E O Eke n continuation of my focus on solutions to the Nigeria problem, I will attempt to discuss it from Psycho-socio-economic perspective. This is a perspective which is often neglected as people became absorbed with the historical facts and the attempt to locate the problem in the role of European in Africa. I am not a historian. However, one thing I have learnt from history is that its facts can be relative and often depends on who wrote the history and my little understanding of linguistics gives me insight into one’s choice of words can betray ones true intention and motives. Since history is often written by victors it hardly contains objective facts of the events it reports. In reading history I try to find out who wrote it and the perspective they wish to validate. Therefore, I see history as a discipline to learn from and not one to seek the truths of the past, even though it has a lot to tell us about our past. This brings me to the current attempt to reduce the antecedents to the Nigeria civil war and its current `problems to the immediate precipitants of the war in effort to placate our guilty at the death of a man who saw the future but could not convince us of the rightness of his convictions.
In my solution focused approach to problems, I am aware that human beings are by nature selfish and subjective in their assessment of issues and tend to see things differently when they are involve or contribute something special to the situation. I have also come to the conclusion that Nigeria problem lingers because we are asking the wrong questions and getting the right answers. These right answers to the wrong questions have been provided in various books and articles that have been published and written about Nigeria and its problems. The question is why we have not asked the right questions after understanding the problems? I will opine here that it is because we continue to focus on the possible causes of our problems, instead of looking for the reasons why it has persisted and our role in perpetuating it. We prefer to look for the causes of the problems in others instead of looking inward to locate our failing that have made the rot possible. We hide our ignorance behind our religious beliefs and dismiss our contradictions with our religious speak. We often appeal to faith in matters that require common sense and amendable to reason. I believe it is this subtle difference in our attitude to the problems and the nature of the question that has led us to this quagmire.
I have observed that Europeans’ attitude to life and problems is very different from those of Africans. Whereas Europeans are empirical and tend to allow evidence to inform their attitude and behaviour, Africans tends to be traditional and magical in thinking and often ignore what works because it is against their tradition or condemned by their religion. It is not uncommon to see a well education Nigerian with higher university degree who still believes that people can get rich by involving themselves in rituals and juju that require the use of human parts. Africans tend to hold on to their ignorant beliefs in spite of their education in the name of culture or traditions. In essence, religion and tradition have become a big hindrance to our development and evolutionary advancement. Another thing I have learnt is that Europe, especially Britain where I live, has a culture of honesty which is lacking in many African countries including Nigeria. This does not mean that there are no honest Nigerians. I will illustrate what I mean with his example.
When I arrived England in October 1996, I went to a shop to buy a winter coat. In the shop I saw a coat priced £4.00. When I took it to the cashier, I gave her £4.00. She gave me back £2.00 and told me that the price was £4.00 but it the coat was then on sale. I could not believe it. She was a teenager, with her hair dyed red and blue. She had metal piercing in her upper eye lid, lower lip and tongue and was heavily made up. I was surprised because I felt that In Nigeria, it would have been difficult to find such an honest shopkeeper or trader. In fact, the Nigeria trader would rather pocket the difference and see it as God’s blessing. From that time I began to wonder if the true cause of our problem is not located in how we think, what we justify, how we define ourselves, who we think we are and where our loyalty lies instead of on who caused our problem in the first place.
Nigeria is been ravaged by corruption which has grown from a culture of dishonesty. Successive governments have paid lip service to its eradication for the simple reason that may of the leaders are also very corrupt. Instead of rolling out an effective anticorruption policy that would address this social cancer, the government spends it time thinking about various ways to disguise corruption. Nigeria has been leading the world in this area. Many politicians declare assets they hope to acquire with stolen fund when they get into offices so that it would look as if they had the assets before gaining power. Others ask their wives, mothers or other close relatives to be in charge of kickbacks. Those who are pretentious connive with contractors to call kickbacks gift. It never ceases to amuse me how self-deceptive and sometimes out rightly delusional Nigerian leaders can be. They believe that they can sanitise a crime by changing its name. Recently a judge called the charges against the former speaker of House of Assembly, Demiji Bankole a mistake and discharged the case and we hear that our president has received a gift of a church in his village. As they say, this can only happen in Nigeria. It is clear that Nigerian leaders have serious problem with probity, honesty and accountability and it is time to begin to address these character flaws in our leaders. We need to work for a culture of honesty and recognise that no man is naturally honest and that good human qualities and characters are learnt and can be inculcated in people and any time even though it is better done early in life.
Another thing that I learnt from Britain is how they solve problems. The British do not view problems so much from who caused it, even though they take it very important; but from the perspective of who failed to prevent it. Initially, I found this very difficult to understand and felt that they must be wrong. However after many years, it is clear to me that I have been wrong all along that the British approach gives better outcome than what my African mind would accept. The British focus on not so much on who caused a problem but what the people or person whose role it is to prevent such problem did or failed to do. They pay more attention to individual and corporate responsibilities in any problem. If there is road traffic and the person at fault has a driving licence. If it is discovered that the person he had the accident with has no driving licences or banned from driving, the person who had no driving licence will be blamed for the accident because he was not supposed to be on the road in the first place. At a roundabout in Britain, you are required to give way to the driver on the right. However, the driver has to wait for you to give way. If you do not give way, you could be prosecuted for driving without due care and for taking a right you are required by law to give up.
If for instance, a man sets a house on fire and he is at large, the primary focus would be to apprehend the arsonist, to stop him from setting other fires. Then they would look at how he was able to succeed, what preventive processes that failed, if the house had fire alarm and whether it was working and how existing safeguards can be improved since they were unable to stop the arsonist. These are ways of looking at problems which I was unaware of before I arrived England. I felt that the person who caused a problem is responsible for it but was unaware of the determinant role of the person whose responsibility it is, to prevent the problem.
In Nigeria we seem to have only two explanations for why things happen. If it is not the devil, it is an accident and the solutions are simple, pray to God, ask for more prayers, call for fasting and praying and pray more and keep praying and curse the devil and then say, it will never be well for the devil. Alternatively the Nigerians would just conclude that it is an accident or try to blame it on evil machinations (juju) of his or distractors. This is because in Nigeria the understanding of accident is quite different from what it means in Europe and our attribution system for events accommodated an active role for the metaphysical. In Nigeria, an accident is conceptualised to mean something no one can do anything about, an occurrence that is predestined to happen. Therefore, we see it as ready excuse to dismiss untoward events. On the contrary, I have learnt that in Europe an accident is something that can be prevented; something that happens because an individual or organisation failed in their responsibility, duty or obligations. Therefore they spend their time ensuring that policies and practices that would eliminate or reduce the occurrence of accidents are put in place and enforced.
For example, Europeans ensure that every person who wants to drive a car actually takes time to learn how to drive and pass a driving test. On the contrary Nigerians seems to think that it is a sign of their genius to start driving a car without taking driving lessons. Not a few boast, that no one taught them to drive. This is a feature of our contempt for due process and rule and evidence of a defect in our moral and character development. After many years of resisting the European way of thinking because of my religious and ethnic and traditional imprintings, I have accepted that the white man is right in this area and I am wrong. I had a moment of Eureka! When I admitted my ignorance and it gave me so much insight into why Nigeria has one of the highest road traffic accident rate in the world. I wonder, how many senators, governors, legislators in national assembly and states houses of Assembly, police men, Lawyers, Doctors, civil servants business men etc., actually took driving lessons and passed their driving tests before driving?
I wonder how many Lorries, luxurious buses and other commercial vehicle drivers, in Nigeria today who actually passed a driving test and obtained their driving licence lawfully. There are frequent occurrences of accidents involving luxurious buses in Nigeria and at the same time there is no structural driving school where luxurious drivers are trained. There is no attempt to deal with the human factors responsible for most of these accidents. Nigerians have accepted accidents as inevitable. People become luxurious bus drivers by serving as conductors for a long time. We are content to trust our lives in hands of people who we know have serious deficiency in their driving skills and knowledge of road safety and at the same time complaint about frequent accidents. My point is that we will have to pay more attention to individual and corporate responsibilities that enable the problems to occur or persist, instead of focusing on who caused it in the first place even though it is very important. If we adopt this attitude towards corruption it would be reduced drastically within a short time. At least no one can steal what he does not have access to. Reduce the access of politician to fund and corruption will be brought under control in Nigeria and I know how to do this within twenty-four hours. It is not rocket science. Nigerian leaders do not want to end corruption.
It would also appear that the Nigeria’s problems also stem from our religious beliefs, and ethnicity which shape our worldviews, attitude, prejudices and what we justify. This view is also informed by the fact that countries which have developed have views and attitude to these two constructs( religion and ethnicity) which are different from those of the average Nigerian and our leaders. It is therefore easy to see why Nigerians will have to overcome the problem of how religion and ethnicity prejudice our perception of reality and attitude to others before it can develop. Our attitude to religion and ethnicity remains primitive. We over value common ancestral origin over civil values and character, while developed nations value character and civil values, over common ancestral origin. To us, religion is the beginning and end of knowledge and nothing more can be learnt about God and the unknown, apart from what is written in the Bible and Quran; while in developed countries: religion is the beginning of knowledge and men add to their understanding of God and the unknown. We venerate our culture and tradition and resist any attempt to change it for the better. We pride ourselves that we uphold the traditions of our ancestors while failing to see the different ways we can do better what our ancestors did well. We have simply been repeating the mistakes of our ancestors while deceiving ourselves that we are upholding our traditions. No wonder we have remained underdeveloped.
To our religious and ethnically prejudiced minds, tradition is sacrosanct, something to be uphold without improvement instead of a dynamic attitude to life which should evolve with time and increase in knowledge. We elevate ethnic solidarity to a mantra and believe that one must support his ethnic group even when they are committing genocide. We see the world through the lenses of our ethnic group, kinsmen, and religion, instead of through the lens of civil values which guarantees the safety and happiness of all people. In the names of religion and ethnicity, we trample on justice, tolerance, equality and liberty; the real construct on which peaceful coexistence depend. Unless we segregate along these values we have no future.
We are imprinted with religion and ethnicity at birth. We either learn enough in our life time to question their certainties and find the truth, or spend our lives defending their ignorance, prejudices and irrational dogmas. We can limit ourselves to two books spend and our life in beliefs or pay attention to the other knowledge which God has given humanity and allow them to inform our faith. We can limit our future to the ones predicted in ancient texts and live our lives in concrete interpretation of ancient texts frozen in time or allow the existing knowledge to inform our understanding of the present and help us shape and prepare better for whatever the future brings. The choice is ours.
To make Nigeria better, we have to conduct a war against the evils of ethnicity and evils of religion in order to free ourselves from their prejudices and irrationalities. As I write, united by religious fraternity and ethnicity, Boko Haram and Fulani herds’ men are conducting a reign of terror in north Nigeria. Boko Haram hopes to impose Islam on Nigeria while Fulani herds’ men wish to burn out some villages to gain free grazing grounds for their cattle near river Benue. They want to preserve their way of life by destroying others and their culture. These are people who are frozen in time. Whose minds are alien to civil values as calculus is alien to the minds of chimpanzees. Yet they have a sense of superiority over those living south of the Niger and around the Benue rivers and believe that they will bomb and burn them into extinction. They have to be challenged and opposed, if Nigeria will have a future. The government should either send the army to protect the people or allow the people to bear arms to defend themselves. The Janjaweed succeeded in Darfur because the government would not arm the people to defend themselves. An ethnic and religious war is going on in north Nigeria, and the targets are not even aware that a war is going on.
Some people blame Europe, slave trade, partition of Africa and British rule for the problems of Africa and Nigeria as if we have no part in a problem that consume us. Yes, Europe may have started the fire, but why have we failed to put it out? continuing to blame Europeans for the woes of Africa and Nigeria in particular, is like a patient with skin cancer that has spread all over the body who continues to smoke, drink excessively and addicted to sunbathing and refuses to take his medication; but blames the sun for his illness. History is only relevant if we learn enough from it to do better. Nigeria’s problems are perpetuated by Nigerians. Europe may have caused it, but we have failed to contain or solve it and what we choose to do, worsen it. Europe is not responsible for our ethnic and religious prejudices, intolerance and ignorance that blind us to the values that create good democracies and safe societies. Unless we take responsibility for our problems and future, we will remain a country left behind because of our failure to apply existing knowledge. It is not all caused by the devil, our ignorance and failure to learn from what works in other countries are among the real reason why our problems remain. The accident was not caused by the devil; it was caused by the failure of the drivers to learn driving properly and respect traffic codes and signs. It is not in our stars but in our minds.
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