Searching for the crossroads

Please do not get confused by this title. Come along with me as we find our ways, possibly to the crossroads. You may be curious about what we should be doing to get to the crossroads rather than disengaging from the crossroads. You may also not be alone in this perspective.

When we are all scattered around the ‘evil forest’ of nonconsensual relationships, perhaps our best bet may be to find our way first to the crossroads. When we get there, we breathe fresh and ask ourselves the simple but tricky question. Where do we go from here? Should we turn left or right or move forward or backward? Or better still, should we get our way back to the ‘evil forest’? After all, the devil you know may be worthy more than the saint you do not know.

In Nigeria, we have so many solutions that we need help to generate sufficient problems to fit appropriately into our myriad of sophisticated solutions. While these solutions have been orphaned for too long, does it not appeal to a sensibility that we quickly create more problems to meet up with these solutions? Success is not ideally expected to be orphaned.

Our number one solution is that we have great potential. If you want to be contemptuous about great potential, think again and ask yourself why we are called the ‘Giant’ of Africa. Our potential is so enormous that it threatens our bare existence.

What is an ordinary moon that we cannot spend our long vacation on to show how great our potential is? The only problem is that we do not like to show off. It will take only a few seconds for “Kanako” to fly and return from the moon.

Our second solution is that we like to throw big figures around, imagined or real. How can an officer of a first-generation bank be reported to have botted with a paltry sum of a few million Naira? At least, if we are to eat frogs, they must be the ones with multiple egg-laying capabilities. Thus, it makes sense that we report that a meager sum of Four Billion Naira (N4b) was stolen by a not-too-smart banker, who may have yet to make it beyond just an ordinary branch manager in a remote area. Were he to have been where the ‘jollof’ is cooked, he should have aimed for something much higher.

Every Nigerian is an adept football (soccer) coach, wizardry financial analyst, distinguished policy formulator, and analyst. Every Nigerian knows how best to run the economy and create happiness for others while demanding total veneration of his/her person.

In our dexterity as the ultimate solution provider, we hold firmly that a woman married for two years should ordinarily take in during the weather for two. Before noon the following day, she should successfully put to bed. “There is nothing that God cannot do.” Okay, it is actually “what God cannot do does not exist.”

One of the most outstanding solutions is that 24 hours is our long-term. Therefore, whatever we cannot see, touch, or feel within 24 hours may actually not exist. In our collective wisdom and learning from the military “immediate alacrity,” it is distasteful and ultimately a waste of our precious time asking us to think about a future that is longer than 24 hours.

Only God knows tomorrow!
Profitability is a mirage; paying living wages is more realistic. How should a worker be concerned about whether or not the business owner makes a profit? That was not part of the bargaining. We agreed that I would be paid a certain amount at the end of the month. So far, we show up at work; how dare you tell an average Nigerian that he/she is unproductive? Nobody is hired to be productive.

Everyone is employed to receive an agreed emolument at the end of the month. Business owners should understand that the law is on the side of the public officials, and, therefore, they should worship them and share with them part of the perceived prosperity. “I own my business” is very distasteful to a civil servant, and such arrogance must be rewarded with multiple taxations, sealing off of business premises, and delay in issuance of permits and licenses.

Who made the business owners “Lords of the Manor”? It is not the business of any governmental agency to support their growth. That will make them to be more arrogant.

Our big Masquerades are highly untouchable. They are the defacto Kabiyesi, the very second-in-command to the Supreme Deity. They are not capable of doing any wrong. They must be well-fed to think of the best way to ensure our belts are not too elastic to allow for easy tightening wherever it suits them to ask us to comply. We are disgruntled when asking ‘unnecessary’ questions. We are sponsored when we try to take inimical action (s) to their comfort and exotic lifestyles.

From time to time, they recruit new members who are taught how to maintain table manners, or else they risk being sent back to the ‘wilderness’ of irrelevance. They call for fasting while enjoying a delicious lunch buffet.

No government in Nigeria will allow anyone to contemplate, let alone attempt to build another “Tower of Babel.” The readily available weapons of ‘mass destruction,’ the ubiquitous divide and rule, are always within the vicinity for easy deployment. Whenever some ‘recalcitrant’ elements gather together to protest or agitate, a counter-pro is quickly assembled to dismantle the tower of Babel.

Our banking industry is the best in the world. They make the best profits each time the economy is comatose. It is the only sector whose profits swallow inflation, no matter how galloping it becomes. It is the only real sector of the economy.

The informal sector is allowed to change prices as often within an hour as it fancies their pleasure. Unaccountable, with no records other than the ones residing in the owner’s brain, ‘they sell what they are buying’

Therefore, with the sophistication of many solutions, it is time to find our way back to the crossroads and find problems that match our over-developed solutions. Shouldn’t we leave our ‘evil forest’ and converge at the crossroads? Perhaps, by then, we will genuinely find which direction to go.
Oluwadele, Ph.D., is a Chartered Accountant, Author, and Public Policy Scholar based in Canada. He can be reached via:
[email protected]