There isn’t much that is really spectacular about Nigerians. We are just normal people looking for direction. It is that direction we lack; the moral compass.
Actually, Muhammadu Buhari was supposed to have offered us some moral compass. After having tried thrice and failed to become the president, the majority of Nigerians were ready to key everything on the ground for him to lead and show us the way. We knew, just as we still know today, that our biggest problem is our impunity, which manifests as mindless corruption among those in government and most of our elites, and indiscipline and unruliness among the poor who try to get back at society. Nigeria is thus treated as an orphan, or as a fallen elephant which gets cut up in so many ways by all sorts of players.
A friend recently showed a short video of Cotonou, the capital of Benin Republic nearby, and it was sad to see just how neat that city was. Sad, I said. Not for Benin Republic of course, but for us in Nigeria. How can we be this disorganised? Why are we happy to be the world’s most disorganised country? Do we know what others really think about us? I can assure us that they don’t think too highly of us in this country. And we thus lose a lot because of this. Our reputation has plummeted to the lowest levels, and we are arguably the most despised people in the world. The noose is closing as more and more countries shut their doors on our peoples, stop employing or doing business with Nigerians, or make obtaining their visas more onerous for our people. Whereas many Nigerians don’t care about these things – especially those who have little or no self-esteem – those who have invested in themselves through education or gradual building up of integrity in our very tough terrain, get stung painfully when they get categorised with criminals. Our children are also going through this, and it is very unfair that we have devalued these kids through our actions and inactions.
Where will we find the moral underpinning and compass? Who will bring some to our country? These are the questions. You see, morality is very important. We have seen how our leaders have consistently let us down on the matter of morality each time they say ‘well, I have fulfilled the law and that is all that is required’. President Jonathan did this with asset declaration. Yar’Adua, before him had toed the path of morality in declaring his assets openly and without prompt. Buhari, unfortunately, went the Jonathan way and his spokesmen said the same thing the Jonathan people said. I remarked then that our anti-corruption war collapsed at that very moment. It was a major tragedy. For morality is more important than law. Law derives from morality. It is the depth of shallowness (now, what figure of speech is that?), for anyone to talk about law outside morality. Such a person thinks that because the white man colonised us and gave us the Common Law, then we can live by that law and forget anything else. But like Anikulapo Kuti (Fela) told us, culture and tradition are the teachers of government, and it is from them that laws are created.
Our religious leaders have failed us in morality. Our business elites have as well. Forget our political elites. Our traditional leaders have been subsumed under local government leaders. This may be the worst thing that the British did to us even though the traditional leaders do and did have their own shortcomings.
I think it is important first off, to know how important it is for us to go back to our morality, to find our moral compass. I think we may find that compass by a collective search. We may have to lead ourselves as a people, in the hope that if we have a groundswell of people who have their heads properly screwed on, we may be able to run these crazy lots out of town and redefine our destiny as a people. Perhaps the discrimination our children suffer, the embarrassments and losses we too will continue to suffer in the comity of nations, will bring attention to a need to return to morality.
We cannot all be behaving like philistines, foisting ‘anyhow-ness’ on our society, reverting to the Hobbesian state daily, acting only for ourselves and the maximisation of our own individual enjoyment. We only have one chance at this life. Collectively, it looks like we have failed in this entity called Nigeria. But who knows where the last gasp effort will heave from? There is nothing wrong with Nigeria but our collective failures to understand and confront the arduous task of nation-building. Many of those who have had the opportunity to actively engage, are soon distracted, and would rather loot instead. The rest have become listless, noisy, uncontrollable, uncooperative, and of course, on a selfish overdrive too. Somebody somewhere has to call a lot. We need our moral compass back. Our very lives depend on it.
Kaduna-Abuja road has become a death and kidnap zone. We all have suffered untold sorrow because we don’t even know what nationhood is about anymore. Politicians, especially since 1999, constituted themselves into lords and masters and continued to grab as much as they can (most of them), while society pines away. The military we vilified now looks like saints compared to what we have under the pretext of democracy. The way things have turned out, mere off-the-shelf democracy as described in the textbooks can no longer work in this milieu. A benevolent dictator perhaps, who straightens us out and sets the standards for everyone. Even under a year, we will see differences. I despair about Nigeria. But we may be lucky – again – to escape Armageddon.
