A cursory look at our families excites the creepiest form of marvel. The Nigerian family unit today parades the worst form of savagery. Mothers are mightily pleased to see a child hurt an annoying neighbour’s dog or cat; and such wise fathers we have now that consider it a notable mark of martial spirit when they see their son domineer his weaker peer. And there are those whose parents raise righteously, breeding them in their images, to conform to and perpetuate the worst forms of religious bigotry and inhumanity, according to the holy scriptures.
Ultimately, our parents look upon it as a sign of great wit and astuteness to see us cheat and oppress our peer by some malicious treachery and deceit. It gladdens their hearts to see us evolve into ‘lovable’ brutes at a tender age. They claim it’s a worthy demeanor for the very tough world out there.
Thus from adolescence through adulthood, they greet every dishonesty we perpetrate with cheer, as long as it translates to stupendous wealth, higher status and the comfort of knowing that their children are “smart” and inured in the ways of the world. These are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny and treason. Our parents nurture vile in us and we perpetuate it in attitude, learning from their misconduct, till we start procreating and perpetuating within our lineage, grosser forms of grotesqueness and bestiality.
It starts from the very little things, like nurturing us to be brutes through childhood and grooming us to be fraudulent through adolescence. Hence the multitude of “peaceful, hardworking and God-fearing” families engaged in desperate pursuits to enroll their wards and university hopefuls in “special coaching schools” while they purchase for them, seats at “special centres,” as they write the S.S.C.E and JAMB exams.
Such wards, dutifully trained to circumvent the straight, moral path to progress and self-actualization, eventually mature into foetal, perverse adults. All through their lives, they navigate the depths and shoals of challenging realities with the courage of a weevil and the wit of a hyena, if I may insult the poor animals by comparing such with them.
Eventually, the seeds of indolence and monstrosity sown in them grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated by society and custom; at the end, we have brutes and savages running our lives and determining our future. At this juncture, I guess, many would dispute, claiming such shameful lot constitute just a minor fraction of the country’s 170 million-strong families or thereabouts.
I whole-heartedly disagree but if they insist, I hereby reiterate that, such wonderful families we have now that blesses us with the current ruling class. Such wonderful families we have now that blesses us with thieving bank chiefs and corrupt law enforcers.
Such wonderful families we have that blesses us with slothful civil servants, light-fingered bank clerks, desperate, treacherous journalists and lawyers. Such wonderful families we have that blesses us with prostitutes, armed robbers, Yahoo boys, and currency-activated clerics to mention a few.
One degeneracy gravitates into the other and we have for ourselves, a nation of finely bred brutes, idiots and foetal adults, pitifully programmed to self-destruct. I do not apologize for my abrasive choice of words. Were it acceptable, I would depict the average Nigerian with more colourful choice of words. We are very, very bad people.
Driven by greed, selfishness, indolence and appalling inclinations to play “God,” we embark on a never-ending quest to ruin Nigeria… righteously. The argument that it’s the lack of good leadership that forces us to be corrupt does not hold much substance anymore; let each one of us be accountable for his actions.
How many leaders do we have? If we count the number of politicians and every hoodlum plaguing our industries, politics and occupying our seats of power, will they add up to a million? Let’s assume that they add up to a million; there are 170 million Nigerians or thereabouts, of this lot, should a paltry million lead about 169 million astray? Is the fault not with the 169 million?
Our nation perishes by our gluttony and lust for fleeting and perishable vanities. It was greed and a disgraceful strain of cowardliness that drove our touted “men of god” to endorse former President Goodluck Jonathan’s candidacy, claiming his emergence was sanctified by their “god.” It was gluttony, cowardice and an unconquerable strain of prejudice that drove millions of Nigerians to troop to the polls to endorse the worst form of the ruling class.
Bestiality, like blood, seems to run perpetually in the veins of the Nigerian ruling class. It is not that the working class is any wiser. Age is of no value within our clans, likewise experience. Our old have no important advice to give to our young. Their experiences have been so partial and fraught with fraudulence that at the end, they pass off as miserable failures.
Indeed, it is good to be bad and bad to be good in contemporary Nigeria. Let us consider for a moment the caliber of leadership we have; the Nigerian ruling class tirelessly appropriates for itself what is meant for the benefit of all. Likewise, the poorest constituent of the breadlines is capable of meaner grotesqueness were he opportune to play with money and power. As it is with the rich, so it is with the poor. Poverty and affluence brings out the worst in us.
Every Nigerian considers himself the quintessential patriot capable of the fairest truth and reason. And from this perception emerges the contemporary Nigerian with the perfect politics, perfect economics, perfect religion and the most exact and accomplished approaches to all things.
Thus our nation abounds with perfect tyrants and looters, our homes with perfect batterers and paedophiles; our industries pulsate with perfect quacks and the slovenly, our schools with perfect dullards and numbnuts. Lest we forget the perfect rapists, kidnappers, hooligans and assassins prowling our streets, baiting the unforgiving second, when ruthless neurosis pulsates with will, for a price.
Every Nigerian is a law breaker. The rich believe they are above the law and the poor believe they could sneak under it, through it and away from its grasp. I would like to believe that the worst of our kind constitutes just a minor fraction of 170 million of us but as you read, our ruling class is busy pilfering our coffers even as it plays Russian roulette with our lives. The rich still connives with the ruling class to impoverish us further. The poor still curses the ruling class and curse the times even as they die daily to serve the whims of the ruling class.
As you read, parents are purchasing seats and liberties to cheat for their wards at JAMB and SSCE “special centres.” Our bankers are pilfering our accounts 50 kobo, N1 to N1000 by the second. Motorists are hastening off their normal lanes to face oncoming vehicles on the wrong lanes. Public administrators are stealing pension funds meant for elderly retirees. Journalists are receiving money to doctor and tilt stories according to the whims of shady politicians, business class and criminal masterminds. Doctors are forgetting surgical knives in helpless patients; lawyers are twisting the law to serve the whims of the worst creatures ever and you are reading this thinking I am just another ‘grifter’ calling the con-artist, ‘fraud.’
