Mr Whiner is Nigeria’s worst nightmare. A kindred spirit with the dubious patriot; while the latter devastates the country with bad politics, Whiner fulfills the role of a mortician. He is the proverbial pallbearer who spirits out a coffin at the first scent of roses.
In Whiner, we encounter a parable of the Nigerian soul. No thanks to him, we know that Nigeria may not die merely by bullets and bombs, but by the gall of cynics in loafers and saboteurs in agbada, soft-shoed mercenaries who smile and kill.
Consider, if you will, the curious case of Mr. Whiner. A journalist whose existence is fashioned in contradiction. He abhors his benefactor, a news publisher, with an almost theological fervour; perhaps because he was groomed to loathe those of different creeds. Whiner’s bile is tribal, his hatred inherited. Yet, he practically lives inside the newsroom of the newspaper owned by this same publisher. He is not a staff member. No pay slips bear his name. Still, he comes and goes like a ghost whose presence nobody questions, his access granted through the charity of a former editor.
Whiner has a wife and children. Yet he deserts them nightly, to sleep in an office corner, beside the wires and routers, because the electricity and internet access are free. He brings soup and makes eba with water boiled in a kettle owned by the newsroom of the publisher he loves to hate. He bathes in the bathroom meant for employees, washes and irons his clothes with the hum of electricity provided by the generator of the publisher he prays would drop dead. Every week, he publishes advertorials disguised as stories: free pages untouched by tax or truth. These are gifts, really, from the house he curses with his breath.
It is not his religion or politics that indict him. The democratic soul must have the right to critique power. But it is the gleeful subversion of basic decency, the cannibalising of the very hand that feeds him, that reveals the rot in his soul. Whiner loathes his benefactor, the publisher, who currently occupies a public office, yet has been feeding off his kindness for over one decade. He dreads the establishment’s ownership while reaping its benefits. He mocks his source of livelihood, venting his ill will with the vigour of a sponsored agitator.
Some would blame the organisation for being too accommodating. I would say that Whiner has simply perfected the subtle art of subterfuge. Something the Yoruba would describe thus: “Je ka pe were won loko iyawo, kin won je ki nri temi se.”
Whenever he is corrected or nudged toward decency, he puffs up like a peacock in heat, hiding his shamelessness behind the veil of religious conviction. What kind of saint sucks milk from his mother’s breast while wishing her dead?
This same soullessness feeds the failed presidential candidate who, in a frenzy of rejection, flew to Harvard to demarket Nigeria, baring its sores before an audience eager to sneer. Like Whiner, he thrives on destruction. He’s the sort who, denied the throne, would rather watch the palace burn than help build a new one. He would bury Nigeria because he lost an election.
It is this same venom that drives his cult of devotees, who gleefully applauded as he painted a dismal portrait of the country before foreign eyes. If they cannot wear the crown, the entire kingdom must burn. Many Nigerians, especially those who imagine themselves too educated to be deceived, drink deeply from this poisonous cup. They defend him on social media, share his slander like scripture, and justify his perfidy with elegant grammar. “If I can’t have the apple, I’ll burn down the orchard.” This is Whiner’s gospel. And tragically, it has become Nigeria’s creed.
In Whiner’s spirit, we see the foul ghost of many Nigerians: the cynic who lights a match to the village because his neighbour’s barn is larger; the kidnapper in his lair, the assassin in his ambuscade and the corrupt policeman and public officer on his perch. This spirit belongs primarily to the predator while it hunts its prey. Like Whiner, too many Nigerians exploit the country without conscience. The corrupt civil servant who inflates contracts and diverts funds meant for roads, schools, hospitals; he is Whiner in a tie. The judge who sells verdicts and perverts justice is Whiner, robed in law. The dubious activist who incites the masses with half-truths, never seeking progress but only more fuel for the fire, is Whiner with a megaphone. The journalist who twists headlines to please tribal and Western imperial patrons trades truth for bias and integrity for wordplay; he, too, is Whiner with a pen.
It is Whiner’s syndrome that animates the Igbo zealot who screams that Lagos is no man’s land, a playground won by intellect and labour, even as he shivers at the thought of relocating to Enugu to replicate such glory. He boasts that Lagos cannot do without him, forgetting that a tree does not mock its roots while basking in the sunlight.
Whiner’s spirit afflicts the Yoruba prodigal, who sells ancestral lands to bigoted interlopers, spends the proceeds on owambe parties and then returns to cry foul: “They are taking over our lands in large numbers! They will soon take our throne!”
Then there is the Fulani herder, manipulated by a soulless political class and mythologies of dominance, who lays waste to crops cultivated with sweat and hope by middle-belt and southern farmers. He believes the earth was made for him and his herd alone. He, too, is a Whiner in entitlement and destructive tendencies.
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These are hardly scattered fragments but different masks worn by the same face. It is the face of the exploiter, who only gives where profit is guaranteed and stays only where he can plunder. This, sadly, is the popular Nigerian disposition. And it is terminal.
No nation can flourish when most of its citizens are transactional patriots. Nigerians wake up daily scheming how to game the country. They share fake news with glee, amplify bad tidings with the fervour of funeral criers, and downplay progress unless it favours their tribe or political messiah. They do not serve the country, they leech it.
And when the country begins to rot from the gangrene of a thousand unchecked sins, they cry: “Nigeria has failed us!” As though they, too, didn’t swing the axe. The Igbos say: “A man who brings home ant-infested firewood should not complain when lizards invade his house.”
There are consequences. If we allow the Whiners of our time to multiply, unchallenged, we shall one day stir to find that we no longer have a country. The economy groans because everyone is gaming the system. Our public institutions are perverted by compromise. The media, like its global counterparts, shamelessly teem with partisans who swap objectivity for tribal vengeance. The youth, seduced by social media posturing, have turned activism into theatre. Even the clerics, once shepherds of moral wisdom, are now spiritual gunrunners, trading prophecy for campaign contracts.
Whiner is not just a man in the newsroom or a lout on the street. He is an archetype. He is a Nigerian who believes in taking but never giving back. Until we stop treating our country like a commodity to be drained, we will keep birthing Whiners. And Whiners do not build nations. They bury them.
