THE PROBLEMS WITH NIGERIA:
. . . and The Metaphor of Double-Headed Snake
By Tunji Ajayi
For this week’s column I had begun writing a different topic when I ran into this truth I had written 25 years ago (Nigerian Tribune, July 23, 1996). What really irked me? The ace musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti at a time was asked why there was a lull in his hitherto profuse musical album releases. He confessed to his being disillusioned about Nigeria’s dismal situation. In a tone of disappointment, he responded in his latent release entitled Confusion Break Bones (CBB): “Nothing dey for me to sing about. . . All the things wey dey e no dey good”. The perspicacious Fela hollered on: “If I sing say water no dey. . . Na old news be dat . . . If I sing say corruption . . . Na old news be dat . . .” This is the narrative of a beleaguered country that refuses to move forward but is continually holed up in her leaders’ claws, while provoking endless debates on contemporary issues without ever reaching any conclusion. Debate on insecurity. On Constitutional amendment. True federalism. Build refinery or continue fuel importation, etc. etc.
Indeed, the most ludicrous debate for over a year now is whether cattle should graze openly on the streets, schools and university premises, on our airport tarmacs etc., or be kept in the ranches by private owners. While Nigeria engages in all this . . . , the rest of the world moves ahead with technological breakthroughs - in science, medicine, space technology, information technology, extraterrestrial world, agriculture etc. A complacent nation that refuses to look forward remains behind. Nigeria’s situation is like that of the proverbial double-headed snake, the summation of whose forward and backward movements will always be equal to zero.
Like an erudite speaker F. Emmanuel once averred: “Truth is never outdated, but gimmicks keep changing. Nothing endures like it. Truth never contradicts; it is falsehood that does. If you tell a lie, you need several other lies to sustain the first lie. But if you tell the truth all the time, you don’t need to remember what you said before.” What has really changed since the feature was written twenty five years ago? Kindly read on:
“If I have from youth, developed phobia for travelling by road and sea, you can be certain I will melt immediately if airborne. Hence, I am frightened to the marrow even to peep into an aircraft, left alone getting myself airlifted to any place outside this country. The last time my dearest person chose to travel by air, I fretted and almost sobbed profusely inside my room like a toddler does, while I was placated like a baby. Nonetheless, I often refused to be branded a lily-livered husband and a coward. This explains my curiosity in 1985 when a peripatetic professor teacher of mine arrived from the United States of America; I rushed into his office to welcome him and asked about his experience while he was in the United States. He had returned a few days before. He knew I am a very inquisitive person and was always prepared to accommodate me, my brainstorming questions, and my idiosyncrasies.
“Good evening Prof. How was your three months sojourn in the USA? Please, tell me your experience while there sir.” His strange experience and the wonderful non-fictional story which he related to me have since remained evergreen in my memory for so long a time to ponder about. Of all he told me, I will never fail to remember saying that what spelt our doom here in Nigeria was our reliance on crude oil as a main prop of our economy. He lamented that if we hadn’t been blessed with crude oil; we would have looked up to our very fertile land to till and placed agriculture in its enviable place where it rightly belongs. Our youths’ attention would have been less tilted towards white-collar jobs. We would have had far lesser number of emergency contactors flaunting their business cards for patronage and in endless pursuit of cheap money from our government offices. Everybody would have learnt about the dignity of true labor. We would have found pride in agriculture like an average United States of America’s farmer does. Individuals’ living conditions would have been far better than it is now.
One of the mostly revered professions in America is farming. According to my professor, every farmer in the U.S. commands a great measure of respect in the society. “When you introduce yourself as a farmer in any public gathering over there, people treat you with warm respect. Over there, farmers are not poor.” The erudite professor continued in a tone of disappointment. “They don’t live like paupers. They are wealthy.”
However, the situation is antithetical here in Nigeria. Hardly anyone ever claims to be the son or daughter of a farmer. I have taught in two different polytechnics for an upward of eight years now. On the first day of every session when fresh students came into campus, I often asked every student in my class to introduce himself or herself to me and other colleagues in the class. I have never seen any of my students introducing himself or herself as the son or daughter of a farmer. To do so is to be treated with utter disdain in the campus. Thus, every student takes pride in “being” the son or daughter of a mechanical engineer.
I often listened to each of them saying, with unbridled pride: “My father is a Professor”. “Mine is a Medical Doctor”. “My own Dad is a Senior Pilot”. “My own Popsy is this or that . . .” And they introduced themselves on and on like that. Hmm! But farmers have no sons here, nor do they have daughters! Perhaps farmers are eunuchs in Nigeria who sire no children!
The Biblical Cain is the known murderer. And Mr. Judas Iscariot a betrayer. None of them has name-sakes on earth today. Just like them, our farmers don’t have relations! Nobody claims consanguinity with a poor farmer. Our farmers are neglected, hence are failures. And failures have no friends. People jostle to associate with success. But on the contrary, every Nigerian loves to recline on his dining table, exchanging lovely pleasantries with his wife while on sumptuous dishes of pounded yam with roasted chicken maneuvering inside egusi soup. Everybody loves to eat eggs, banana, and vegetables and look well-nourished. They wear clothes made of cotton and wool. Yet, farmers are dishonored and treated like lepers.
The professor told me that his second experience in the U.S. was very pleasant and brought joy to his heart; but the joy was short-lived the very minute he stepped on the Nigerian soil. How so? I asked the learned Professor. According to him, he boarded a plane en-route Nigeria with a few other Nigerians. At the J.F. Kennedy Airport in New York, he and all the other Nigerian co-travellers submitted themselves to every pre-travel formality and respected all protocols before boarding the plane. While on board, every passenger behaved very decently. But to the Professor’s chagrin and dismay, the same group of Nigerians who had behaved decently a few hours before at the J.F. Kennedy Airport in America and while airborne throughout the duration of the journey, started to behave unruly upon landing on Nigerian soil. They grew overly impatient at the Lagos Murtala Mohammed Airport, and started pushing and pulling one another, while jumping queues to conclude post-trip and arrival formalities, and would not respect clearance protocols. When the professor asked me why these same Nigerians who had behaved decently while abroad acted ungentlemanly upon stepping onto Nigerian soil, I had no answer other than looking benumbed and puzzled.
A few days ago, when I thought about the professor’s ugly experience and his brainstorming question, an answer crossed my mind. It was an inbreeding problem; I reasoned. It is the environment in which a man finds himself that often dictates his behaviors. Yes, every individual has his own idiosyncrasies. A nation together with its people also does. If I am badly pressed and I urinate beside the road here in Nigeria, I can claim the alibi that I was so pressed and having got no gents around to urinate, I had no option other than make use of the roadside gutter as my emergency rest-room. This explains why human feces litter our motor parks, where open defecation is forbidden, but the government provides no toilet facilities.
Goats and cows compete with automobile vehicles on our high ways whereas it would make BBC headline news in Britain if a cow or any domestic animal ever crosses a highway. The popular taboo is that ducks should never be overrun by automobiles on our roads. Perhaps our ducks and other domestic pets have impressionable minds too. They have grown to know that we do not place premium on orderliness. Hence, domestic animals dance and junket about our highways. No potent sanctions forbid pet owners from letting loose their pets in the community. What are seen as oddities in other climes are daily occurrences and commonplace here, and due to our negligence have become part of our traditions.
Our behaviours, dispositions and perceptions are influenced largely by the society in which we live. Such influences have domineering effects on our lifestyles. The influences they have on us had, overtime metamorphosed into serious in-breeding problems. An average Nigerian child of white-collar job parents, who from childhood, had imbibed the feeling that university education is meant to garner fat pay in the oil industries may never grow up to embrace farming as his own profession. From time immemorial, our university graduates have imbibed the culture of running head-over-heels into the Ministry of Customs and Excise to get jobs. For they know that their predecessors became wealthy by becoming customs officers and not farmers.
None of my friends who are agric-science graduates opted for jobs in the agricultural sector of the economy, for they are scared of being reduced to paupers and subsequently contend to live on charity, or on their aged parents who on the contrary should be their dependants. The Federal Government’s support for the development of agriculture is half-hearted and pretentious. The ‘support’ should go far beyond government media sloganeering. The government should encourage every Nigerian to partake in arable farming.
And this reminds me of Wednesday, November 6, 1985 when the late sage, Dr. Tai Solarin came to deliver a public lecture on “Education Challenges and the Feasibility of Free Education in Nigeria.” at the then University of Ife. The social critic and human rights activist took a swipe at our half-hearted love for agriculture, and our misdirected love for exhaustible crude oil. According to Tai Solarin, while coming for the lecture, he hated looking through his Volkswagen Beetle car window to watch the uncultivated land along Ife-Ibadan road and other sparse uncultivated land across the country.
Hear the late sage: “In China, you do not know where a town begins or ends. There is no uncultivated land.” Yes. China’s population is alarmingly high; yet the highly populous country is not starved of food because of its reliance on agriculture.” When we start to ruminate on facts, rather than reveling on fantasies, our society will be a better place to live in. Verbum Satis Sapienti.
+COURTESY: Ohio Wesleyan University Press, USA.
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*Tunji Ajayi, a creative writer, author, biographer and audiovisual documentary producer writes from LC-Studio Communications, Nigeria (+2348162124412) >facebook.com/tunji.ajayi.946<
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