Through the glass darkly

Through the glass darkly

By Tunji Lardner

Lately I have been having this recurring vision that it is at once intriguing as it is disturbing. Now given the peculiar Nigerian interpretation of the word, I am compelled to preemptively quash any cynical retort about my ‘seeing visions,’ I must quickly add this disclaimer, ‘no hallucinogen and or religious epiphany were used in the production of this vision.’  There, as I was saying, in the vision I am on the second floor a house, peering through a square and clear glass window, twice bisected and thus framing the window into a quadrant of four neat squares. It is invariably dawn with the Sun rising and steadily brightening the vistas I see as I peer in wonderment through the glass brightly.

I see a wonderful land, lush and verdant, like an idyllic savannah, with wonderful and happy people purposefully  tilling the land, growing things, making things, building things and all harmoniously working together to build something in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This green paradise stretching far into the horizon and capped at the furthest point by bright luminous white clouds, with just a hint of azure skies in the background, immediately conjures up something familiar in my altered state of consciousness. Even as I struggle to make immediate sense of this green and white montage, the beguiling beauty of this landscape holds me spell bound; I look again in bold arcs of looking, taking in the view and tracing it right back, it seems, to my door steps. I look again at what should be my very own garden and I see the fractal geometry of this beautiful land fully replicated in my own backyard, suggesting that it is within reach, literally at my own doorsteps.

I immediately race down the stairs and in two bounds I am on the ground floor, pivoting on the balls of my left foot and making a sharp right, arms out stretched reaching for the door handle. I yank the door open to be confronted by something not all together unexpected, familiar even; as I taken in the sight I shake my head in amazement. What lay before me was a dank, grim and dysfunctional nightmare. I saw people suffering and shackled by their own fears, greed, violence, cowardice and deceptions, sloshing through the excrement of their own making, crying no, howling for someone, anyone, to save them, even though they could save themselves, if only they chose to. I quickly shut the door on this self-inflicted nightmarish hell on earth that I strangely felt was co-created by my own complaisance and the willful complicity of tens of millions of others.

I dejectedly make my way up the stairs and back to the window.  I hazard another furtive peek at the window and there it was again, that marvelous vision of a country in which everything worked in consonance and concert for the greater good.  As I take in the beautiful green horizon that lay boundless in front of me, the significance of the green and white motif hits me. This is Nigeria, or more realistically this is what Nigeria could be. I especially look sharply downwards to my own garden and again, I see my own backyard as being part of this greater whole, and I am tempted to again rush downstairs to frolick in my garden and partake in the collective of this joyful celebration of a purposeful, orderly and productive life, but I restrain myself.  I know what lies in my garden, Nigeria today.

As I scratch my head in bemusement, I wonder aloud about these two different realities.  The one the utopian vision of a country that has been endowed with everything it needs to be a successful global leader, and the other, the dystopian reality it has created and seems determined to sustain.  Lost in my thoughts, I gaze through this window, trying to reconcile these two phenomena, the illusions of greatness and the reality of mediocrity. What is the common denominator in this puzzle, then as my eyes pull back from staring at the horizon, I took a step back and actually looked at the window. Suddenly it struck me as I respectively trained my sight to look intently at the squares from the top right quadrant right through to the bottom left quadrant. It was the people. It is the people that can make the difference.

To fully share this vision, I want you to look in your mind’s eye and imagine that you are looking at the window and there are four contiguous squares that make up that framework of the window and each square that you see is a quadrant. You see them? Good. Now imagine with me as I seek to populate the quadrants with the type of people I saw in the vision.

The top left quadrant These are the ruling elite comprising mostly of the beneficiaries of the Military-Political Complex that capture the state in 1966, and have since then been rapaciously plundering the common wealth and deliberately impoverishing their own people to maintain this dysfunctional and unsustainable status quo. This band of thieves is composed of the direct inheritors of Nigeria’s political independence whose predation started almost immediately after the Union Jack was lowered on the 1^st of October, 1960. This group comprises of three main classes, the military-having fought to ‘keep Nigeria one’ regard the wealth of the nation as war booty to be shared according to their whims, the civil servants and other apparatchiks of the state for whom the workings of government is simply a toll gate to extract bribes and rent for every transaction or contract that they care to implement, ostensibly for the good of the commonwealth, and the politicians comprising professional political operators and other assignees from the two previous groups that collectively sustain the graft and patronage machine, much to the detriment of the common good.  These kleptocrats know that the jig is up, and that after five decades of unrestrained pillaging, the Nigerian state is danger of collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, but can’t stop stealing. It is too easy, and besides the odds of you being brought to justice is virtually zero. The present crop of brigands know that they are riding the tiger but are too afraid to dismount for fear of been eaten. The group numbering no more than 5% (five percent)t of the population have access to over 80% (eighty percent) of its wealth and are fully replicated at both the federal , state, and local governments of this country. Their educational attainment ranges from the barely literate, to the well educated, nonetheless they have found common ground in grand larceny and effectively they are ‘our ogas at the top.’

The top right quadrant This group is roughly the traditional middle class of Nigerians whose membership in the fluid and uncertain dynamics of Nigerian class formation is constantly changing with each regime. They owe their class ascendency by virtue of their kinship and proximity to the ruling elite in the aforementioned top left quadrant. They are the educated professionals in the main, but depend on the patronage machine to successfully ply their trade.  When called upon, they migrate seamlessly and sideways into the left quadrant, and once there, fight doggedly to remain in that space. For the rest of them, they wait with anxious anticipation for ‘their turn’ to feed at the trough. For this middling class, their constant complaint about the system without any real resolve to make the necessary sacrifices for real transformational change had come to define the nation’s character. This group has created a country where its potential leaders are too cynical, afraid and self-absorbed to fully understand the dynamics of its own extinction. For them salvation lies mostly in the ‘divine intervention’ that hopefully will nudge them sideways into the state subsidized creature comforts of life in the top left quadrant. Even though they frequently travel internationally to see and enjoy the results of other nation’s sacrifice, planning and hard work, their deluded sense of ‘Nigeria’s exceptionalism,’ and their inherent laziness and habituated value system of expecting reward and benefits without any real or meaningful effort or production,  means that they cannot and will not change the system for the better. And although they worry about the diminishing horizons for themselves and their families, they are immobilized by fear, uncertainties and doubt to mount a sustained campaign to transform their country. They constitute perhaps 20% (twenty percent) of the population and are fully represented at all levels of the body politic.

The bottom left quadrants This group is the potential creators of a utopian Nigeria, or more realistically a new Nigeria. They are drawn from all quadrants and exist in and out of Nigeria. And with the return in increasing numbers of members of the Diaspora, there exists the prospects of the formation of a new middle class with considerable intellectual and financial capital to deploy in a last ditched attempt to salvage Nigeria before it collapses. What they presently lack is the social capital to successfully organize to occupy the top left quadrant. This group is the brain trust of the nation and it is staffed by creative and innovative Nigerians who have the technical skills as well as the right moral attitude to bring the much needed change in the country. However, they are viewed with suspicion by the people in the top right quadrant who don’t want anyone to ‘rock the boat’ or in that peculiar Nigerian expression ‘heat up the polity,’ because any potential change of the system could possibly dislodge them from their positions in line for feeding at the trough. The sentiments from the top right quadrant is even more sinister, they do not want these potential change agents anywhere near their quadrant, so they invariably deploy their strategy of the three ‘Cs:’ conscription, cooption and finally coercion to neutralize them.  In spite of these threats, an increasing number of Nigerians from all quadrants are looking to this group for answers. They constitute perhaps less than 5% (five percent) of the population.

The bottom right quadrant The actions of this group over the next decade will determine if Nigeria survives as a nation. This is the largest demographic unit and comprises the over 70% (seventy percent) of Nigerians who are under the age of 30 (thirty) and not so coincidentally, the 70% (seventy percent) of Nigerians who are living below the poverty line. So as you look more closely at this quadrant, you do the math.  If 70% (seventy percent) of your population is  at once young and poor, living on the marginalized edge of destitution, disease, ignorance and hopelessness, then by proportionate extrapolation, your country Nigeria, is a rich country full of poor people. Furthermore, this ‘poverty tribe’ contrary to the usual ethnic classifications is the largest tribe in Nigeria. The poverty tribe in reality cuts across the broad demographics and ethnicities, whilst mostly hidden from view in our rural villages, in the large urban cities, we still see glimpse of this growing tribe every day in our streets, begging, hustling, stealing and trying to eke out a miserable living under the hot tropical sun. This group does not really care about the preservation of this system or political order, because the system historically has not cared for them. Even so, they are acutely aware of their privations and ceaseless hardships against a backdrop of the relative comforts and affluence of the other three quadrants and they are angry, very angry. We must recognize that we are all sitting on a tinderbox perched atop an oil drum of explosives and that this group will have no hesitation whatsoever to one day in fit of blind rage light the fuse.  They really have nothing invested in the system because the system has invested nothing in them, and therefore they have nothing to lose if the whole place goes up in flames.  As you read this, consider that you also might be collateral damage if this scenario ever plays out fully.

So, which quadrant or quadrants do you belong to?

Comments can be sent to:    me.tlardner@gmail.com

My Oga at the top Redux

My Oga at the top Redux

By Tunji Lardner

Poor guy; Obafaiye Shem, the Lagos State Commandant of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corp (NSCDC) , whose meteoric rise to digital media fame on account of a truly comical interview on Nigeria’s Channel TV must rue day he stuttered the words ‘my oga at the top.’  In a truly classic display of evasion in the face of pointed questioning and craven obsequiousness to his Oga at the top, jabbing his fore finger heaven wards, he unwittingly created an Internet phenomena, even as he spawned an instant cultural meme and wrote his words forever into the Nigerian urban lexicon.  The full story of the actual scandal he was ineptly trying to explain away and the extent of this viral contagion can be explored further in the links below:

THE ISSUE

Scandal Reports and the background:

August 25, 2012

http://bit.ly/Z3mWtS

February 17, 2012

http://bit.ly/Z3mMD1

Senate investigation:

http://dailytimes.com.ng/article/federal-ministry-interior-denounces-illegal-websites

Consider that the Lagos State Commandant of the NSCDC has a Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/obafaiye.shemsunday

The Channels Interview (a snippet):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=F9ZV8pfJS34

THE MEME

Website:

http://www.ogaatthetop.com/ (Under construction already!)

http://www.myogaatthetop.com/ (Domain name speculators)

Facebook pages:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/My-Oga-At-The-Top/173989725978821?ref=stream

http://www.facebook.com/MyOgaAtTheT0p

http://www.facebook.com/pages/My-Oga-At-The-Top/476038165784454

http://www.facebook.com/pages/My-oga-at-the-top/250967005040123

http://www.facebook.com/groups/436185913134057/

T-shirts:

http://on.fb.me/XNJ7sp

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151375129029480&set=a.387409149479.163184.703289479&type=1&theater

Music Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gCFZMPbReQ&feature=share

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0MeZbdDHkU

To some readers an explanation of the meaning of the word ‘meme’ might be necessary.

Meme [meem] noun: a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes. In the digital world, this cultural item can go ‘viral’ as was the case here. Now, the meaning of the word ‘oga’ so familiar with Nigerians and other Africans as a distinctly Nigerian cultural trope requires some effort. The easiest transliteration is to equate ‘Oga’ with the boss, the big kahuna, the capo, the master, the big shot, the shot caller, de man, (as in ‘he de man’), you get the idea. Another variant is the ‘Oga pata-pata,’ as in the Boss of all bosses, or as my Sicilian friends would say ‘Capo de tutti capi’ a.k.a. The Godfather.

It is a safe bet to assume that when Commandant Shem was referring to his ‘Oga’ at the top, he was referring to the personage of  Dr. Ade Abolurin the Commandant General of the NSCDC ensconced like most other ‘ogas’ in that most hierarchical of cities, Abuja, where our own boss of all bosses, the President  resides. In sticking to the time honored script of publicly pledging loyalty and fealty to his immediate ‘oga’ on the hierarchical and mostly patriarchal totem pole, Shem was simply delegating upwards the task of revealing his agency’s web address, ordinarily a fact that should reside in the public domain. However his conditioning like most public servants was not to advance the public good, but to propitiate the gods of the civil service and damn the public’s right to know.

However in this rare instance, the public’s right, specifically the digital public’s right to know pushed back hard. In unwittingly creating Nigeria’s first real digital meme, Shem’s ‘my oga at the top’ faux pas, was in actuality the collision of an analogue thinking monolith with a digital generation whose domain the World Wide Web.  Shem and his numerous ‘ogas’ will have reasons to fear in the near future if these digital natives push home their advantage on all fronts to bring thieving politicians, inept and corrupt civil servants and irresponsible governments  to  heel to the tenets of open, transparent and accountable governance.

It was also a battle between the rigid, mafia like hierarchies where all knowledge is deemed to reside in the mounting stacks of different ‘ogas’ embedded in the civil service machinery and the newly evolving paradigm of flatten inclusive hierarchies of distributed knowledge and participation in which the collective wisdom and input of all stakeholders are deemed necessary for successful decision making as well as successful outcomes, in a word good governance.

The relentless social media parodies about ‘my oga at the top’ also signals the digital unmasking of the analogue Nigerian ‘big man-oga’ masquerade in the digital public square. For too long the myth of the invincibility of the Nigerian ‘big man’ and by extension that bogus self referenced titled of being ‘The Giant of Africa,’ has gone unchallenged in spite of  the declining quality of life for most Nigerians over the last five decades.  I would argue that to understand the Nigerian ‘oga’ mythos is to delve into the pre-colonial patriarchal system that existed in most indigenous cultures, which eventually evolved in the post-independence era into the African ‘big man’ archetype; the one man that kept fractious tribal sentiments in check, even as he, perforce of his personal strength, wisdom and political acumen kept these fledging states together. A critical look at the very mixed legacies of the various African Big men since independence suggests that they wound up doing more harm than good to their various countries. Even so, in Nigeria today the ‘oga syndrome’ persists in spite of all evidence to the contrary, he or she is typically an insecure but powerful office holder or authority figure, lacking in humility and compassion, more style than substance, and the benefactor of the grand patronage machine of the state. The technical word for this client-patron relationship is ‘clientelism,’ and its popular manifestation is the asymmetric power arrangement between ‘political god-fathers’ who are patrons to clients, who can be political aspirants, or simply  down trodden unemployed young Nigerians, desperately seeking  jobs, as was the case in the NSCDC fiasco. Since it can be safely argued that most big men or ‘ogas’ got to where they are today, not on account of merit, but  by simply riding the patronage machine  to the very top of their incompetence, the net negative result for us all is the triumph of mediocrity over meritocracy.  

Femke van Zeijl, a very insightful Dutch writer living in Nigeria put it so bluntly and so clearly when she wrote that; “ Nigeria is the opposite of a meritocracy: you do not earn by achieving. You get to be who and where you are by knowing the right people. Whether you work in an office, for an enterprise or an NGO, at a construction site or in government, your abilities hardly ever are the reason you got there. Performing well, let alone with excellence, is not a requirement, in fact, it is discouraged. It would be too threatening: showing you’re more intelligent, capable or competent than the ‘oga at the top’ (who, as a rule, is not an overachiever either) is career suicide. It is an attitude that trickles down from the very top, its symptoms eventually showing up in all of society, from bad governance to bad service to bad craftsmanship.”

In trying to think of a way out of this infinite regressive loop of mediocrity, while the logical place to start should be the very top with our ‘uber-oga,’ our own ‘capo di tutti capi,’ or more colloquially, our ‘Oga pata-pata,’ Nigeria again defies conventional logic. As it is, we can’t presently start from the very top to begin to change things, because it seems that our ‘oga at the very top’ also reports to his own ‘ogas at the top.’ ‘Das all.’

Comments can be sent to:    me.tlardner@gmail.com

Why I write

Why I write

Since I fired my warning shot across the bow last week, announcing through this medium that I would resume this risky business of writing a weekly column, I have been giving the whole idea a second and even a third thought.  You see this for me is like déjà vu, all over again. I somehow feel compelled to offer a tepid apology to all for firing that first shot; beating a hasty retreat into the familiar confines of my vacuous mind, and then carrying on as if nothing happened.

Having withdrawn from the Nigerian journalism space over twenty-five years ago (most Nigerians weren’t born then), you can empathize with me over this groggy sense of dread and trepidation that happens when you are suddenly jolted awake in a strange place, and this is a strange place. The only comfort so far has been the handful of congratulatory messages from my old time friends and some new ones encouraging me to  ‘keep the ink flowing.’ The responses have been in the main good, save one from the ever cynical Sonala Olumhense, himself a long in the tooth columnist for this paper. 

“Congrats. Excellent start. The key will be whether or not you are willing to dedicate time to think deeply before each one in the months and months ahead. Then and only then will the quality be sustained and raised. Happy you are doing this. Well done” One of them sagely advised.

Another one issued a shrill note of warning. “Beware all ye men of fragile character for he shall jab you here, gouge you there and excoriate you everywhere. He shall give no succor and plead for none. Long may his ink flow.”

 And then my cynical friend intones “Please join me in congratulating Tunji for finally finding his pen.  Some of us have tried to help him, almost forever, in the  search for it. But misery loves company, the self-same Tunji always says, every other cognac sip.  I welcome him to the land of frustration.  I hope he does not conveniently lose his pen again by Easter. Welcome, son.  Yes, your past awaits, the misery complicated by lost youth and ageless indigestion.”

Buoyed by these words of encouragement, I am now embolden to explain ‘why I write,’ instead of the lukewarm excuse previously offered. Even so, I am still somewhat self conscious, at least in my mind about the inevitable comparisons between the ‘Tunji Lardner jnr ’of perhaps thirty years ago and the hoary, ornery, and irascible geezer he has become.

 Recently I was sifting through the compilations of opinions and essays that I wrote three decades ago, and I was startled by two things. The first shock was the realization that I could never write like that again. I marvelled at the self assuredness of youth; the pointed inquisitions of any and everybody, the lightening rapier thrusts at goons in power, the monochromic clarity of my vision of the world, always laid bare in stark black and white relief, the moral certitude of my positions all driven by an unquenchable fire in the belly.

These days, the fire still occasionally rages in my rotund belly, but I have over the years been able to pinpoint its source as any one of three things acting alone or in concert; indigestion, constipation or flatulence.  My rapier sharp thrusts have over the years been blunted by the slow and steady abrasions of life’s experiences sand-papering  the serrated edges and bevelling its point into a rounded burnished finish-still sharp, but not pointed, better suited for slashing. The monochromic black and white contrasts of moral issues that were so clear in my youth have alas ceded ground not to a Technicolor view of the world, but the greyscales of relativism. I now see life in way more than fifty shades of grey. I have come to humbly embrace the uncertainties of wisdom, or perhaps the wisdom of uncertainties in fully acknowledging that the more I know, the more I know that I do not know. Or as Buddha puts it ‘true wisdom humbles.’ But even so, you can still expect to see flashes of the old Tunji in the new.

Yes, I expect the usual complaints about not writing for the ‘common man’ or for ‘ordinary people,’ to which my response is that at this point of my life, I prefer to deal with only uncommon and extra-ordinary people. There will be no pandering to the least common denominator, because while my ‘fight’ as it were is to prod the system into lifting from poverty the over 70% of Nigerians living in near destitution, I hope to speak directly to the perhaps 20% of literate Nigerians who can help make a difference.

 And yes, you might have to reach for a dictionary now and again, so I suggest that you also take an aspirin tablet whilst you are at it. Like the old Tunji, this new but old version will still arrogate the universal poetic licence to write about anything from quantum entanglement to local politics and everything in between hopefully for the entertainment and edification of my readers... all twelve of you.

 The second shocking and even more disturbing fact is that Nigeria more or less has changed little in the intervening decades. Indeed some of the people I was railing against as a young man are the same people I see in still pulling the levers of state and dominating the newspaper headlines today. It seems that in Nigeria, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

This leaves me with no options than to rail some more. However this time, I hope to educate, guide, persuade and influence the cadences of our national dialogue, especially among young people. I especially want to challenge the orthodoxy of the prevailing narrative about Nigeria, prompt new debates, stimulate new thinking that will hopefully galvanize positive action. Given our fractious nature and the present fragility of this divided country, I am not sure I will succeed, however it is my hope that by casting some empirical light on vexing national issues, explaining them, and persuading the reader to come to a place of enlightened self interest, we might be able to speak truth to power and make rational and informed decisions about whom we choose to lead us going forward and how we want our country to truly develop.

Why I write? Well, the truth is that this is also for my own catharsis. With a million ideas constantly ricocheting inside my capacious head (capacious because it is mostly empty) I find that the act of concentrating my thoughts and writing frequently about them helps to hold my brain in place so that when I shake my head you don’t hear my brain rattle. This is why I write.

I beg your pardon

I beg your pardon

By Tunji Lardner

This time, not even the fig leaf of hiding behind the National Council of State could morally justify and mollify public opinion about the decision of President Goodluck Jonathan to especially pardon his self described ‘boss and mentor’ the former governor of Bayelsa state Diepreye Alamieyeseigha. While embedding this egregious pardon in the cynical calculus of Nigeria’s ethic representational politics; a spineless ex-general here, a thieving bank manager there, one or two dead politicians sprinkled in for good measure to tote up the numbers for the arithmetic of national character, and as it turns out, even in this act of magnanimity he got his sums wrong. Three of those pardoned had already been pardoned before by another head of state. It is therefore crystal clear that the intentionality of President Jonathan was to free and rehabilitate Alamieyeseigha; possibly in preparation for his run in 2015.

It is also clear that he was, as is increasingly the case, playing to his South-South constituency gallery, while willing to sacrifice the larger Nigerian sensibilities and concerns about our international standing regarding the almost mythical fight against corruption. No surprise here really, like most Nigerian politicians, his parochial nativist instincts trumps National interests every time, and besides, he after all has publicly told us that he does ‘not give a damn’ about what we really think of him and his governance. So as his voluble and gratingly meretricious spokesman Doyin Okupe said directly quoting the president ‘that this is an action that has been taken by the National Council of States and I have no apology for that.’  

But what is to be said about our National Council of State, our own secular conclave of elders, the Nation’s pre-eminent congregation of leaders comprising the President, the Vice President, all former Presidents, all former Chief Justices of the Federation, the leadership of the National Assembly and all state governors. Indeed our national constitution stipulates that the Council of State is established under Section 153 of the Constitution. In the Third Schedule, it is stated that: “The Council shall have power to (a) advice the President in the exercise of his powers with respect to the – (ii) prerogative of mercy.”

 In the best of times this august body represents the collective embodiment of our values, ethics and morality as a nation-the gathering of the wisest men in all of Nigeria- what advice did they give Mr. President on this issue?  Granted that this enquiry is now moot and the question rhetorical; it none the less raises some very vexing issues about the moral bankruptcy of our present political elite.

In unanimously granting a cross-dressing felon like Diepreye Alamieyeseigha a presidential pardon, the council of state was taking care of one of their own, in him they respectively recognized a fellow wayfarer on that tortuous road to the destruction of Nigeria, and so their collective act of esprit d corps in the warped logic of national politics to date is perfectly understandable. There is after all honor amongst thieves, and in this instance, thieves of all political stripes.

However, what about the rest of us?  How does this explain the sociology of our corruption and our own collective reluctance to criminalize  and punish corrupt practices by establishing a rules based, legal, rational, fair and equitable justice system that ensures that if your do the crime, you will do the time. What does it say about great amoral wall we have collectively built (and maintained) between our private ethics and our public morality? What does it say about our willful ignorance and denial about tremendous opportunity cost of the grand theft ($400billion by some estimates) by our leaders since 1960?

What does it say that increasingly we are degenerating into a country where the usual societal disapprobation of shame and or guilt can no longer modify behavior? What does it say about our collective complicity in allowing this audacious act of state impunity to happen, with absolutely no fear of retribution? Above all else, what does it say that we as a nation have lost that collective sense of treason- treason for the avoidance of doubt, defined as ‘a violation of allegiance to one’s state or the betrayal of trust or confidence’ by engaging in acts injurious to the collective well being of the state to which one bears allegiance. By this definition it seems we are all guilty in varying degrees of co-creating this treacherous state of affairs.

With all the organs of state fully represented in executing this pardon, we can formally and without equivocation state that Nigeria as a country represented by its ‘democratically’ elected leaders has lost its moral bearings and the ship of state is unmoored and drifting in its own self created sea of anomie. We are all in a leaking ship, in dire straits, piloted by a Captain lost in the fog of his own confusion and heading for the rocks. Contrary to what the apologists might say, it is not the hard technical numbers about GDP growth and other economic indices that guarantee that nations thrive and continue to evolve; it is their collective sense of identity as a nation, their binding set of values, their body of laws and their collective moral codes and their clear consensus about what is good and what is bad, and their collective will to insist that their represented leaders always seek to do the public good, and punish them if they do the bad.  

Not so in this case, to fully understand our relationship with our ruling elite, we sadly must again turn to the president’s mouth piece and alter ego, Doyin Okupe, who rationalized the issue thusly, “It is like a parent, it is not every decision a parent takes that is palatable or acceptable to the children. But in due course, we always find out the parents were right,” His condescending characterization of Nigerians as children bound to obey the decision of their parent, in this instance, Mr. President and the council, while galling, actually speaks to a larger truth.

 Nigerians over the last five decades and especially since 1999 have allowed themselves to be infantilized by the political elite. In truth, we all are members of a large fractious and thoroughly dysfunctional family headed by immature, venal, abusive, violent, and untrustworthy parents who prefer the ‘do as I say, and not as I do’ style of parenting. A trait compounded by years of military misrule and our own lax moral values. We can pardon our leaders and not seek to hold them accountable, because we (the children) ourselves are always exonerating our respective bad behavior and do not want to be held accountable for anything. In this Nigerian family, any and everything goes, you are encouraged to behave badly, because everyone is doing the same and can statistically be assured with getting away with it.

 In the same way it can be argued that a nation gets the leaders it deserves, we can also make the case that the children of this grotesque family definitely have the parents they deserve. Our parents are right to expect that again in this instance, we will throw our typical juvenile tantrums, cry out in disgust, stomp our feet in muted rage, even fling a few toys, but in the end we will return to our humdrum sedated selves busying ourselves with the ever grinding business of life in Nigeria.

But I do beg your pardon sir… I find the decision unacceptable and unpalatable as well as wrong in its entirety.

Comments can be sent to:    me.tlardner@gmail.com

The Age of Consequence

I think a short explanation is necessary here. Well... I have started a weekly Sunday column at the Guardian in Nigeria, and here are the articles written so far, starting with this one. There!

THE AGE OF CONSEQUENCE

By Tunji Lardner

“They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.”  Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger.  The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close.  In its place we are entering a period of consequences”.  We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now”

Winston Churchill, November 12, 1936

The inimitable Winston Churchill made these remarks when speaking to journalists about the impending war in Europe. Against the ominous backdrop of Hitler’s sabre rattling, he was issuing a dire warning about the inevitability of the Second World War amidst the dithering, ill prepared, fractious, frightened and collective impotence of what was to evolve to become the Allied Forces in the European theatre.

His powerful words, expressing the ‘strange paradox’ of a wilful decision to be indecisive, irresolute, unmoored, liquefied and impotent; this might very well describe the collective state of the Nigerian psyche today.  Since last year’s fuel subsidy ‘wahala,’ there is a growing consensus among the chattering class that Nigeria is a very fragile state heading in absolutely the wrong direction. While the reasons adduced for this dangerous trajectory are as varied and as vapid as the respective commentator, it is clear that ‘something is rotten in the state of Nigeria.’

The prevailing zeitgeist is one of a limited national horizon as a viable and stable political entity and a severely circumscribed future for the tens of millions of young people under the age of thirty, by some estimates perhaps 110 million out of a population now adjusted upwards to 170 million frustrated citizens. Nigeria has run out of excuses for its failures, and ‘the era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays’ is truly over we are fully in it, we are in the ruthless grip of historical causalities, we are all, regardless of culpabilities in the age of consequences.

If we consider the past as prologue-meaning that our history has determined where we are today, we all must bear graduated responsibilities over the last five decades for taking what was once a promising nation and turning it into a failed state. While, I must concede that most of the damage to Nigeria was wrought by the ‘Military-Political Complex,’ still well and alive today, thank you very much, a substantial amount of blame must lie with succeeding generations whose collective apathy and inertia, all but guarantees that their future is permanently held hostage by the past. A past they can reasonably argue, they had no hand in shaping. However, that’s exactly my point, this IS the age of consequences, and our collective complaisance in maintaining this present status quo means that we are all guilty as charged, in varying degrees.

Presently in a wry and ironic twist of history, we are engulfed in that strange paradox of cascading failures of the state, undermined by maximum complexities and complications being confronted with a sorry counterpoint of minimum competence in leadership and governance. At federal and state levels, on the average, our political leaders are both incompetent as well as corrupt, and yet our citizens still look to them for salvation. Nigeria’s problems have outstripped the abilities and will of her leaders to solve them. Then again there is the paradox of expecting salvation from the very class of people who caused the problems in the first place, a clear case of doing the same things over and over again and then expecting different results-this by the way is an acceptable definition of madness.

It is as if Nigerians have all collectively decided that they are not subject to the laws of physics, and that the laws of causality do not apply and that we are not bound to the simple logical equation of A+B=C; in a word, cause and effect cease to apply in the Nigerian dimension of reality. However, the ‘reality’ of reality is that while the time and historical distance of a causal factor might have happened a long time ago, and not within the immediate purview of the observer, the effects will still happen, and continue to happen until its trajectory is changed. This is what young Nigerians have to fully understand; the fact that you did not ‘cause’ the problem does not mean that you will not suffer its consequences.

We are presently confronted by many existential threats, not only to Nigeria as a country but also to Nigerians as people. Up North, we have a raging civil and widening war, underscored by wide spread destitution and deftly disguised as a religious conflict, and deep down south, we are held hostage by war lords periodically threatening to destroy Nigeria’s oily life blood. Caught in between these violent pincers, the looting of the commonwealth goes on abated and unchallenged, our health and wellness indicators keep us abysmally in the lowest global ranking, our educational systems has virtually collapsed, we live literally in the dark ages and nearly 70% of our citizens are poor, creating again that strange paradox of a rich country full of poor people.

As often times as I scratch my head in bemusement and wonder aloud about if at all it is possible to right and repair this country, if at all this Nigerian experiment is in fact doomed, I am always amazed at the astonishing ignorance and incuriosity of Nigerians about the true state of Nigeria, and even more so, the breath taking arrogance and impunity of the people who rule them. In Nigeria, about 2% of the population have access to and control 80% of its resources. The ruling elite have demonstrated over the last fifty years or so, that they really do not care about the welfare of Nigerians, and even when they do, their egos, arrogance and incompetence prevents them from creating a fully realized and sustainable process of lifting their compatriots out of poverty.

So the question, is the past as prologue, are we doomed? The answer is yes if we continue to encourage and maintain the bad habits of the past, and no, if we decide to change the present trajectory and chart a new course. On a positive note, remember that the Allied Forces did eventually win the Second World War, but not without considerable ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ Are up to the task?

Comments can be sent to me.tlardner@gmail.com

Two walks of Life

Early this morning I went for a walk-doctor’s orders. Over the years, I had gradually and irrevocably succumbed to the wear and tear of the aging process, subject to and relentlessly humbled by the law of impermanence. Everything changes. Nothing remains the same. This morning’s walk, the second in as many weeks, was sort of special. I donned on my khaki shorts, a tee-shirt, and plugged in my Ipod, listening to a podcast that dealt with the twin and related subjects of “mindfulness and awareness.”
And so, I set off into the frazzled Lagos dawn, gingerly picking my way through the deserted side street in the half-light, determined to walk the entire one-hour duration of the podcast. Ah… the bracing early morning smell of diesel fumes belching from dozens of generators, intermingled with the occasional piquancy of overflowing rubbish from stuffed bins, and the universal smell from the sewers interlacing and stitching the entire experience into a smell that is, well, Lagos. It seemed as if the once spirited attempt at cleaning up the city might have slacked off a bit. However, with approximately 10,000 tons of rubbish generated each day, quite a bit gets left behind. I quickly made it into the main street, Awolowo rd, a major road into Ikoyi and Victoria Island (for those who know, the “tony” side of town); with the intent of doing a longish loop that would bring me home in about an hour. As I walked with sharp and nimble strides quickly passing the early morning crowds trudging drearily to work, I was simultaneously taking in sporadic details of my environment, even as I listened mindfully to an interesting discourse on mindfulness and awareness by an MIT professor who started his meditative practice in 1966. Being familiar myself with some aspects of meditation, I could relate to the cannons of what I was hearing and strangely enough relating it to my environment. Two things particularly stood out this morning one was just how much more texture and color was buried in the dusty thickets of detritus that seem to lace both sides of the streets. Driving past in the cocooned comfort of a car, you really do not get to experience the sights, sounds and ah yes, smells of Lagos. The other was the pace of a young water vendor pushing his two-wheeled cart, purposefully designed to carry 12 50-liter plastic jerry cans of water. As he effortlessly whizzed past me, adroitly pushing his cart, I thought almost audible to myself, that the cans must be empty. It had to be. However in my presumptive Zen state of awareness and mindfulness, I knew that it did not matter or rather it should not matter. Full or empty, there was no way I could keep pace with this young man marching forth forcefully trying to eke out a living in this unyielding city. I was walking because my doctor suggested that it would do my health some good. He was “working-walking” as if his life depended on it. Two walks from two different works of life. As I watched him stride off into the brightening dawn into a new day full of possibilities, I ruefully remembered the athleticism of my youth, even as I exhaled in gratitude for the privilege of experiencing yet another dawn. Even so, my creaky knees with every grateful step reminded me of the law of impermanence.

Happy Now Year

Today is the first day of the beginning of the second decade of this century. 2010. Last night’s revelry and celebrations marked yet another opportunity to ponder the future, even as we contemplated the past. Sandwiched in between both temporal poles is of course the present. Now. As I grow older facing anew the existential questions of my mortality, realizing that short of living past a century, most of my life, mathematically speaking is behind me in the past, with the shortening future still fresh and full of possibilities, but none the less abbreviated; I now fully realize that all I have is now. Thusly, as is the traditional, if was to make a resolution, it would not be the usual aspirational tripe-“I want to loose weight and find true love (which would be nice)”- it would be instead, a commitment to live life mindfully, mercifully, lovingly, compassionately and in the NOW.
Join me.