Title: Nigerians and their Foibles
Author: Olayiwola Erinosho
Reviewer: Omolola Afolabi
Publisher: Bulwark Consult
Pagination: Ninety-nine
A cursory glance at the cover of the book bearing our country’s colours and the attention grabbing title “Nigerians and their foibles” would leave you with enough curiosity to wonder what lies beyond. Written by Olayiwola Erinosho, a sociologist and interactionist who has traversed both Nigeria and Canada is therefore left at a good vantage point to create a juxtaposition between the Canadian clime which has witnessed a relative evolution in both the character of its nationals and the development of its resources as compared with the Nigerian clime which still grapples with numerous fundamental challenges.
.Erinosho, with his words so picturesque yet so poignant as it graphically paints a picture of the scenes we are quite familiar with ourselves in an expository narrative. Those which we consider the norm which happens to be the deviation in other parts of the world, those which linger at the back of our consciousness but we still refuse to acknowledge them as wrong and those which the only explanation we find for, is that ‘This is Nigeria’ or “Na Naija we dey”.
A book with its 22 chapters objectively presents ‘commentaries on aspects of our national character’. In a certain chapter where the writer discusses corruption, he asks if there has to be a genetic reengineering aimed at bottling the genie of corruption and indiscipline in both young and old Nigerians.
Written about us through and thorough with a sarcastic beauty that’ll keep you intrigued all the way while jolting to you some realities that were hitherto taken quite flippantly without as much as a critical thought. The book exposes several peculiar habits and idiosyncrasies of Nigerians.
Also, the chapter where our collective amnesia is mentioned is also a bit of a clarion call to posterity. Erinosho mentioned how several economic policies of a certain previous military administration left a lot of lethal loopholes in our economy .He however gives a subtle reminder so we may not be found culpable again as we were in the yesteryears. So we may stop casting aspersions but begin to take positive and constructive actions
I find the section about noise and Nigerians particularly amusing. Our number one, most-utilised attention-seeking manner for announcing that ‘we are here’. I have never found a reasonable explanation for our loudness in Nigeria except that it is Nigerian of us to make noise. Our passive love for arts, our obsession with pictures, abhorrence of punctuality, fear of the known and the unknown. We gallantly exhibit restlessness for wealth and recognition and deploy excessive use of honorifics ,titles and awards.
Nigerians have such an ephemetian generosity when it comes to putting out fires for others while pointing extinguisher away from our own burning roofs, our disregard for clean environments and nature’s beauty and splendor, borne out of our sheer indiscipline and boundless freedom. The incessant, unnecessary and customary love for wastage and our fiery interests and investments in other matters apart from Nigeria’s and many more have all been stated in the inciting monograph.
Perhaps one very fascinating part the author made failed to mention is the way Nigerians reinvent English phraseology and lexicons. The interference of our local languages with the Lingua Franca is both humorous, ingenious and dexterous .Expressions such as :In case of incasity, Did you hear that smell? ,long trousers, short knickers ,dress back ,toast bread and a multiplicity of others
The book has been written explicitly to make you stop arguing for a while and make retort in the resignative affirmative ‘abi’ comments about you and the nation as a whole as it makes the stinging truth bite even harder .A collage of commentaries on our cultural, international, political and religious characters and its dynamics that would leave you, after, with a more open and enlightened mind tasked at questioning more seemingly “normal” Nigerian characters and a set mind to affect them positively.
Our mistakes, our flaws, our mindsets, our perversions have all been carefully woven into this book in a careful succinct way . A book written so truthfully that you will be persuaded to abandon the Nigerian way of admitting and denying that ‘yes, it’s true but it’s not our faults na ‘.One can only hope it truly touches us so much that we want to start imbibing positive attributes that match global standards.
Eyan meji ki padanu iro’ .A Yoruba adage meaning ,’two people cannot be oblivious of a lie, if the one hearing the lie doesn’t know that is a lie, the one telling it will definitely aware. If the rest of us have chosen to stay complacently poor-sighted to our numerous flaws, Erinosho can be called the one of out of the several scholars that has studied his fellow compatriots patiently and meticulously so enough to lay it out to us that we are a great nation capable of great deeds but we prefer shifting the causes of our qualms to unseen mystical forces and always resorting to reverberating and energy-intensive methods of prayer and blame-shifting as the only way to solve them .
If only we could resort to and critical and practical methods to tackle problems ,instead of wishing them away, if we truly take responsibility for our shortcomings, it would empower us with the capacity to find sustainable solutions to our situations. This definitely would have gradually dimmed the dent on our damaged reputation in the international community and maybe fully restore us some reverence in the comity of nations.
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