Values and ethos: A new Nigeria is possible (1)

“NIGERIA has a terrible reputation. Tell someone that you are going to Nigeria and if they haven’t been there themselves, they offer sympathy. Tell anyone who has been to Nigeria and they laugh. Then they offer sympathy. No tourists go there. Only companies rich enough to keep their staff removed from the realities of Nigerian life do business there. And big companies rarely mention Nigeria in their annual reports for fear of what it will do to their share price. Journalists treat it like a war zone. Diplomats regard it as a punishment posting. Everyone has a Nigerian story from beyond the normal bounds of credibility. Some are terrifying. Most are funny. Nigerian politicians try to pretend that its bad image is some Western conspiracy against Nigeria and Africa. The truth is that Nigeria’s popular image falls short of the reality. It is not just white visitors who fear it. I told a Ghanaian cab driver in London that I was going to Nigeria. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said: ‘I lived in Lagos once. Give me a million – a billion pounds, I would not go back there. Never. It is the most terrible place in the world.”

The first time I read the opening chapter on Nigeria in the British journalist, Richard Dowden’s book, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracle (2010), from where I took the above excerpt, I was filled with a deep sense of shame. Now, when one reads a piece of this nature about one’s country, what is one supposed to do? The picture painted by Dowden above is what foreigners think about Nigeria. If one were to ask Nigerians what they think of their country, one is most likely to hear worse things. Even among those Nigerians who have an unambiguous loyalty to Nigeria you still find those who rubbish it and are cynical about its chances of going anywhere. In Dowden’s book, everything wrong with Nigeria comes down to two indices: indiscipline and corruption.

One of the enduring legacies of the first coming of Muhammadu Buhari as military Head of State (1983–85) was the launch of the War Against Indiscipline (WAI) in 1984. I was born the following year 1985 and only got to know about WAI as I grew up. The last I ever heard of it was in 1996 when I was in primary six. Every day before the commencement of the day’s lesson, our class teacher and assistant headmaster, Mr. Yohanna Sarki, a man of tough discipline and stern reserve, would beckon on us to recite the WAI pledge individually as he dangled his “koboko” with relish before the entire class: “I pledge myself to Nigeria my country, to be disciplined and law abiding, to work faithfully for the good of the country, and to obey the WAI law.” You can imagine the fate of any student who couldn’t recite this pledge!

Many Nigerians who love to romanticise the “good old days,” have been agitating for a resurrection of WAI following President Buhari’s second coming. Some others describe WAI as a total fiasco as a result of the alleged draconian and unreasonable punishment meted out to defaulters for even the most insignificant infraction. However, on both sides of the spectrum, there is at least a general consensus that indiscipline remains one of the greatest obstacles hindering this nation from reaching the full potential we all know it is capable of attaining. In his celebrated monograph, The Trouble with Nigeria (1983), the late Professor Chinua Achebe drew serious attention to the entrenched malaise of indiscipline in our society. “Indiscipline,” Achebe said, “pervades our life so completely today that one may be justified in calling it the condition par excellence of contemporary Nigerian society. We see and hear and read about indiscipline in the home, in the school, in the public service, in the private sector, in government and in legislative assemblies, on the roads, in the air.” Achebe further argued that there is no better place to observe the thrusting climate of indiscipline in Nigerian behaviour than on the roads where frenetic energy, rudeness and noisiness all conspire to paint a bizarre image of a country where lawlessness is celebrated.

Personally, I have observed how obeying road traffic regulation in Nigeria appears to be unrewarding. The law-abiding motorist is made to look like a fool in a society where utter disregard for traffic rules smacks of smartness. But it is not only on our roads that indiscipline and lawlessness exist. In virtually every department of our national life, all manners of brazen wrongdoing from corner cutting, queue jumping and rule breaking have conspired to paint a picture of a country well gifted in organised anarchy. It is not as if every Nigerian does it. There are millions of decent Nigerians who give a good image of their country both at home and abroad, and who spend their lives defending their country against those who would want to rubbish it.
To be continued.

• Ojeifo is a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Abuja. (emmaojeifo@yahoo.com) / 07066363913.