Ladies and Gentlemen, our life as individuals in our various worlds are built around our immediate environments culture. Subsequent macro-environments that by nature of an indirect influence, have a more telling, determining force in our personal outcomes. .
Our existence in these environments are fundamental in forming our characters, behaviours and outlook. When these environments are summed up, our societies are formed.
The unique attributes of the individuals in a society form the general description of that society. The manner the environment has conditioned the people determines their response (s) to the environment, to others in similar cells of societies and to life in itself. These behaviours shape the culture of the society in collaboration with other subjects of man’s existence in the form of religion, food, clothing and even geographical nature of the location where the individuals are.
Every day, that society determines how our lives will be whether we know it or not. I will ask that you follow me through an excursion of how the Nigerian society determines the daily nature of its people and actually entraps them.
Having said the above, we go to bed daily ,either in a pool of darkness or more often than not in a generator powered ambience that is for the average Nigerian, a sign that he is comfortable (middle class determinant provided it is not ”I better pass my neighbor”). You have to either stand in a queue to buy the fuel (petrol or diesel) to power the generator and because you have a container (jerry-can in the local parlance), you will need to “pay” the fuel station manager and the fuel attendant so they can fill the “jerry-can” which our authorities have banned from being used to collect fuel (without providing an alternative or solving the energy needs). Failing to do this, will doom you to a night of darkness at the mercy of mosquitoes who will visit you because the sewer (gutter in local parlance) is congested and the bushes around have not been cleared. If you open windows to save yourself from being baked from poor ventilation, a combination of the stench from the sewer and that hanging environment defining stench from the local waste disposal heap will help lull you to sleep (and this is assuming your nose gets used to it and your lungs last long enough to take the stench). As they make their entrance, your prayers are that night marauders ( armed robbers) do not follow the stench in. But hunger will drive those who have not eaten out so as they prowl, you have a village or estate or neighborhood or street “meeting” and set-up a local vigilante service who will now do a better job than the police (who your tax has paid for) would do.
Ladies and Gentlemen, are you counting?
We wake up from slumber and know that we must get to work (for those who have jobs – millions are underemployed but are still termed employed and they live with the attendant psychological dents and effects of it thus living with fragile self-esteems).
The journey to work is in itself fraught with its own drama. From buses(NURTW) with their staff (drivers, conductors/tail boys and touts) littered along the road, to commercial motorcyclists aka “okada”or “achaba”,no safety precaution is taken, the vehicles have no insurance policies and they set off; poorly maintained if maintained at all. The routine is the same, at each leg of the journey, police, government traffic management agencies and other sundry units that can get some form of uniform put together, collect their tolls for onward transmission up the chain for favorable posting. The extortion racket, ladies and gentlemen, is official. When Mr. Okadaman or Bus driver parts with a percentage of his fare, he cuts corners, breaks safety rules so he can make more money for the day and causes traffic offences which naturally lead to congestions on the road. The congestions make the other private users of the road get very inventive so they in turn, commit their own offences, whilst the traffic management agencies of government will stand there, not to manage the traffic and ensure they are no congestions but to see who will flout the law and pay them, otherwise “they will take you to their office”.
The man who survives all this gets to work and works hard, so hard the forefathers wonder whether he has gone crazy but because his tribe is not what the government has quota for promotion, he has to wait until others ahead of him from his tribe either die off or retire. He then sees less competent people become his bosses, so he figures he would probably not get to the position that will assure him of a decent retirement so he takes the next best offer – starts making money from the “side”; because of the government policy of federal character and the lack of social safety nets especially for pensioners, he plunges into the murky waters of under-hand deals.
Who do we blame now? For every effect, there is an equal cause or worse. If you doubt it, ask the man who sleeps under the bridge with his family because he doesn’t have a job and can’t pay house rent in advance.
If you doubt it, ask the farmer who has to harvest fingers of cassava and yam that will barely feed his family because he can’t afford to pay the bribe that ensures he gets fertilizer.
Ask the woman who has to sell her body to get a job even though her qualifications are ordinarily sufficient and her performance at the interview came out excellent.
Ask the civil or public servant who is being owed months of salary in arrears because the governor kept the salary in a fixed deposit account to make extra money or spent the money for elections. Or maybe the governor had to pay lawyers defending his election cases and pay off some godfather or worse …to pay for the upkeep of his epicurean lifestyle complete with a house in the Western World or Near East and his harem of mistresses.
Call it callousness or lack of societal values or the anonymous monstrosity we foist on ourselves unknowingly, our society conspires against its own.
We birth circumstances that lends others to commit crimes and we come back to castigate the level of criminality, corruption, joblessness and government ineptitude. The next time you come across that errant bus driver, ask yourself what you have contributed to make him what he is. Ask yourself the same when you see the man under the bridge or the man looking to bribe the traffic officer and get home or the lady by the dark street corner or the man trying to illegally connect his household to public power supply.
I believe when we sufficiently ask ourselves the right question consistently, our answer will be – we conspired to do this to ourselves.
I pray we conspire to undo this to ourselves.
Before it is too late.