Who Will Save Nigeria From Nigerians?

Two weeks ago, I delivered a speech at a stakeholders’ engagement forum organised by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ahead of the November 8 governorship election in Anambra State. I was asked to talk on the role of civil society in realization of a peaceful election.

One of the highlights of my presentation was my observation that achieving a peaceful election is ultimately a collective responsibility wherein everyone must embark on personal introspection to see where they are contributing or failing to contribute to peace. I made reference to our culture of externalisation of evil whereby each individual views evil as always originating from some “other” persons elsewhere and never themselves. Thus, when it comes to peace before, during, and after an election, individuals tend to be blind to the fact that their communication, especially on social media, matters a lot to the quest for peace and non-violence. Hence, after making or sharing peace-threatening posts, such individuals still conveniently look totally beyond themselves when attributing responsibility for tensions and volatility.

Trapped in the noisy and confusing interrelations characterising our mass society, individuals tend to lose consciousness of their personal contribution to the good or detriment of society. Social media typifies this noisy interrelations where each person sees their own voice as too tiny to make an impact. However, truth is that in the ocean of social media, that wave that sank a ship indeed started as harmless ripples in one small, inconsequential corner of the water. Thus, small ripples are progressively enlarged through continued sharing of same post by individuals until the ripples grow into engulfing waves – yet, funnily, without those individuals that lent a helping hand to the disaster recognizing their liability.

On a personal level, I have since recognized my moral duty as a social media user. This recognition entails that one does not act in a carefree manner in the public communication space. Originating or sharing a post must be informed by moral discretion – words, pictures or any other form of communication can build or destroy. A most recent example was when the actors in the upcoming governorship election in Anambra started engaging themselves in mudslinging, which got the environment charged up, I simply resolved not to share any single one of the many caustic materials flying online. There is always the temptation to do otherwise.

Very importantly, our tendency to externalise evil extends to all facets of our social life, and has been a crucial factor that sustains the vicious circle we have been stuck in as a nation. Ours is a clime where everyone desires change, yet no one wants to change. Each individual believes that someone else (and not themselves) needs to change for things to get better.

It is the height of irony that among those who are waiting for an upright, corruption-free, messianic leader that will emancipate Nigeria are those who never fail to seize any opportunity to extort or take bribe in their offices as civil servants. It is paradoxical that even those who steal public funds as perm secs, chief executives of parastatals, heads of educational institutions, directors, and even lower-cadre public servants are among those waiting for some “other” persons (usually political leaders) to change their ways for society to be better. With the way many government workers are illegally enriching themselves, it is safe to say that collective stealing has become part of our national culture.

Funnily, among those who accuse politicians of nepotism in appointment and allocation of other privileges are persons who seize every opportunity to use their position or connection to place their relatives or friends in public employment in violation of the official recruitment rules. People who attain high positions in public service (be it in parastatals, military, higher institutions etc.) do not fail to get their children recruited as though public service has been reduced to a family heritage.

The same procurement fraud everyone is shouting about pointing at politicians is seen at every level of public service. Contracts are awarded to staff members, their relatives, and friends in criminal violation of procurement laws. Contract fees are inflated and poor jobs done due to loopholes in procurement processes. In Nigerian universities, many (especially senior) staff members have turned themselves into contractors executing projects for their respective institutions contrary to the law. The procurement laws have criminalized such acts for a good reason – they tend to compromise the financial integrity of procurements as well as the quality of jobs delivered. Yet, the people who engage in these or indirectly benefit from them are waiting for some “other” persons to change for Nigeria to be better. Using one’s position to unlawfully secure privileges (financial or otherwise) for oneself and cronies is a form of state capture, being that it amounts to appropriating state machinery for self-serving purposes – yet the perpetrators are crying foul about certain persons holding the state captive.

Those who offer bribes for school admission or use money to buy government jobs as well as the sellers themselves are equally waiting on “others” to change. So, in our clime, change has become an orphan, no one wants to own it up.

We condemn nepotism but, at the same time, expect familial, communal, or ethnic favouritism from politicians. Once our own person is in power, we expect – nay, demand – that they use their official privilege to give us jobs, school admissions, government contracts etc. In other words, we expect them to abuse the privileges of their office for our selfish ends. Ironically, the extent they succeed in doing this is the extent we see them as good leaders.

But one interesting thing which many citizens are ignorant of is that our leaders are not oblivious of the implications of all this; they are observing how much the masses are contributing to the common problem. Just as the citizens point at them, they also point at us as part of the problem.
On a certain Sunday in 2009, while working as a journalist in Lagos, I had gone to a place to urgently see a colleague of mine. It turned out that the place he directed me to when I phoned him was the house of a prominent Lagos politician whom he had gone to interview. When I came in, the interview was over and the female politician was engaged in an off-the-record chat with my friend who obviously was close to him. I still remember her say something like, “Everyone is pointing accusing fingers on politicians but the truth is that we are all in this together. Do you know how many persons that are on my neck for jobs and contracts as well as other demands? I have a long list and I am attending to it gradually as opportunities come. But then, how do you satisfy all those demands without breaking the rules? Unfortunately, if you don’t attend to the requests, people will call you bad names, saying you are selfish, you don’t want to help people. Yet, when the negative consequences of bypassing rules and due process come, everyone blames politicians.”

While I obviously can’t remember every exact word used by the politician who was evidently frank in her submission, her exact points are still stuck to my memory. The points she made echoes what happens between commercial bus drivers and passengers regarding the use.of bus stops. Not once have I asked a bus driver why they insist on picking passengers at prohibited places as against the bus stops and they would answer, “the passengers are to blame; instead of waiting at bus stops, they wait elsewhere, and as a driver, if you don’t pick them, other drivers will do so and you will go empty-handed.” In the same vein, a politician may say, “the citizens are the problem; they keep making unlawful demands from us, and since other politicians are attending to the demands, if you insist on not attending to yours, you become a bad leader and will fail in your political career.”

But after all said and done, the leaders have the ultimate blame. The buck must stop with them. One who has power is in a better position to force a change. As I have always told any bus driver that I had had the above conversation with, a driver is in control of the bus, they have the key and the steering and no passenger can force their hand if they insist on stopping only at bus stops. So, if every driver insists on not stopping at unauthorized places, passengers will be forced to wait only at bus stops. The drivers have a union, and they can act in one accord on this.

However, the reason for calling attention to the often discountenanced liability of the masses in our national woes is to demonstrate that our usual binary of “bad leaders versus innocent citizens” only poorly explains our predicament. The point is that, contrary to the picture we have carried in our heads over the years, there is no one set of few evil people oppressing and seeking to destroy the innocent majority. It is from the ranks of the same “innocent” victims of today that the “evil” and “oppressive” leaders of tomorrow emerge. Chinua Achebe, in his famous THE TROUBLE WITH NIGERIA, aptly pinned down our problem to leadership. He wrote in 1980 – 45 years ago – yet we have among our “bad” leaders of today many who were either not born then or were still among the “oppressed” then. So, the so-called oppressors were once among the oppressed and even today some future “oppressors” are yet to be born – meaning that if you tell me about an unborn child who will be a leader tomorrow, I can predict with almost 100 percent certainty that they will be a bad leader. So, what we call oppressors are a creation of the system; the system creates the sort of leadership it is wired to create.

This is why anyone who assumes political leadership at every level in Nigeria suddenly appears to be evil. This trend extends to non-political leadership including lower levels of state bureaucracy, such that in the civil service, for instance, you would struggle to find an office where bribery is not demanded. Have we all become evil? The safer way to answer this question is to say that we have a system that reinvents evil.

So, if actually we need a leader who will liberate this country, it is one who will liberate Nigeria from NIGERIANS and not just from an assumed band of few evil men and women. In other words, we need a leader that will liberate us from ourselves. We have chased shadows enough seeking to be liberated from an elusive few hostage takers.

I must confess that I am yet to see a leader or an aspiring one that has unequivocally spoken in terms that clearly show that they intend to pursue this ideology of liberating us from ourselves. The usual thing is for leaders to keep boasting about their “achievements” while aspiring leaders summon us to stand with them against the “evil” lots in power. Of course, the aspiring leaders have failed to address the populace in such a way that they understand that they are not outsiders in the task to repair their country; that even though they have been victims, they have also contributed to their woes.

They haven’t told them that everyone has got to forego the unlawful privileges which our positions or connections afford us; that our hope of securing jobs or contracts from that relative or friend would have to be extinguished if the task of rebuilding the nation gets underway. They’re failing to declare that everyone – not just politicians but all of us – must cease stealing and extorting at our workplaces.

On the contrary, these aspiring leaders have exploited the we-versus-them binary; a very convenient way to appeal to the emotions of the masses being that it feeds on the long-age indignation nursed by the masses against their leaders. Vilifying the “usual” enemy is the shortest path to exciting the aggrieved masses, thus positioning the power seeker as different from other “evil-minded” politicians, and impressing it upon them that he/she is the messiah to liberate them from the enemy.

While this approach is politically expedient, it sustains a mass illusion that hides from the masses the genuine reality of their situation. It reinforces their blindness to their own liability in destroying their nation and the consequent role they must play in its repair. In their minds, a Messiah who will perform miracles is arriving. This further complicates the task of nation building, making it more difficult for any leader, no matter how good-intentioned they may be.

On a personal level, there is something that I find suspect and manipulative when someone seeking my vote starts to tell me about certain evil persons whom he intends to liberate me from. It may have made sense to me in the past, but not anymore. We need leaders that will tell us what is expected of us in the task of rebuilding the nation, and not ones that will make us believe there is a devil somewhere that has haunted us for years, and that they alone have all it takes to exorcise it. Changing the fortune of this nation lies not in liberating it from some external forces, but in liberating it from Nigerians.

Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.