If you follow Nigerian social media, the New Year 2021 has taken off on a sex start. So, let’s be Nigerian and start with a wish (prayer) – may this year end without you becoming a subject of lurid scandals. A nation of real scandals so very often scandalises the mundane and normalises the scandalous.
It is scandalous that while the only reason anyone could not drive between Canada—USA-Mexico today is the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic. Nobody needed a permit to move freely anywhere in the free world. In Nigeria, we are at the level where when 80 humans were slaughtered on their farms, our official response was that they did not take permission from the army to harvest their crops! If I wasn’t a full-blooded Nigerian, that would have been scandalous. Indeed, it would have been stranger than fiction, but we are used to that.
We are the only country that owes our sleeping and waking, going to work and returning safely and the supply of electricity to God. These things are taken for granted in Saudi Arabia. We are the only country that votes in people to solve our problems pay them hugely for them to tell us to take our problems to God. This may be incredibly scandalous to non-Nigerians, for us it’s normal. Nobody goes from one part of the town to another without saying a prayer. We think it is a measure of our spirituality, but in actual fact, it is a hallmark of our stupidity.
So, a certain billionaire gentleman who is single has ditched his date. Their affair was hidden until an aggrieved party made it public. That’s as it should be. The single woman was counting her chickens before her eggs were hatched. So, when reality overshot the runway of her expectations, she crash-landed on social media looking for our bucket of tears. She says her heart was broken into a thousand pieces, which she displayed on social media for anyone collecting broken hearts as a hobby. Adults move on, but immature children kiss and tell, money doesn’t usually go where love lives!
We have closed land borders in the hope that it would boost local production and induce local consumption, but if you watch the lurid dance of the Naira with foreign currencies, you will understand why the egg is on our face. The neighbour’s economy we thought would collapse did not. Indeed, we lost many gallant officers trying to police a porous border and made millionaires of smugglers. Ironically, whenever there is an international vacancy, we tend to forget that Africa has 54 countries; we field candidates for every opening!
In Nigeria, we tend to forget what is important only to cry over spilt milk items. We had hardly finished with our billionaire lover boy when other scandals surfaced in high places. Two bank executives have been fingered in tsunami-inducing extramarital affairs that could bury their moral standing but thankfully spared the shares of the banks and the stock market. Nigeria cannot survive the burden of two failed banks on the infidelity of their chief executives.
How many giants should we bury till we know that we are a nation high on the opium of fake morality and counterfeit piety? Every suspect on trial belongs to a religion, just like failed leaders. Advanced nations make no claim to godliness but they are higher on the morality and development to attract our citizens – young and old.
In Kaduna, the state’s urban planning and development agency, KASUPDA razed down a business based on a social media advert that listed it as a venue for a ‘sex party’. The invite published on KASUPDA Twitter handle mentions no venue. KASUPDA cannot go to court on verifiable evidence but received beatitudes from the beautiful hypocrites applauding its vendetta. If you know Nigeria, you could ask the question – whose advances did the poor lady turn down to earn this shock? KASUPDA went in with bulldozers before its officials could ask themselves the probing question – what if this was a hoax? This is typical zombification of governance – act first even if illegally, think later.
The concept of breaking heads to cure a headache is a military hangover. When soldiers suspect each other, they do not wait for the culprits to march into radio stations before rounding them up, initiating sham trials and executing the culprits. Even for normal crimes, America has discovered through DNA evidence that many innocents have been killed. In Nigeria, DNA is the new evil that breaks down homes. Nature has inducted people as parents of every child that addresses them as parents.
Our democracy is very young; maybe when it reaches maturity, it would begin to separate religion and state. So far, it is difficult to separate a fundamentalist from the secularist in governance. There are too many hypocrites adorned as moral compasses. Wherever the state tries to legislate on morality, it exhibits its misunderstanding of the concept of governance. A government is made up of the godly and the skeptic, just like the public it serves.
The Kaduna victim is heading to court but how is she compensated for lost income and emotional trauma. Who compensates her staff for loss of employment and wages in a pandemic? Who reimburses her legal fees for a case whose legal outcome is faintly known?
From the outside looking in, Nigerian women in business face double jeopardy. The ceilings are cemented against their rise while hypocritical society judges them for their appearance. The other day, it was another female proprietress of a business venture in Abuja hyperventilating over the way she has been treated by the authorities there. Nigeria can do better than work on the premise that every woman in business is a whore. It’s a vain attempt to domesticate every woman with a degree or business sense. Staying at home is not for every woman. Staying at home doesn’t prevent adultery. Laws and not whimsical morality should govern society.
Governments should concentrate on creating enabling environment for legitimate businesses to grow not kill them before they grow or tax them into oblivion. If the federal government fails to withdraw the operating license of the two banks whose bosses are believed to have wrecked two marriages and caused the vicarious death of one spouse, how do we justify the demolition of a business because someone printed a poster and circulated it on social media?
The way we overreact when it comes to ‘moral’ issues we should have no single person in jail. But our jails are bursting at the seams. The world’s top five countries with the lowest crime rates are secular nations and neither Saudi Arabia nor Israel features on that list. Expect bulldozers in your home based on someone’s mischievous tweet. Government treats its citizens like an army of occupation. If KASUPDA had closed down this business, it would have had enough time to investigate and catch the culprits red-handed thereby saving us this senselessness and a vain attempt to showcase fake piety. When you realise your mistake is the best time to say you’re sorry!
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