Posted by emotan77 on June 1, 2011
by Tola Adenle
[With a mind-boggling figure (US$1 billion) being alleged to reside in Alhaji Saburi D. Bankole’s domiciliary account and N10 billion in personal loans, and with my “Open Plea to National Assembly Opposition Members” this week, I’ve chosen an essay from 2002 that points to loss of moral values as a major Nigerian problem. It is the first of two old newspaper columns for this week. I’ve also explained briefly the accompanying Shakespearian quotation used in 2002. Essay slightly reduced for space.]
Oh, for leaders that would really lead,
Through paths of moral rectitude,
And show by actions we can see,
They ache as much as we the led.
Tola Adenle, 8/2002
The macabre theatre playing out at Abuja has deep roots in the decay that Nigeria has become, a decay that has left no institution, including organized religion, untouched. Moral uprightness can no longer be defined except in relative terms. Churches accept “thanksgiving offerings” and confer titles on people of questionable character; so do mosques, while traditional rulers, many of whom have long lost credibility, send staffs of office to accompany just about anybody who can pay for traditional titles.
Since experts claim that most of our character is formed by age five, let’s begin where all the problems originate, the home. Nigeria is not alone in the mad rush that characterizes our world today and hence, most of the world’s children are, to a great extent, deprived of the close supervision that kids had in the past. However, the values that are most lasting, that form the child, the man and a nation still abound in most nations that are plagued by the same less-time-to-do-all-that-needs-to-be-done-in-our-daily-rounds like Nigeria. These are values like honesty, love and fear of God, love of our fellow man and nation, fairness, and determination to put in our best effort in ALL that we do or are asked to do.
The trading mother leaves home at the crack of dawn to provide for her family and does not return till late at night. The children are under no adult authority after school which often means playing with other children; others are simply made to hawk or take on jobs like bus conducting to bring money home for the family. I’ve heard that teenage boys who work and take money home are masters at home to their mothers and siblings alike. The educated woman fares not that much better. Unless she is a teacher which means she has time to supervise her kids (that is if she has not been driven by the state of the family’s resources, to running a shop or stall), goes to the office very early in the morning and gets home very late at night, especially in urban areas.
Older women who, in the past would be employed by young women just raising families, would rather beg than take care of babies. These women and younger ones (“house girls”) would, in the past, provide moral guidance in the home while both parents were at work. Not any more. Babies as young as two months have to be packed to Day Care Centers and such places from where they move to nursery schools-and-after-school-programs. Parents are therefore spending very little time with their children. Bad manners picked up outside the homes are not noticed or when they are, the parents are probably so exhausted from all the running around we do that kids are not corrected. It is not unusual to find adults who did not master such basic social skills as not eating and talking or chewing with the mouth open but such inadequacies are not morally wrong, even though repugnant.
Behaviors that are repugnant though preventable and teachable, are the bane of this society: dishonesty, stealing, lack of consideration for others, cheating … Someone who will later become a “419’er” would be a liar as a child and when parents do not pay close attention to correcting the “little” lies, he/she gets worse. Then, there are kids who pick up bad social behaviors from parents: a secondary school or university child who can deduce that the family wealth is from stolen sources in government or in companies, or that the parents are fraudulent people, is not likely to turn out as a beacon of hope to younger people in his/her adulthood
In Nigeria today, a child has several ways in which to become full-blown criminal before stepping out of his primary social group which is the home. Fathers and mothers lay the money out for kids to buy the so-called “orijo” (question papers sold to willing buyers). Many of the “lessons” that students attend as preparation for examination resits (WAEC, SSCE, NECO) are veritable outlets for question paper revision before examination dates. And many parents know this. No, let me put it in a better way: parents who are aware of this fact seek these “lessons” out: “ko ti e pass na …” (at least she should pass first…). These “lessons” are very popular because the students do not want to exert themselves and the parents want the kids to get certificates that would qualify them for the next level. The result of these “abuja” (the Yoruba word for “short cut” is the same as Nigeria’s capital; very interesting!) is the nightmare staring university authorities in the face now.
Along the way, the cheat in secondary school “graduates” to other “Abuja” means of getting ahead but the “mother of all” fraudulent ways is listed in Criminal Code 419 which has given all Nigerians a big stigma around the world. The U.S.A. is the hardest hit. Stealing credit cards and cashing the owners’ limits out in cash, accessing people’s IRAs (individual retirement accounts) and emptying them, and of course, the greatest con job of all time, advance fee frauds, are all ways in which these ugly Nigerians steal money abroad and flount same in Nigeria. My credit cards were used on two occasions by Nigerians – in Los Angeles while I was in Nigeria, and high up above the clouds on a Sabena flight while I was on the ground for a daughter’s wedding in Nigeria.
These fraudsters do not even get the proverbial slaps on the wrists from government or how can one explain the fact that the same people or group of people perpetrate most of these heinous crimes? How can a person purportedly give twelve million naira as tithe from a con job to a church for “thanksgiving” for what was reported in a publication and some months later, be involved in another highly-publicized fraud? Why are such people not where they belong—behind bars and the keys thrown into osa (the lagoon)? America and other western countries are not mad with Nigeria for nothing: fraud from Nigerians cost them billions yearly and all one has to do is look around Nigeria and see the foreign exchange “contributed” by fraud.
Now, if someone is rich and is celebrated, that is all well and proper, especially when we have an idea of how the person acquires the wealth. Being an avid reader of tabloids, I am always amazed at how they seem to worship those that the tabloids imply are criminals. As we read these publications, so do foreigners and this aspect must trouble them: that we do not care if somebody has defrauded others to become rich. It does not seem to bother many of us, nor does it seem to bother our institutions like churches, mosques and traditional rulers.
Installation of ‘chiefs’ in churches rival those of towns whose rulers seem to come up with ever more grandiose titles every day. Time was when Aare in Yorubaland (excluding the Moslems) was a rarity. There was Aare Onakankanfo, a title that has been held in my lifetime first by late SLA (Chief Akintola) and then by MKO (slain elected president of Nigeria, Chief Abiola). The title is synonymous with “field marshal” and was not held for a very long time because Yoruba were afraid that whoever held it would die prematurely. Both SLA and MKO died as warriors. Aare of villages now litter the southwest!
Now, it becomes easy to understand the tragedy playing out at Abuja when one looks at the antecedents of many of these “elected” officials who see Nigeria as their fiefdom: certificate racketeers, advance fee fraudsters, etcetera.
Being men of little understanding, they cannot see that the tragic-comedy of a few years ago is now a full-blown tragedy and who better to turn to than the Master, himself, to contribute some closing words to men who may not understand - not the words, but the import:
Man, proud man!
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape …
Shakespeare
The Comet on Sunday, September 2002
POST SCRIPT, June 1, 2011:
Many from an earlier-era Nigerian educational system will recognize this excerpt from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure from Isabella’s telling off of Angelo, the Duke’s Deputy who is actually her brother on the very corrupting influence of power. Isabella chides Angelo further: “it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant”, among more memorable lines.
Shakespeare dwelt a lot on different human emotions in his works in which we are especially drawn to the themes of love, hate, etcetera in the comedies and tragedies but the theme of the corrupting influence of power on the powerful is also prevalent in his plays.
LAST WORD: I just learnt that the title, Aare Onakakanfo, was wrongly spelt by me in 2002. There is no ‘n’ after the first ‘ka’.