Culture entraps a generation. A few men of vision open the cage. It begins with ideas. Ideas illuminate society. Doers take over with courage and they galvanise the people along the lines of the vision.
In South Africa, Alan Paton wrote a searing novel, Cry, The Beloved Country, a work that jolted a society driven by caste based on colour. Others also penned, including playwright Athol Fugard and epics like Mazisi Kunene’s on Shaka the Zulu, the first blood of rage against caste. The courage, however, roared from the loins of Nelson Mandela upon whose levers South Africa broke out of the fetters of prejudice. He caught the fire of change and lit the tinder of equality in the land.
We saw a short note recently from the governor of example, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, the governor of Lagos. His ruminations on the World Economic Forum hosted by this country in Abuja would make many a columnist’s ink freeze with envy. In short, clinical sentences with sapient punch lines, he gave us his takeaways from the forum. It is Sociology 101 for Nigerians.
He noted five highlights. One, that we start our meetings with prayers and end them with prayers as though we run a vast tapestry of mosques and churches, wasting tremendous man hours. Two, in meetings, we interrupt sober sessions by serenading ‘who is who’ when we should go to the business of the day. Three, a knock on journalists whose cameras and torsos shade out the profiles of guests from the eyes of other attendees and even television viewers. Four, the facility and efficiency with which Transcorp Hilton conducted the affairs, a cut away from the routine failures of protocol and order in many of our public events.
His take was less, to me, a knock on Hilton but more on the failure of our institutions across the board to rise to occasions. The fifth take focuses on education, and how a foreign personage rallied the corporate world to save a dying need. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown dredged up $10 million to secure 500 schools up north. It was a call to fiscal discipline.
These takeaways from the governor of example were a cultural call to arms. It is a commentary on a culture captive to epicurean slothfulness and levity. It shows we are a people who love pleasure more than work, who tolerate chaos, who surrender to fate, who grapple to simultaneously worship God and man, and fail in between. Finally, it shows we love money for its plenty rather than make plenty of our money.
His take on prayers reminds me of the investors’ forum Nigeria held in Toronto over a year ago. I was sandwiched in the hall by two Canadians whose faces shone with quiet contempt as our organisers insisted on opening and closing prayers that lasted forever. The prayers alternated between Muslim and Christian, even though the events opened earlier and closed later than schedule. Our obsession with faith makes the faithful fake and fake faithful. It has crossed over into politics where we must consider the god a man worships to elect him or her as though wealth creation, job creation, good hospitals, schools, discipline and maintenance of prosperity and value depend on whether the candidate gazes at star or moon.
A comedy flows from his second take. At every event, we begin with long and winding introductions of chairmen, guests of honour, etc. Some VIPs deliberately attend events late for ego massaging. If the person – a governor, party apparatchik, business mogul, etc – arrives two hours late, the MC interrupts to pay homage to the person. No attention is paid to the fact that he has not shown respect to others there, and even the organisers of the event. They usually do not come alone. Their long and boorish retinue also assume the cocky air of their principal. Such display of supercilious extravagance is worsened, as Fashola notes, when he would have to displace others who respected the event by coming early. It is always an alawada moment in this country and it is made more farcical by the obsequious demeanour of reverence of everyone else in the hall as they wave, bow, clap and sing for the criminal of time.
The Transcorp example is typically Nigerian. Usually we do not do the right thing. But the hotel has shown us one thing: things will work when we put our minds to them. The failure of hospitals, of election agencies, school boards, tax agencies, power companies, etc, is the failure of discipline.
PM Brown’s story tells us that we do not want to run a country based on compassion. Our compassion is often in the wrong place. We are sorry for our aunt, so we steal public funds to fund her son’s naming ceremony, etc. If $10 million can safeguard 500 schools, it means two things. One, we have a business community unmoved by a sense of social engagement. They would rather fund vanity like a TV show on finicky celebrity than an education endowment. I wrote last year, that if we start a programme where the well-heeled adopt a bed, or ward, or equipment, etc, in hospitals across Nigeria, we shall see how easily we can tackle the problem of health care. But the rich spend money either to get power because they did not earn the money, or stash them away so they can have Dubai weddings and Madrid birthdays unmolested by the physiognomy of poverty back home.
Fashola’s takeaways are a brutal set of words, subtle in indictment but total in its umbrage. This is a culture unsuited for the 21st century. We can pray, but let us work. We can salute VIPs but not as late comers. We can spend money but on the right things. Let our hotels and hospital work and not wait for the white man to show them the way. In one word, let us abandon the lazy culture of feudal Nigeria and embrace the industry of the internet age.
In more sensitive societies, Fashola’s notes would needle us into mass introspection and institutional sobriety. But this is not revolutionary America where one Thomas Paine wrote a short note titled Commonsense. The pamphlet emboldened the nation to action. It told home truths that eventually led Americans to a war that ousted the British. It was the shortest writing that ever roused a people. It was longer than Fashola’s takeaways but no less penetrating in insight. We need such commonsense for our common sense and, ultimately, common wealth.
