not peddle rumours.
But the biggest problem is that when people realise that
access to information is being controlled, rumours spread like wildfire and any
thing they read in the newspaper is immediately distrusted - so the aim of
making Nigerians content will still be defeated.
Approach 4: Don't worry, be happy. This approach
accepts that there will be differences between the material well-being of
Nigerians and the material well-being of the citizens of other countries. It
also accepts that there is no way of preventing Nigerians from finding out
about these differences. But it attempts to 'immunise' Nigerians against any
discontentment they might feel by getting them to see that just because those
citizens have certain material goods does not mean they are necessarily happy.
To some extent, there is a point to this. Must we
relentlessly acquire everything just because everyone we know is doing so? If
we were happy before we knew about this thing that we must acquire, why all of
a sudden are we now unhappy? Must we tie our notions of well-being to what
obtains in a country far away whose culture is very different from us?
Unfortunately for this approach, the answer to this question
for a large majority of Nigerians is "yes". It may not be that they
desire to obtain these items specifically because they are used abroad - it may
more be a case of a 'diffusion effect'. What happens is that a few
'early-adopter' Nigerians acquire the items from abroad and show them off to a
wider group of Nigerians, who then acquire the items and show them off to an
even wider group. So those Nigerians in the ever-widening groups are acquiring
these items purely because they see other people in society doing so and they
are under pressure from their family and friends to do so - and these are very
difficult forces to resist.
It also means that the curse of comparisons in determining
material well-being will be with us for a while yet... at least until
technology achieves the ultimate aim of bringing the cost of making things down
to zero. When that happens, material differences will disappear since every
thing will be virtually free to produce. Of course, human nature being what it
is, a new way will quickly be devised for differentiating 'haves' from
'have-nots'...
If you liked this article, you can check this related article out too:
Destination Happiness
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Posted by Robot| 19.09.2007 20:47