It seems so worthless here, life that is. There is hardly any day, these days, when the headlines do not trumpet the boldness of death unnatural. Violent death from the work of people who you have never had a quarrel with seems to define daily life now in Nigeria. How did it come to be so and what can the committed do to pull back from this brink. Whatever may be the general thinking about why this orgy of violence is upon us the reality is that death is dancing on our graves and we are not trying hard enough to locate why our individual lives and collective being is so broken and traumatized. It is important here to note that death is about more than the loss of life. There are very many walking deads laid waste by the culture of death which stokes us. Take the living in Jos after the bomb blast kills so many innocents. Those who survive deal with the trauma of uncertainty, constantly looking over their shoulders waiting for where and when next. People too scared to go to market are quietly starving to death even as those who cannot transact the daily trading that is source of income, are too broke to have real life. And so we all die slowly. To fight back against, this death taking us hostage, we strongly need to die. Die? How can dying save us from death? In Liberia the slang for give me a dash, is die small for me. True indeed it is that when you give up something you die a little, in a manner of speaking. A Nigerian priest travelling in Liberia during the civil war once gave a touching homily about policemen at a check point who said to him bossman, Oga, in Nigeria speak, die small for us. To save us we must be willing to make sacrifice for truth. So what is the truth about why Nigerian life is worth so little that the daily news reports of so many being killed by Boko Haram bombs is now taken as one of those routines that people hardly blink when only a few people are killed. If we are to get to the bottom of why all of this is norm we ought to talk about the fundamental problematic of the Nigerian Condition. This is the collapse of culture in which the general value system and dominant social ethos hold other things more valuable than human life. In Nigeria money and power at all costs, seem to have become prime desire. To get either, or both, people have been willing to suffer humiliation, betray trust and become numb to their shared humanity as they pursue the goal of money or power. Politics is a classic vehicle for loss of a sense of life as the ultimate value. I first reflected deeply on this when about 20 years ago. I attended a meeting of Ohaneze Ndigbo in Enugu. As was the tradition, a selection of top of the class retired for caucusing and lunch atthe home of the then Governor of Enugu State, who at that time had just become a former Governor. At Dr. Okwesiteze Nwodo’s I was seated between some notables like a former Vice-President of Nigeria, Alex Ekwueme, Dim Odumegwu Ojukwu when in the cause of lunch one noted money man and politician quietly leaned across to me and said “you see all these people puffing up as big men, just wait for the military to blow the whistle for the resumption of politics and you will see them groveling at my home. When that time comes I will bring out a casket with a corpse and get them to swear allegiance to me and jump over the casket so they can get money for their campaign” He laughed hilariously at his own story and I stayed fixated for seconds at the kind of morbid sense of humor displayed. Since then I have watched what is fair game to get power or money degrade the humanity of Nigerians. When at the all- politician’s conference president Jonathan said how his being president was not worth a life, I felt a little sad because I felt that could not have been said in candor. If the official line is to be believed the whole boko haram phenomenon is to stop him from running. Assuming it were true, how many people would have to die for him to realize it was not worth the body bag count? More importantly for me the body language in smaller things show a pattern of the seared conscience. The President is not yet a candidate. The electoral rules, as repeated by INEC Chairman Atahiru Jega is that it is a violation of the rules to campaign. But the president has for months run a no- holds barred campaign on television whose claims Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola thought were heretic. If the rules are violated with such impunity with resources not explained to think any other thing is not possible is to be naïve. But no one has protested these violations of the rules. So we deserve what we get. In the days when at 18 if you did not have radical nationalistic passions, something was thought to be wrong with your head the 18-25 year olds would have poured unto the streets protesting as we did when Murtala Mohammed was killed in a coup that was still in progress why do our young people not have a sense of outrage at what is wrong anymore and why are they readily usable against that which is just. Indeed how can we rescue culture in collapse? My view is that the agencies of socialization have failed us. They include the religious organizations, the schools, the family and many of the character building people development non- profits. All great religions treat life as the ultimate gift which the creator gives and is at liberty to take. Most religions put peace forth as the greeting are typically shalom or salaam or peace be with you. Yet, so sadly, many are maimed and slaughtered in the name of God. I have quite a few times been criticized in social media for not being radical enough or for not seeing wisdom in entering the establishment at the opposite end. In many ways the centrist label is hung on one as indicator of not opting for a fight, no matter the strength of character in standing up for things believed in even at great cost. I have found response to such criticisms challenging because the simple fact of my “breeding” is temperance. My way has always been the teachings of the church. Temperance. I have always been an advocate, a passionate one at that, of non- violence. In my head, everyday, I am matching with Mahatma Gandhi. I dream of being nailed to the cross with the ultimate evangelist of non- violence. Temperance Yet I wake to bombs in public places, tales of young girls kidnapped in their hundreds and about 80 days after, no man has a clue. How does the curriculum of our school system reflect this challenge. Hardly at all. At a personal level these experiences have inspired a project to get the Centre for Values in Leadership to develop primary schools to serve the poorest of the poor for free with additions to the curriculum. After spending some time visiting with BRAC in Bangladesh, two years ago I became determined that if an NGO could employ more than 100,000 people and make so huge a difference the quality of life of its people we had to find our model to make a difference without government. On a more recent visit to the Art of Living Aashram in Bangalore where they have created a tradition of building schools for the poor, I determined that CVL would modify its national values transformation strategy by moving down to a primary school level. The idea is to build schools where education for select children of the ultra poor will be free with a free meal and uniforms and books offered for free. Under collaboration with the Art of Living Foundation, the trainers of the new teachers will arrive later this month. The idea is to begin with schools in Lagos, Delta, Enugu and Osun states. In addition to the regular curriculum we will use the pedagogy of the determined and also introduce vocational skill, values education and life skills. The first school should be ready in a few weeks and I am persuaded that the outcome will be that 30years from now these children of the poorest of the poor will be better equipped to lead than the children of most of today’s elite. Hopefully the coming anarchy will not have consumed them. At least this kind of madness has been on display for a long time in Pakistan and they are still around. As ironies go I recall a 2009 visit to Pakistan and the bombs were going off just before or after we had left as we journeyed from Karachi to Lahore and to Islamabad. I thought then this could not happen in Nigeria, even though I had founded a group called NUTRA (Nigerians United To Resist Anarchy) as I read the signs several years earlier. David OmbugadU, Political Economist and Professor of Entrepreneurship and is founder of the Centre for Values PWDs in Leadership
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 08:02:17 +0000
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