2024 and our appetite for self-entitlement

In the video of Falz’ song, Something Light; he took a girl to a restaurant and the girl asked for something light. However, the female date’s something light consisted of an order of six wraps, meat pie, pizza, and still more packed foods to take away for her sister at home.

It’s common and often not frowned upon when you attend a wedding reception and eat. When you look around, you see servers serving plates of food garnished with choice proteins. If you’re a silent observer at weddings, you would observe somethingthat is brutish but has become acceptable.

What is no longer shameful is the flagrant diversion of plates of food meant for seated guests to the nylon bags and sacks of some entitled guests who are carting them home. It is not only foods that are packed; bottles of water, soda, wine and all what nots including souvenirs make it into these infamous bags. The foods are hurriedly packed in nylon bags and then buried inside the go-to bags for all things imaginable and unimaginable.

The perpetrators of this ignominious acts are well dressed men and women who have foods in their homes but just choose to ride on the apparent abundance of free food. Some wedding guests come prepared for these take aways. They come to the wedding with the popular African polypropylene bags. These go-to bags became popular in Nigeria around the 1980’s when undocumented Ghanaians resident in Nigeria were suddenly expelled from the country.

These holdalls come in various sizes and are quite durable and adaptable enough to carry different items including foods. These adaptable sacks also became quite visible on election grounds all over the country as they were handy, non-transparent and had handles that made carrying large amounts of money easily.

Globally, these bags have become ubiquitous and were recently banned by Ethiopian Airlines in December of last year. The African Airline admitted that they damaged conveyor belts. The Ethiopian Airline was not the first to impose a ban on these versatile sack-bags. About six years ago, Air France and KLM Airlines had put a ban on the use of these bags.

Nigerians have affinity for extravagance, showmanship and food.
Until Hilda Baci briefly held the Guinness World Record for a marathon cooking time of 93 hours and 11 minutes in May of last year, many more Nigerians had been in the Guinness Book of records but we didn’t hear of other people attempting to out shine their records. However, since the chef from Akwa Ibom came into the lime light, Nigerians from all walks of life have been scrambling to get a glimmer of the lime light.

Since May of last year when the 27-year-old chef came on stage, hardly a month goes by without news about another wannabe Guinness World Record holder. She actually cooked for more than 93 hours but the Guinness World Record could only officially recognize 93 hours and 11 minutes. Nigerians and other Africans did not even allow her to sufficiently bask in the euphoria of her noble feat.

However, as soon as Hilda Baci got into the fray, various attempts like sing-a-thon, cry-a-thon, wash-a-thon, fry-a-thon and teaching marathon prompted a veiled message by the Guinness World Record body for prospective candidates to contact them before embarking on their quest to enter their record books.

Previous Guinness World Records held by Nigerians were mainly from sporting events and other Nigerians didn’t attempts those. Perhaps because the duration it took to attain those records were longer than the hours in the cook-athons. The late Stephen Keshi had his name in the Guinness Book of Records as the youngest person to win the African Cup of Nations as player and as a coach. We also have other athletes from the Para Olympic games who have their names in the coveted record book.

Recently, at the 10th German-Nigerian Business Forum, Our Commander -In -Chief, quipped that his name deserved to be in the Guinness World Record for his past economic exploits. The exchange rate for one dollar to the naira is more than N1300.

Let’s leave the Guinness World Record. If there’s a function and you’re in charge of gifts, it’s not surprising and it’s even expected that you’ll keep some of the gifts for yourself or perhaps for those who would come late.

If you’re an usher and you have special passes, it is also not viewed negatively if you allow those who know you or perhaps those who interact with your pockets are allowed into the special area. It has become an accepted norm that you gain materially from whatever position you’re in. We’re not saying you should not gain but be considerate.

From primary schools, our children are now involved in politicking for hitherto teacher-nominated positions like class president, class treasurer or even posts that never used to exist but have been created to fit into the caprices of their parents and school administrators. Parents print T-shirts and caps with the faces of their children and provide other token gifts on behalf of their children in a race to win coveted positions while in primary schools!

The textual messages on these shirts could read “Vote for me, Class President.” Such messages are hardly different from what we see on the adult stage of Nigerian politics. The only difference is while one has the image of a child the other is that of an adult. It seems parents are training their children in politics right from primary school.

It’s no surprise because in the spirit of self-entitlement, if their child gets into government, they would continue in the entitlement mentality and amass what is meant for the people to themselves alone. Never mind, what the children or parents do once voted in. In secondary schools, the race into politics intensifies and in universities it is superlatively intense. Such coveted positions are not without their rewards. They have their perks.

In our appetite for power, we have become entitled. We have become a nation of entitled people. Our environment celebrates entitlement. In the open-air market, simply asking for direction to where you want to buy an electric cable; the person directs you, goes with you into the shop and eagerly waits for you to make the purchase so that the seller can give him his entitled cut for directing him to his shop. Afterall, there were many shops selling cable wires and yours was the chosen one. Whatever happened to civility?

Even in comedy skits, the actor that has successfully tricked his victim is usually shown with an extra-large plate of rice topped with a massive chicken thigh, the size that ordinarily he would not eat. If the comedian is not shown eating a large plate of rice, he can be shown lavishly spending money that he fraudulently got from his victim. The juxtaposition of such comedy skits is the reality of our entitlement mentality.

This penchant for entitlements is not new. What is new is that we are all acting surprised and shocked at the magnanimity of self-entitlement in our governments. In our daily lives, from primary school to whatever level we have reached, we have imbibed the spirit of entitlement. In our environment we have been cured to have an unsatiable appetite for entitlement.

It’s no wonder that the International Monetary Fund is reluctant to write off any more debts from Nigeria. Paraphrasing from Kizz Daniel’s song, My G; If you get 35 houses, you can only stay in one at a time. Just as Falz’ song illustrates a restaurant order of something light turned into a meal that could feed several people.

Young Internet fraudsters who scam unsuspecting, retirees from their life savings justify their selfish actions by the same entitlement mentality that, they are making the unsuspecting love scam victim happy.

In nutrition, what we ingest determines our health several years down the line. As we get older, we need more fibre, less salt, less sugar and less fat. When we constantly eat more sugar or salt than our body needs, the organs suffer for it and can result in non-communicable diseases like hypertension and diabetes.

But these diseases do not appear immediately. It could take years before they finally show up and by then you might not really know what precipitated them. If not discovered on time, the damage might be irreversible.

Similarly, when we divert the monies or other resources meant for other people to ourselves, it indirectly comes back to bite us and the generation yet unborn. The consequences could be irreversible.

When there is institutionalised entitlement, it breeds social injustice, festers unrest and enshrines poverty. It becomes a vicious cycle. It doesn’t end there; lack of food, education, employment, social welfare, housing and water are all in the pot pourri for insecurity. A country cannot progress without education of the younger generation and without employment of an able work force. Our religious and political leaders should not promote entitlement mentality by their words and actions. Nigeria is blessed with many resources. We have human resources that are excelling all over the world.

Unfortunately, Nigeria is bleeding out most of our youths to the Japa syndrome because droves of our productive ones are leaving the Nigerian shores every day. They cannot find employment in Nigeria and when they do, the salary does not meet a fraction of their needs. The ones that cannot leave are attempting to by any means possible.

Yet we have some productive and energetic members of our population that are into kidnappings and all forms of insecurity. Nigeria! We have to set our house in order before all the employable members of our society leave the country and those that remain are thrown into the abyss of insecurity. Our appetite for entitlement eventually breeds insecurity. God help us.
Obilade, a Professor of Community Medicine, wrote from Abuja.