As
little kids growing up in the village, anything or situations or
happenings that looked exotic, out of this world, difficult to
comprehend by our childish imagination or amazing to the point of
stupefaction, we kids used to call awonder or America Wonder. When we
got to the primary school, we were taught of the then Seven Wonders of
the Ancient World among which included the Hanging Garden of Babylon and
the Pyramids of Egypt.
In our country Nigeria, we have not
yet succeeded in building for ourselves or inheriting from our
ancestors, structures that can be considered wondrous. There are however
some things or learned behaviour or acquired traits (all of them
negative) which have proved so ruinous to the growth of our economy and
which have seemingly learnt to live with because they have so persisted
for so long in our country without any serious efforts to provide
solutions to them, that I have now elevated them to the same pedestal as
those things that can be considered amazing wonders. They may not be
man-made inventions of great genius or natural occurrences that stagger
the imagination, but they are destructive human foolishness of
incomprehensible proportion. No rational mind can understand some of
what we have allowed as a part of our national character especially in
our governance and administration. I have tried to identify them here in
no particular order or degree of foolishness.
Open taking of bribe by policemen:
Everybody in Nigeria, from the least person to the highest, knows that
bribery and corruption is what has kept the country where she is today-
at the very bottom. One manifestation of this national ill is the open
taking of bribe by policemen at checkpoints and in their stations. Each
time I see this open sore, I feel so ashamed of myself and my country.
Yet no one has thought it necessary to do something decisive to stop
this open national shame.
Whenever a new Inspector General of
Police is appointed, he will make some pious declaration about how he
will flush out ‘’the few bad eggs in the force who have soiled the image
of the police’’. He will proceed to announce the disbandment of road
blocks across the country ‘’with immediate effect’’.
Days after that announcement with
fanfare, several of the road blocks will remain in place with the police
still doing ‘their thing’ in open defiance of the IG. You will wonder
whether they police are trying to test the will of their new boss. And
yes that is precisely what they are doing. But no form of sanction will
be visited on those who defied a lawful order of the chief of law
enforcement officer in the country. After a while the road block police
will reluctantly abandon the logs of wood, tyres and other unsightly
odds and ends they have improvised as road blocks to engage in their
seemingly officially sanctioned open extortion of innocent and hapless
Nigerians of their hard earned money. Some fooled newspaper
editorialists will write editorial and some op-ed page stuff hailing the
new man and his ‘anti-corruption’ stance.
A few days later, roadblocks will come
back with a vengeance. Where they were two within five kilometres
before, they will now become three or four. More policemen will be
deployed to mount the road blocks and collect their usual toll with a
new commitment and ferociousness as if to compensate for the few days
loss of ‘’business’’ they suffered when their boss was trying to prove
that a new broom sweeps cleaner.
It is also an open secret known even
to children that many innocent citizens languish in police detention
cells across the country because they or their family members are unable
to raise money to obtain bail. Every IG says that bail is free but even
fools know that this is not true. Anything that gets you entangled with
the Nigerian police will cost you money to free yourself. Some
unfortunate citizens have spent more than a quarter of their lives in
unjust detention or deprivation of their freedom because of inability to
bribe the police. Heaven weeps every day for the kind of oppression the
system visits on some of its citizens.
Nigeria may be one of the most corrupt
countries on earth which is bad enough. But to exhibit the ill of
taking bribe in so open and flagrant a manner without even any
hypocritical official revulsion is indeed a great wonder to me. If we
have chosen to live a life of reproach can there not be some finesse or
sophistication to our own bad conduct? Can we not try at least to be
dignified even in doing a shameful thing? What is responsible for this
paralysis of will to do something about the police open bribe taking?
Open urination by Nigerian men: All
across my country, many Nigerians, especially men, stand and urinate in
full view of the public. Some even go further than that- they defecate. I
feel even more ashamed and angry at this national shame than I feel at
the open taking of bribe by policemen. Why is no one doing something
about this reproach which portrays us as uncivilised, uncultured and
indecent people who lack respect for their sense of dignity or
personhood?
Many times when I see men engage in
this act, I wish a mysterious, invisible cane with venomous stings would
descend from the sky and start caning such persons who demean my sex
and bring to shame my country. Why, I ask again, is nothing done to stop
this type of barbaric act? Are there no people of decent sensibility
wielding power in this country?
Too much concentration of power at the
centre: Among the elite, it is fairly well known that one of the
reasons why Nigeria is not developing fast enough is the lack of true
federalism in the running of our affairs. Too much power and resources
are concentrated in the Central government. Everyone who speaks on this
issue says that the thing is bad, very bad and that there is the urgent
need to devolve power and resources to the federating units. For once,
the Hausa-Fulani elite, the Ibo elite and the Yoruba elite who ‘own’
this country appear to have a consensus on this issue.
DailyTrust
