By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
Nigerians are very good at crowning false heroes. Just open a Nigerian newspaper you can find near you and see how many people that are recklessly described on its pages as “credible” politicians, “honest and selfless” Nigerians, or worse, the “conscience of the nation.” You would be shocked to see the number of people that carelessly allow themselves to be associated with such superb, ennobling qualities even when they are fully aware that by their personal conducts, it might even appear as a generous compliment to dress them up in the very opposites of those terms.
Over the years, these words and phrases have been so callously and horribly subjected to the worst kinds of abuses in Nigeria with hardly anyone making any attempt to intervene and seek their redemption. I won’t in the least, therefore, be surprised to wake up tomorrow and hear that decent people in this country have begun to protest and resist any attempt to associate them with such grossly debased terms.
As a people
sharing the same country with an ever-growing tribe of shameless, exceptional
experts on the egregious art of effective and perpetual devaluation all that
ought to inspire awe and noble feelings, it should not come to us as a shock
any day to be assaulted by the news that some Nigerians felt grievously
insulted that their dogs were, for instance, nominated for “National Honours.”
Even the poor dog may bark all day to register its dismay! But do we need to
wait for this to happen before we quickly rouse ourselves from our long-lasting
moral slumber and hurriedly stop this overly revolting annual charade of
“honouring” people whose only contribution to their fatherland may just be
their ecstatic participation in the mindless looting of its resources and
effective supervision of its wholesale devastation.
Especially,
since former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime, the “National Honours List”
has indeed worked extremely hard to distinguish itself as a worthless piece of
paper always starring people who ought to be in jail for the humongous effort
they had contributed to the brutal abortion of this country’s lofty dreams and
aspirations, people totally undeserving of even the slightest respect of the
basest of fools.
And as you
look at the haggard and impoverished nature of a country that annually
celebrates this long list of “illustrious” and “honest” sons and daughters who
are honoured for their “selfless” and “invaluable” services to their
fatherland, you cannot help wondering why it is very difficult, if not
impossible, to see any positive impact their so-called “immense contributions
to the growth and progress” (and where is the “growth and progress”?) of the
their country were able to register on that same country and its people.
Why is a
country that has over the years accumulated such a very long and intimidating
list of “patriotic achievers” and “nation builders” still one of the most
backward in the world despite being also endowed with rich, abundant natural
resources? How long shall this debilitating self-deception continue to plague
Nigeria? What beats me is why some otherwise decent people still allow their
names to be used to add some pinch of dignity to that totally worthless list
annually and actually carry themselves to the venue of that festival of the
philistine to be decorated with those medals of dishonour?
The problem
is that when we look around and there are no genuine heroes to celebrate, we
simply invent some. For instance, today, it can safely be said that Nigeria as
a country no longer possesses any “Conscience”. If we had any
persons that truly qualified to be described as such, they are long dead and
buried or yet to hug the limelight. But because we are unwilling accept that
very stark reality, we just had to pounce on anyone we find around and proclaim
him the “Conscience
of the Nation,” whether he merely represents a debasement of that
term or not.
It should be quite clear that anyone seeking to be crowned “Nigeria’s conscience” should be able to rise above partisan and other considerations in his interventions in the country and always stand on the side of the truth and the oppressed. A person who can readily bend the truth just because at that particular time, insisting on the truth would have very injurious effect on his friends and associates, should feel embarrassed anytime anyone tries to humour him with the underserved title of “the country’s conscience.”
It is not
everyday that we produce the likes of Gani Fawehinmi or Chinua Achebe who would
always use the same yardstick to evaluate either an Obasanjo or a Jonathan, and
if they were still alive today, would apply the same criteria for the incumbent president. Not for them
the sudden, unabashed revision of their well-considered and widely
circulated opinion on an any ruler, not because of some new “evidence” of
redeeming qualities they have suddenly stumbled upon about him, but merely
because the fellow has now banded together with their friends (in a clearly
bad, doomed marriage) to capture political power. Those who truly qualify to be
referred to as a “country’s conscience” always put their country first – always
place the welfare of the hapless, long-suffering citizens far above the
primitive interests of their politician friends.
When
President Jonathan, for instance, sought to decorate Achebe with a “National
Honour,” the legendary writer rejected it by saying that the situation that
made him to earlier reject the same “Honour” awarded to him by the Obasanjo
regime had not changed under Jonathan; and so, he had to once again excuse
himself from it. That was his way of telling those rulers that unless they
deployed conscientious efforts to fix Nigeria and make life more tolerable for
the citizenry, they lacked the qualification to honour him. Achebe would have
told the same thing to the now clearly groping and morally bankrupt regime in Abuja were he still
alive and such an “Honour” extended to him?
Of course,
Gani Fawehinmi would have done the same thing too. He was not one to brazenly
take sides in a political conflict, offering high-profile support to one party
in the conflict even when it was public knowledge that he was at that same time
being retained as a highly prized consultant in a lucrative pet project of the
particular public officer he was supporting. He would have hastened to realize
that there was something called “conflict of interests,” and that you do not
unduly stretch the people’s trust, beyond its malleable limits. Put another
way, you don’t sleep on Delilah’s lap and hope to wake up in Abraham’s bosom.
Somebody who
allows himself to be described as “Nigeria’s conscience” cannot afford the
luxury of a credibility perennially stained by his very close association with
(if not public endorsement of) people generally perceived as strategic,
generous contributors to Nigeria’s current chronic problems, a people whose
mere appearance anywhere immediately inspires unqualified disgust in the
citizens. Anybody can occasionally throw front-page-grabbing “bomb shells” (it
is not rocket science), but such pronouncements only make sense to informed
people if the person who throws them is able to demonstrate that he is not a “situational
ideologist” and “activist” who only finds his voice when the
target is a “safe” one. To him, corruption does not lose its egregious hue when
accusing fingers are pointing at a friend.
The danger
now is that a growing number of people have already begun to look a bit
too closely and have begun to discover that even the loud “king” whose
ill-fitting, borrowed costume had engaged their unqualified admiration and awe
for a very long time now is actually unclad like the rest, and that beyond the
pronouncements delivered either in the finest or mostly complicated prose, much
of what they had witnessed so far is an unduly stretched farce, despite the
unending, drab “oriki” booming
from tireless praise singers.
I think we
should just tell ourselves the plain truth: for now, this country has no
conscience! Indeed, conscientious and discerning people will know when
one eventually emerges.
*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, a Nigerian journalist and writer, is the author of the book, “Nigeria: Why Looting May NotStop,” (scruples2006@yahoo.com)
------------------
Frist published in Daily Sun newspaper of Tuesday, April 11, 2023
No comments:
Post a Comment