In society
responsibility is customarily shared between
the people and the government. Responsibility is also implicit in social
contract which wards off anarchy. Going by this unconvoluted truism, it therefore
follows that the
blister-inflicting twine of irresponsibility too is tugged between the
government and the people. Irresponsibility is a shared lapse; a damnable
testament to people-government failure.
As a matter of fact,
everyone, that includes people in the saddle, go through the gestational stage
of socialisation,
after which parturition
of idiosyncrasies, bias, views, beliefs and predilections,
occurs. Indubitably, the role of society in
character formation is significant. Therefore, everyone is a sculpture of the
moulding of society.
Again, society is
people governed by traits of culture- progressive
or regressive. The dominant cultural aura or vibe of a given society determines to an extent the behavioural output and proclivities
of the people in that society. That is,
if corruption is a permissible cultural aberration, it becomes dominant among
other cultural deviations in the genome of that society. This is in no way a
sociological absolute, but a verifiable claim that can be exhumed from
comparatively examining peoples of different societies and their behaviours.
Hinging on this dialectical plank, it is therefore apt to aver that the
Nigerian leadership is a grotesque representation of the Nigerian people and society. The leadership is as bad as the
people. The anodyne expression, “you cannot give what you do not have” captures
picturesquely the Nigerian situation in this purview. Nigerian leaders are the
scions of Nigerian society. Their odious discharges are from the malodorous
miscarriages of the society they are born and forged in. Even those that are contaminated (in a good
way) by the la dolce vita and pheromones of the better world still carry albeit
regrettably, the Nigerian stink. This is not making an argument for the
lamentable ineptitude of Nigerian leaders; rather it is to espouse the logic
that the Nigerian leadership is a manikin of the Nigerian people and society. There is just no shade of difference
between the two- the Nigerian leadership and the people.
Both the Nigerian
leadership and the Nigerian people bear the ignominy of culpability in driving
the country to the Paleolithic precipice. Inter alia, what is more sickening is
the discomforting fact that none in the enterprise of running Nigeria aground
takes responsibility for its irresponsibility. The Nigerian leadership indiscriminately throws
blame at past governments and obverse groups; the Nigerian people in turn see the distant
Nigerian leadership as the provenance of their
woes, thus they blame
it for even fiddling discomforts
such as the angry army of mosquitoes that torpedoes them in their sleep at
night and the sour taste of balls of
"kwuli-kwuli" in their mouths.
In the same
symmetrical logic, not taking responsibility for actions,
inactions, situations, problems, and faults
seems to be in the Nigerian genome. To illustrate this, some Nigerian parents
take pugilism to their children’s school with the
uncouth aim of battering their teachers for failing them. They
induct their children into the “hallowed hall of irresponsibility” at a nascent
age by wittingly or unwittingly encouraging them not to take responsibility for
their failures and actions.
There must always be someone or something to blame.
In the same vein,
when such
children from “molly-coddled” homes fail in WAEC, their parents become their feisty advocates, barking to all who care to listen to
their racket that their children have been robbed of their true
results or failed unfairly by WAEC; You hear,
" WAEC sold my son's result". This is usually against the back drop of
dereliction of study and laziness of their children. The same thing happens
when they fail in JAMB.
The excuse is usually that JAMB is corrupt, and that they have been
marginalised for the sheer reason that they are not from a
particular part the country. So
it is when they are finally at higher institutions. The excuse for their
failures in this case is that their lecturers are victimising them because of
their relationship with some “fine girls” that the lecturers too are “eyeing”.
And so the tradition of not taking responsibility for their irresponsibility
progresses to points of rude disregard for ideals of excellence, hard work, discipline and performance.
As pointed out
tangentially earlier, the Nigerian leadership and the Nigerian people share
morsels of garbage
from the entrée of irresponsibility. The irresponsibility of the Nigerian
people is visible in the corruption of the most unlikely person of the rabble, plebian malfeasance, celebrated
ignorance, denuded scruples, unabashed disrespect for simple rules and
regulations, veiled peccadilloes,
and the culture of low expectation according to Okey Ndibe. In fact, to be
ignorant of fundamental rights; to
stand and defend those rights, and to have high expectations of the government
smack of gross irresponsibility on the part of the Nigerian people. On the
other hand, irresponsibility of the Nigerian leadership needs no adumbration.
It is evident in the insalubrious
and gangrenous state of the nation. The Nigerian leadership here implies all
the governments that have failed to give Nigeria the elixir of even marginal
development.
Having drawn the
Nigerian leadership and people irresponsibility quadrant, it is germane to etch
in the minds of Nigerians the need for the evolution of a new thinking; a thinking that the
Nigerian leadership mirrors them. They are as good as the leadership and they are as bad as the leadership. Therefore
corrective, surgical operations must be performed on the national body to
remove the decayed arm of irresponsibility; that is by taking responsibility
for their
individual and collective predicaments
and finding solutions
to them.
Finally, Nigerians are fighting multidimensional battles
which coalesce into a single
armageddon-like war; they need to join hands to form a giant
fist to deal it a coup-de-grace. In all, the
country's quandary proves emphatically that irresponsible people beget
irresponsible leadership.
GlobalReportersVienna
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