By Olatunji Ololade
Capitalism is neither wicked nor cruel when the commodity is the ‘whore’ – blue-collar or brothel ‘whore.’ Nigeria is neither ‘doomed’ nor ‘forsaken’ when the ‘national cake’ is shared among the loudest activists, shady politicians and public officers.
Profit is neither vicious nor impure when victims of multinationals’ exploitation are voiceless, impoverished host communities, and the bleeding heart rights activist, ‘social influencer’ or crusader-journalist eventually earns courtship and seasonal inducements by the transnational culprits.
Government is neither tribal nor unjust when the Igbo, Hausa, Ibibio, Tiv, Jukun, Yoruba, Fulani groups, to mention a few, have their lands and treasures forcibly splayed for kindred “activists” and “saviours” to plunder.
Values are neither degenerate nor effete when its the ‘emancipated’ youth having sex in a public toilet of a unisex hostel on a ‘reality’ TV show; sexual slavery becomes hip when ‘future leaders’ are presented as meat and body parts on the ill-conceived ‘reality’ show.
When reality differs from our fantasies, let’s cut to the chase and blame government for everything. Right? While we do so, let us remember to blame Muhammadu Buhari and his “under-performing” cabinet and cliques for our elevation of fatuity as enchanted condition.
We should blame government for our smutty politics, the drab one too, while we conveniently forget that our erotica of the left-wing is the graveyard where our ‘woke’ clans slither to die in eternal wokeness.
Dworkin was wrong to imagine that the Left cannot have its politics and its whores. For some Nigerian Leftists, or progressives if you like, politics and whoredom unfurl in perfect sync.
Political whoredom thrives by enabling youth. The latter, having learnt to manipulate protest into performance, emerge as a rising political bloc. Dirty artifice, hitherto an exclusive preserve of questionable politicians, becomes the tool by which they renegotiate their claims to social spoils.
Yea, Buhari, no matter the frequency of his bursts of feeble ‘savvy’ and implied strength, will never curry the favour of his most virulent critics. This, unfortunately, shall be his lot until push gets to shove a la 2023 general elections.
Nonetheless, Nigeria has got you and I to save her from the ravage of familiar predators, plundering her treasure trove for sport. Who knew pillage could be so elevated as recreation, and that coffer rapists could attain the honour of national heroes?
The malady persists by our psychology of youth participation in politics, which highlights a lust for instant and unearned gratification. This explains why some youths, goaded by sycophants and a false sense of worth made frantic gestures to become Nigeria’s president at the last general elections.
Their ambition had little to do with being visionary and competent for the job. It was arrant narcissism.
A curious form of what clinical psychologists would call maladaptive self-love seem to have crept up on the Nigerian youth. Little wonder hordes of youths, unquestioningly, submit as tools and canon fodder for violence and destruction, for a fee, at election time.
It also explains, perhaps, why otherwise promising youth would scorn morals and intellect, and submit as lab rats in corporate sponsored experimental porn cum reality shows.
There is no gainsaying youth participation in politics thrives on the pursuit of material gain and status by circumventing the cycle of honest endeavour.
A recent study carried out to examine personality traits and narcissism as predictors of pathological selfie among undergraduates of a federal university establishes narcissism as a major driver of neurotic lust for selfies among students.
A similar lust sprouts by the notion that young presidential candidates at the 2019 elections were simply bidding for face-time. “They know they cannot win, they only wish to register their presence en route the 2023 elections,” argued their apologists.
The argument also persists that many contested in order to land plum compensations or jobs in the cabinet of the eventual winner from the big parties.
Several young candidates at the 2019 general elections, no doubt, emerged to take political selfies; and this portends the most dangerous case of self-love, given that thousands of voters hinged their destinies at the mercy of their aberrant lust.
Another study reveals narcissistic facets in narratives of Nigeria’s advance fee fraud letters. The paper analyses a sample of 100 advanced fee fraud letters or Nigerian scams by fraudsters otherwise known as Yahoo Boys. Analysis of the scams highlight a Machiavellian/narcissistic approach of human behaviour and morality.
It presents scams as narratives that give us various perceptions about the youth in the present era. It draws a set of moral principles and values that are explicitly declared by fraudsters similar to the young candidate’s platitudinous chant.
A similar approach is adopted by many a Nigerian revolutionary and woke youth. To them, political participation and protest are simply facets and scenes in their performance theatre. Their strategy involves starting a ruckus until government drags them by force or persuasion to the negotiation board.
As soon as favourable terms are reached, they withdraw to enjoy their loot and ‘elevated’ status in silence. When confronted on their sudden silence, they will brazenly say: “When you are eating, you don’t talk.” It’s called table manners.
Activism to them, is hardly about ideals. It’s an artificial construction, a performance to seduce fearsome power. To withstand providence’s scourge, they reinvent themselves as rights activists, advocacy-journalists, ‘social influencers, sociopreneurs, mediapreneurs’ – apology to such ‘practitioners’ plying honest endeavour.
Eventually, the shady among them, would get storm-tossed and drown in karma’s retributive deep.
The duplicity within is what we should fear. It is the root of our predicament. And it thrives on narcissism.
Vicelich writes, that, narcissists “behave like four-year-olds: it’s all about them.” They don’t recognise personal boundaries, they hog conversations, crave constant validation and take criticism extremely badly.
“They want your attention, they need things right now – it’s all about instant gratification – and they really have an undeveloped sense of self,” she says, thus diagnosing the tantrums and naivete of several Nigerian aspirants.
They can be charming, flirtatious company too, notes Hinsliff, but they see others largely as extensions of themselves and can be controlling, cruel or critical of anyone they feel reflects badly on them.
Honest criticism wounds their fragile egos and they may become violent, broken or commit to drugs. Some simply commit suicide. This is, however, not an attempt to make light of the disconcerting suicide culture or its triggers and dangerous manifestations.
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter supply them with oodles of their ‘fix’ as measurable ‘likes’ and ‘shares.’
In his Metamorphosis, Ovid narrates the story of Narcissus making it clear that he will live a long life “if he does not discover himself.”
Narcissus, it’s worth remembering, eventually died of loneliness and sorrow sprung from his distorted perception of self. He got destroyed by extreme self-love and maladjusted behaviour.
It’s about time we understood that the most underrated act of selflessness and progress even if sprung from self-love, is the ability, occasionally, to get over yourself.
