JUST THIS MORNING...

 

Just this morning, I was walking my children to school, and I saw this young, handsome, African man dutifully putting waste bins into the truck. It is sometime before 8 and it is still dark. We exchanged greetings, he smiled warmly, and we acknowledged that Africanhood in silence, sealed with a smile and a nod of the head. Then I passed, but my thoughts did not. It dwelt with this young man and wondering whom his relatives are – some fools back in Africa who would be complaining that he is sending little money or nothing at all. Some of these entitled brethren range from blood siblings to schoolmates, and people who saw him pass to school on foot everyday. The African way: the child belongs to the community and anyone you do not send money to becomes a sworn enemy in whose eyes you instantly become stingy and selfish. Some of these claimants will not come down their high horses to do the kind of job this brother is doing here. My mind went back to Nigeria, to how we naturally look down on people who are doing honest jobs to survive. My mind went through my whole life in that short walk halfway to my kids’ school and back, before getting back to my desk to immediately pen this, and I realised, SADLY, that we have a society that rewards crookery and deceit other than diligence and honesty. Once you are diligent and honest, people become afraid of you and see you as a threat. But if you become a BOOT LICKER, the level of your boot-lickingness determines how high you can go.

 

My mind went to Aso Rock, to every upstart that has occupied that residence in my adult life. None of them represents the best of us. NONE! The present occupant is the worst ever. In a society where hard work and honest are rewarded, someone like this one who has never done anything outside soldiering and being in power would never have led anything except his immediate family. But wait, it is not his fault. He would not have made it if not that the best of us stood by him, prompted his actions, and promoted him to the seat. Even a Nobel Laureate, a professor of letters, the most educated of all of us, stood to promote him in 2015. It is not their fault, it is just the society we have found ourselves in – people with ideas are being led by people with money, irrespective of where they got the money. It is only in such a society that a president can have the temerity (as he did in a recent interview) to tell Nigerian youths – both those looking for jobs and those still in school – that there are no jobs for them, and the land is silent. It is only in such a society that somebody like Tinubu will be laying claim to the presidency after supporting another gerontocrat who has done nothing but make a mess of the nation in the last seven years. People do not see that Tinubu’s silence as Nigerians have been groaning under Buhari, whom he supports, is an indication that he would be worse, that it is time to let all these evil people know that we are tired of them.

 

Come to every level, even in academics, show any sign of brilliance or independence in teaching and learning, you become a target. People do not take pride in building younger academics and supporting them to excel. They form a band of detractors, tearing them aspiring young scholars. Once you are not a boot licker, you are a target. If you are one, no matter how olodoish you and your generation are, they will gather behind you and promote you to the highest level you can get. It is no longer about quality and brilliance; it is about knowing how to “abase and how to abound.” Graduate Assistants threaten professors when they are not “loyal” enough. VCs are threatened by cleaners and lecturers are threatened by intelligent year 1 students. It is a reign of mediocrity. I have been in a situation where a teacher told the brightest student in the class that he is intellectually worse than his classmate who has repeated two classes simply because this lecturer could see that this student was no ordinary one. We live in a society where age and wealth have been erroneously endowed with being intellectually superior. In other words, that you are a lecturer or professor now does not mean you are the more intelligent that your students or junior colleagues. It simply means that you started out first, which also means that if you were to be in class with some of them, they will dust you clean in terms of getting better scores. Which brings me to say that if you are a lecturer and you do not acknowledge to yourself that if you are to be in the same class with specific students of yours that you can identify, that you won’t see their backs in academic brilliance, then you are among the class that is easily threatened by people they should be happy to promote. Same goes for senior academics.

 

I return to Buhari. He is not the problem. We have so many of his kind replicated in every state, LGA, government and private workplaces. These are people who know that they did not get to where they are by any honest means, as such, their loyalty does not lie with the people, but with those who put them there. They thus go ahead to do what they have been instructed to do and serve their masters/mistresses who are not the PEOPLE to whom they should be accountable. They are mediocres, boot lickers, liars of the greatest sort. Honest and diligent people are only important to them when they serve their selfish purposes, afterwards, they discard you. They lie against people, set up snares for hardworking folks, device ways to rid the system of those who are not loyal, and replace them with those who can sell their birth rights just to please their benefactors. It is a society where people are grateful to receive what is due to them, their rights. A society where the president or governor receives accolades for using public funds to do public good as if they are favours.

 

Returning to this hard working, honest African I saw this morning, it is the sickness in our society, its scandalous reward system that pushes people like this young man, people like us, out of the lands of our birth. It is not individuals that Africa is losing, it is generations. Every person that leaves, takes with him/her the immediate family, and there are hundreds of relatives at home who are on the line to go too through him/her. Of course, am just writing to fill my morning and offload my heavy thoughts. Are they going to listen? Would we do anything to right the wrong of our society?