A society punished for aggregated wickedness
Does society gets punished, collectively, as a result of the aggregation of the wickedness that takes place inside it? That question can be put conversely thus: Does society flourish as a result of the goodness or uprightness of one man or, to borrow the title of that iconic movie, A Few Good Men?
Why do I put these questions forward? Well, this Nigerian society needs a lot of soul searching. It needs to ask itself some hard questions and must answer them satisfactorily to enable it have closure to a lot of things. We shall return to these questions later in this piece.
So, why is this society, full of greatness, yet so deprived of greatness? What is it that holds this society down, unable to fully take responsibility for its citizens in a robust way that would allow them proudly associate with it, whether they be in Birnin Kebbi, Isele Asagba, Abakaliki, Ede, Omu-aran, Gusau, Modakeke, Iragbiji, Karu, Okene, Orlu, Onitsha or Abijo? Why is it that the people of this society are failing to see that what is presented to them as huge, insurmountable challenges by their leaders are the kernel upon which successful leaders are recognised?
Our society is a fractured one, but we soldier on, nonetheless. How we manage to do that is not really far-fetched. You will find this unusual ability in what many have called the “resilience”, the “ebullience” of the proverbial average Nigerian.
If you live in a country like ours where government is so near, yet so far away, where local government has lost all the characteristics of locality, and the people are, therefore, forced to form their own governments – running personal governments, governments by families, governments by communities (what the Igbos call ummuna, a word and concept brought to the world forcefully by the legendary Chinua Achebe in his novels) – then you’ll understand all the sense that is made of the resilience and ebullience of the Nigerian.
The resilient and ebullient Nigerian, as governments appear distant, finds herself having to generate her own power, pave her own road to her house, provide quality education for her offspring, seek private medical care for herself and her family, among many other self-helps she has to resort to. Yet, it’s possible to make this happen without too much fuss. This obviously requires citizens working with their leaders, but more specifically, their leaders leading from the front on ideas, implementing and executing successfully soft touch programmes with great impact for a majority.
But you’ll find that it is in the fractured nature of our society that we seem to have lost our souls. How have we done this? Well, we have decided that majority of us, ignorant and mad, will give ourselves to be used by the elite to propagate and then profit from our fractured minds.
This majority, so unable to comprehensively harness its numbers to its benefits, empowers the elite to take advantage of the propaganda that tries to raise the fault lines of ethnicity, religion and language differences to a level beyond the proper understanding of the majority. God help us, because it doesn’t seem as if we are going to get out of this in three life times, if we continue to do nothing!
The ability of the elite to manipulate the majority to its benefit is at once traceable to what in some quarters has been described as the “foolishness of the majority”. This foolishness is the one that makes this majority to think that the appointment of an incompetent man or woman from our immediate ethnic, religious or language group is supposed to a bigger beneficial accrual to us than a competent man from whatever part of the country who will get the job done!
When are we going to be sensible enough to just let all this go? When are we going to learn that real progress is made when honest people, beholden only to delivering on tasks, devoid of bias but with a sense of purpose to do good by the many, are allowed to occupy positions of power and authority? Why do we allow ourselves to be blinded and, as a result, short-change ourselves because we allow the wrong-headed sentiments to cloud our sense of judgement? Or is it truly impossible for this society to take care of itself and its people? I doubt.
If this society has continued to be unable to take care of itself and its people (this would refer to a satisfactory approval by a wide majority of citizens about what they get from the society) would it be correct to say that besides the leadership question often raised as the major reason for the state that we are in, there could be something more sinister, something that is truly the result of an aggregation of the wickedness, perhaps greed related wickedness, of a larger number of citizens?
Are we being punished for something that is deeper than we are either ignorant of or something for which we have been playing the ostrich? If you are not facing the challenges that comes with living ordinarily, (by which I mean that you have conquered the basic needs of life (you can feed well, you can clothe well, you shelter well), would it not be correct to say that you actually do not care how goodness is spread across our society?
And if you face those challenges, do you not just concentrate on your own survival and as such care less about the general good of our society? Well, there is a counterfactual to those two questions, but the truth is that those who do not care or care little give the leeway for society to be as bad as it is.
But how much of wickedness can permeate society as to bring everybody into what you might call a curse? This is a society that is suffering from widespread wickedness, believe me! There is wide ranging wickedness that cuts across all strata of the society – class, religion, ethnic group – that is contributing to pulling this country down.
This widespread wickedness would include people who do not bat an eyelid when packing hampers at Christmas and other celebrations with expired products! Now, let’s trace how far reaching that act of wickedness can be. It’s not just the packing, but it’s important to ask who pushed such expired products to be accessed by the person who packed the hamper? You could consume it and die!
There’s wickedness exhibited in the sale of fake drugs that can kill people all because some people care little or nothing for their fellow citizens. There is wickedness exhibited by artisans who take money from you and do a hatchet man’s job and ruin your day, if not your life. There’s wickedness in taking pension money meant for Nigerian elders who have worked and retired, and then keeping same for and causing the death of innocent people.
There’s wickedness when, instead of appointing right people to positions, you deliberately appoint incompetent people who then go ahead to ruin the lives of people. When you aggregate these and numerous others, then it’s not difficult to see that here’s a country full of wicked people, but who need to do restitution so that forgiveness can commence and be able to help other people!
PHILLIP ISAKPA