That the Nigerian state is a typical example of failed leadership is, am afraid a cliché. However true this maybe, we seem to be in a hurry to forget the dismal role played by followers; the citizenry at large. We- quite frankly, are incapable of understanding the simple fact that a good leader is a product of good followers.
See (http://lordedwardteach.blogspot.com/2012/05/motivational-leadership.html?m=1).
The 16th century war strategist, Nicolo Machiavelli, predicted the doom of a good man amidst bad people. I wonder what he'd have thought at the expectation of a good man arising from bad people. When we go out to elect leaders, do we do so out of selfish personal interests or for our collective good? Do we really realise the potential for change that we squander or cause?
We live in a system where the basic unit of society-the family, is almost dysfunctional. While parents these days limit their functions to the provision of basic amenities for their children, they ignore uncelebrated, moral, values. And whether they realise it or not, emphasis is placed on grooming children into hardened criminals. By this I don’t refer only to men with arms and an intent to rob-God knows we have enough of those-but, I point out the other thieves everywhere else. From the elected crooks to the deceitful petty trader, parents groom for this nation kids, who thoroughly believe that profit is only attained by the deliberate circumvention of honesty and hard work.
Agreed there are socio-economic reasons for this malaise; with minimum wage barely able to cover school fees in a decent place of learning for the kids, provide food on the table, buy clothing.... parents are forced to look elsewhere to source for funds. Efforts at ‘‘looking elsewhere'' grinds to a halt when economic policy stifles genuine attempts at self sufficiency. It is almost as if there is a constant, gradual push from the economy into a life of crime.
No matter, we must quickly note that true character is best honed by resistance to the temptations presented by adversity and if the current landscape is any judge, most parents have serially failed this test since a little before the First republic.
It’s not okay to ensure our kids go to places of worship, attend schools, do homework and get degrees. It really goes beyond that. How well are we raising these kids? Do we teach them to be rational, balanced people or needy, dependent, opportunists? What kinds of values are instilled into them? Do we excuse their wrongs purely on sentiments? Do we before their eyes place emphasis on the ends as opposed to the means?
Agreed it is illogical to argue that parenting is the single source of our ills. It is merely its cornerstone. A lot revolves around this unit and its direct influence on the health of the nation is understated. As if we do not realise that our society's actors are parents themselves and were once under the care of. That our inept civil service, the policeman demanding his #20 Naira bribe, the trigger happy soldier surveying the carnage at Bama, the subsidy thieves, the suicide bomber, the ritualist...cannot be divorced from that core of humanity.
Society as we understand the notion is structured in such a manner that a sizeable amount of what we could learn from it is obvious to the truly observant. To learn the manners of a foreign culture isn’t it best to observe that society? But in these present danger prone climes, just who do we learn proper morals from? What do we learn from observing the Nigerian society?
This is a society in which exists what can best be described as justification for a corrupt lifestyle; Economy is harsh, poverty is everywhere. Crooks will trample on your rights because the courts won’t protect them, clerics will justify the accumulation of crass wealth regardless of its source with the notion that God is a Prosperous God and most importantly, the fact that our sense of worth is tied to material acquisitions-solely to material things.
You see poverty, when inflicted upon a man is a painful experience. It puts man in a state where he is most vulnerable to temptation. This said temptation is even greater to resist when experience teaches that if you steal just enough, you can buy your freedom in any court in the land. In fact, you are rather 'unbalanced' if you refuse to 'help' yourself. This is what the Nigerian reality has taught our parents and it is one major thing they teach us. Am sure it is what is meant when thievery is rationalised...; ''I only want the best for you''.
112.5 million of us live below the poverty line. That’s an orchestra of 112.5 million voices twisted out of tune by poverty, singing a sad song.
The criminal indoctrination of the young Nigerian mind is further established when the child is sent along to acquire some education. Tracing his steps from pry school we see our public places of learning have become tax free trade havens. Headmasters & Mistresses in conjunction with minions divert free books allocated to schools and sell on to black markets. Teachers have low morale and in most cases, grossly unqualified for the job they hold. Where there are teachers with decent qualifications willing to teach, they are faced with unpaid salaries and underfunded classrooms. The alternatives to government schools are pricy for most parents in the country. Some parents struggle to send wards to private schools even though there is a clear deficiency in National enforced guidelines and curriculum. Others, (read, govt. beneficiaries) pay easily from dipping into our commonwealth. Some even open such places to siphon money from 'bloated' parents and or to assure membership of some elitist facade.
Consequently, the examinations for all national entry levels in the country are annual headlines of shame. The percentage of fraud; results obtained via illegal money exchange, the so called 'special' centers where candidates are assured of passing grades after payment and even shockingly, the number of students who fail every year is always an indictment of the sham we call our educational system. (see Amina Idris Ebiojo's Woes of Low Class Citizens. Daily Trust Jan 21, 2013.) Despite this and many other neon signs pointing at our progressive doom, we obstinately ship our poorly educated, ill mannered, opportunist brats off to higher institutions. There they find advanced cultures of decadence, violence, sleaze, and lecturers who teach them. It is little wonder cultism exists at the level it does even in the face of efforts aimed at eradicating it. It’s a microcosm of the hierarchical system this country operates. The Cult and the Cultist, (a metaphor for the political party and its membership) is a higher citizen on campus; threatening fellow students, abusing the system with violence, gaining GPAs and favour alike. Compare with the corrupt politician who tramples on the rights of fellow citizens, abuses the system to win court cases and contracts with ease, and yes, our ever present pre and post election violence....!
While its not everywhere this madness prevails, Government's policy of underfunding of Education is an unspoken decree. Minimal government presence from the tertiary to primary school levels results in public schools lacking basic amenities such as running water, first aid, and classrooms with roofs over them. Laboratories in most if not all federal and state universities are ill-equipped. The old poorly maintained ones probably won’t run because power failure is rampant nationwide. Hence research, that enlightening adventure has become merely a dull, vain, theoretical experience.
The fact is that most of our students in fields say; Engineering probably spends five years pouring over books with outdated lectures and minimum practical or pays for grades if he were so inclined, for a degree to which he contributes nothing to neither its science or, practices with any hint of competence.
When we begin to give serious thought to just how much damage the average, supposedly educated Nigerian youth is exposed to, we see why bad leadership is the norm. Understand that bad leadership becomes a natural progression. Thus the young Nigerian, psychologically scarred by his life experience thus far is mentally unhinged. His priorities are misplaced, more likely there is a complete absence of any. He cannot find any sense of achievement in any other endeavor but in the accumulation of material things. Amongst the many reasons for this is the need to compensate for a lifetime of lack. This he sets out to remedy regardless of the means he employs. The tragedy however is that this perceived 'lack' is a mental malaise and no amount of material accumulation can cure this illness.
There exists a plethora of ways to abuse the system eternally without fail. We have cultured corruption and hence our general, almost religious observance of it. It is the only way to move 'forward', to be relevant, to survive, and, holding any objection towards corrupt enrichment is a sign of weakness or a laughable holier-than-thou disposition.
In chronicling our ever fluid corruption, the Reader will permit me a moment to narrate an experience (related to me by a friend) in which a young lady, a victim of an auto-accident needed prompt medical attention. You could imagine his dismay when a trader accosted him over the bag of sachet water used in reviving the young lady and even then; at a cost price of #20 per sachet! This absurdity did not end there as the bike man that conveyed them to the hospital was quick at cashing in too; charging over #600 for a fare that normally would go around #200. All this because, of the peculiar circumstance and our genetic disposition to profiteering. And this scenario is by no means a one off event, why then should any rational person expect good leadership in Nigeria when the humble lot is fast becoming extinct? Why should the state provide free healthcare as due when the people themselves begin to commercialise the barest sympathetic gesture? Is there any choice then for any resident Nigerian but utter irredeemable corruption? Isnt it the only way his survival and that of his family can be assured?
What was that Darwin said about the survival of the fittest....? Make no mistake about it, 'survival' as understood by Nigerians in this context has never been and will never be judged by morality.
We have millions of Christian and Muslim worshippers but the impact of religion on our young Nigerian's morality is questionable. Perhaps it serves as a reprieve for the fully developed kleptomaniac tendencies in our Nigerian's conscience? Or the most trusted weapon in the politician's Divide and Rule armory. Look and listen all around you, there is the blare of the Muezzin's voice over the speakers and two or three Churches on almost every street. The ever increasing number of the places of worship all around the country should give to an epiphany of sorts, right?
Churches are built with stolen funds and Muslim clerics politicize sermons to favour certain patronages. All this time, fundamentals such as honesty and truthfulness are barred to the soul. One wanders in
a maze of get-rich-quick gospel and inflammatory 'jihadist' propaganda. It’s alright to NOT ask where that money comes from as long as Mr. B, an elder of the church, a Civil servant and a ''Big Man'' pays his tithes and then what else. Clerics will bless a man-anoint him even, regardless of the fact that this man steals his country blind.
Religion as implied in its practice here is simply a tool to control the masses a s a single unit unit and as the most effective cutter to tear it apart.
I remember a book I once read asking; ''Will a man rob God?'' Welcome to Nigeria...
How does any parent who has looted Billions from the nation expect the child not to do more? And how do we collectively bemoan the excesses of our leaders when we do not appropriately punish the few guilty ones we find? At what point do we realize that it is not okay to blame the leaders we have for the mess we are in when we encourage our children to pay bribes for certificates?
How do we teach them to be upright when we resent passionately, our current status(...and perhaps rightly so), all the while scheming on how best to exploit the system without any attempt at improving ourselves and that system?
Ask any person you see on streets-parents, youths- what they would do for the country if they happened to become President, Senator, Governor, Local Govt Chairman, Councilor and the answer is almost always the same;
''I go tiff money na, who noh like money? I go tiff my own sef but atleast I go try do good ting pass all dis pipuh dem...''
We cannot continue to blame leadership 100% anymore as if they are some external, separate entity instead of threads of the Nigerian fabric of corruption that we also all belong to. The solution has always been with us but we pretend to not see it because living with cowardice is easier than dying a hero. A revolution of sorts will come in our favour but we have no right to expect one as we are most unworthy of it. That’s why our leadership is what it is... Do we forget after all that their presence is a function of our concern or the lack of it?
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