Segun Gbadegesin
FOR this first full week of 2021, I had planned on focusing on a concern that I believe many fellow citizens share with me. Rightly so, because many of the challenges that we’ve had as a nation ultimately boil down to the absence of accountability. We don’t hold ourselves accountable for our conduct which has adverse effects on others and on the nation.
As I mulled over the matter, my focus was going to be entirely on the political context. After all, it is the foremost institution, the architectonic, which has the most impact on our lives. Yet it is one that is lacking most in accountability. However, as I thought more about this, it occurred to me that what ails the political institution has its roots outside that institution, and it is a carryover from other institutions.
We can go down to the minutiae of this issue, especially at the domestic or family level. Many bring children into the world with no thought or plan for their care and future. They fail woefully in the matter of discharging our responsibility to them. From their impressionable years, they forge in them a spirit of dependency. They seek help from others to bring them up. They distribute them to relations to take care of. Or in ignorant understanding of religious tenets, they hand them over to spiritual leaders who in turn use them as beggars for alms.
I concede that, traditionally, there is the belief that it takes a village to raise a child. But that does not mean that parents are expected to delegate their responsibility for raising their children to the village or community. Rather, it is simply a reflection of the understanding that a collective effort is warranted in introducing the children to the values of their village, community, or nation. Indeed, there was more personal responsibility in our traditional and indigenous societies than the so-called modern era. Traditionally, a child can expect to be given the resources he or she needed for entering into the family business, trade or profession, whether it be farming, weaving, or trading.
For the most part now, however, we just give up on the products of our loins and the fruits of our wombs, leaving them to their fate while we produce yet more. And those that we give up on almost always go on to become anything from hoodlums and cultists to hard core criminals with dire consequences for society. And no one is held accountable. Perhaps if parents are held to account for the crimes committed by their minors, they will assume responsibility.
This lack of shared responsibility and shared accountability runs through every aspect of our national life and we ignore it at our peril. As the elders observe, our untrained offspring will eventually destroy the edifice that we build in lieu of their training. But as it is for families, so it is for nations, which end up bearing the burden of family irresponsibility and negligence.
There is more, however. The idea of shared responsibility extends to the relationship between the family and the state. As an assembly of families, the state has the mandate to promote the welfare of citizens through their elected representatives. It does this by making provision for their security, education, and health. But to carry out this important mandate, the state depends on the contributions of citizens to its pool of resources. Where such contributions are not forthcoming, shared responsibility is lacking and the mandate cannot be fulfilled.
Before the discovery of oil, the nation depended on taxes from agricultural produce to fund development and welfare programs, including the popular free education in the old Western Region. A responsible government channeled those resources to benefit the people with glaring results that elicited the pride of the people in, and respect for, their government. It was a give and take philosophy in practice.
That, unfortunately, is no longer the practice. With a majority of our people in a paralyzing dependency mode, we have moved to the realm of representation without taxation. As we know, taxation without representation is a valid justification for a revolutionary stance on the part of the people. However, the government is still very much expected to carry out its responsibilities even when the people renege on theirs.
Perhaps a fair distribution of the proceeds of the natural resources at the disposal of the nation would be alright to provide for the basic needs of every citizen even without taxation, as is the case in some countries. In those jurisdictions, a powerful few don’t grab available national resources. Too bad, we do not belong to that fortunate group of nations.
The result of this combination of misfortunes is the inadequacy of public goods from security to education and health. And everyone pays dearly for this. Thus, while the state could provide a better security regime for all from a pool of resources to which everyone contributes, many families and communities end up establishing their own security regimes around their homes and streets respectively. Unfortunately, however, there is no guarantee for their safety with armed robbers now operating in groups with sophisticated weapons.
In the golden era of shared responsibility, public education was at its best, with dedicated and well-trained teachers, from primary to modern and secondary schools, producing the best and brightest, many of whom are still making the nation proud. Surely, there were complements of private schools, including mission schools. But these were effectively regulated by governments, and their fees weren’t prohibitive.
What can we say of our public education system now? It is a disaster. From dilapidated buildings and falling roofs to staff and teacher shortage, the rot is mind-boggling. We are failing the future of children and we don’t seem worried. Now there is a plethora of private schools catching in on the mess and taking advantage of the predicament of parents. What we fail to contribute in taxes to have good public schools, we pay in exorbitant fees to private schools with pecuniary interests. Amazingly, we are alright with it.
It is the same story in the matter of health. Since 1985, we have been comparing our hospitals to glorified dispensaries. At one point, we even described them as morgues in waiting. And for more than thirty five years, instead of improvement they have actually further deteriorated. This is especially true of general hospitals in rural areas. But who cares for them? There are private hospitals for the rich, and for the super- rich there are countries with great healthcare systems even if they are the same age as our country. Shamelessness will not kill us!
Currently, however, there is no greater evidence of how we are undermining the importance of shared responsibility and shared accountability than in our collective response to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. While the government has been forthcoming about what is at stake, and have inundated us with guidelines to prepare us for the fight against the disease, many in the population have either been in denial or are simply disdainfully unconcerned.
In the absence of a functioning health system to cope, our best chance for escape from the wrath of the virus is prevention. Surprisingly, we have failed woefully. Even with a scary spike in number of positive cases in the wake of a second wave, beaches were packed for Yuletide festivities. We are really pushing our luck and I fear the worst may soon descend. What are we going to do? Already some thought leaders in the west are wondering why Africa hasn’t been hit hard. And we seem to be helping them witness the horror that they cherish to see out of Africa.
My point of departure for these reflections is shared accountability in politics. As the institution with the most responsibility for the populace, it appears that citizens have all but delegated their responsibility to politicians. But my thoughts on this will have to wait till next week when I discuss a model of politics that is not for the common good. Unfortunately, it is one that we seem to have embraced.
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