The certainty of chaos

Many of us grew up hearing complaints about the many things wrong with Nigeria, but little did we know that things would continue to get progressively worse. We have tenaciously broken down the vestiges of institutions bequeathed to us by our colonial masters, which actually took more than two decades after independence to finally collapse. That’s a testament to the strength of those institutions. In my opinion, people born in Nigeria in the mid to late 1970s were the last to enjoy a similitude of sane society, and considering the fact that the life expectancy of the average Nigerian is about 52.11yrs, then larger percentage of Nigerians alive now were born into chaos, a system that has become a certainty of their reality.

I was therefore surprised when on September 8th, 2016, with all pomp and pageantry, we rolled out the drums to introduce an ill-conceived initiative termed ‘change begins with me’. The first thing that came to my mind was that this was an admission of failure by the leadership of Nigeria, and in so doing, are trying to transfer the burden of change to the citizens. Then a deluge of messages followed across social media by ‘patriotic’ Nigerians, from professors to the layman on the street, on why we as citizens are responsible for the change we want to see in the country. Amazingly, none of those epistles was backed by research, logic, history or reference. All I could sense was influence of emotions and religious piety.

Admittedly, it might look like a case of chicken and egg situation, that our leaders are drawn from the citizens, and therefore, a reflection of the majority. So the argument goes, that we need to change for good, so that good leaders can be elected into positions of authority. In my own view, this a very simplistic thought process, and that’s why I know the initiative is dead on arrival. The most important thing citizens owe the country and themselves is to find that one leader whose common sense will not depart from him or her once elected to that highest office. It is commonsensical to me that it is easier for that one person that controls the policies, framework and institutional apparatus to influence change than 180 million hapless Nigerians.

Another question that came to my mind was, if most Nigerians were born into chaos, and that has been the only way of life they know to get things done, what are they supposed to change into? They don’t have an experience of a system that works and the benefits, likewise is the absence of any reference point of an organised and orderly society in close proximity, so why would they leave the certainty of their chaos that has continued to work magic for them to an uncertainty of change?

Then I thought to myself, maybe I’m being too critical, may be the people that conceived the idea had seen it work successfully in other climes and they were just replicating the same? But everywhere I turned, I never saw any country whose institutions were built because the citizens became angels overnight. All I saw were countries who had visionary leaders who understood what it took to build institutions and were committed and unwavering. Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia did not ask the citizens to change, but built frameworks that took the country from one of the most corrupt in the world to one of the least corrupt in a space of 10 years. A country he met that was dependent on Russia for electricity, to one that became an exporter of electricity. A country that was so corrupt and inefficient in its customs and excise functions to one that is now the gateway of car imports into Europe due to the 24hr guaranteed clearance.

On the issue of change itself, hoping humans will willingly change from their old ways is a stretch of the imagination. In Behavioural Economics, under the Nudge Theory of Thaler and Sunstein, I find the ‘loss aversion’ and ‘status quo’ heuristics very relevant to why Nigerians will resist change. The loss aversion heuristic suggests that people’s thoughts are mainly driven by the feeling that change will be disadvantageous, and that losing something makes us twice as miserable compared to the happiness experienced gaining the same thing. The status quo bias also posits that there’s a high tendency for humans to maintain things in their present form for fear of the uncertainty that comes with change. Corporate organisations also realise human beings, by nature, are averse to change, and that is why they don’t leave change management to the employees, but rather, they build the framework and drive it from the top, with the buy-in from the employees.

Nigerians are at liberty to misbehave, if they so wish, it is the responsibility of the appropriate institutions to check their excesses. The responsibility of deterrence is institutional. In 2015, local councils in the United Kingdom made PROFIT of 700 million British Pounds from parking fines alone. That is a civilised society in which we expect that most people will obey the common laws. If they made that much from parking fines, now imagine the chaos if the laws weren’t enforced.

In summary, I would enjoin those that come up with government-driven initiatives to at least have them backed by theory and history. It isn’t a crime not to be a great thinker, but it is criminal when we can’t replicate ideas that are commonplace. It, however, borders on stupidity when we try to turn common sense, supported by years of painstaking research and history, on its head and expect great result.

Olugbenga A. Olufeagba