Nigerians are a rare breed — at once contemptuous of their country and fiercely defensive of it. When arguing among themselves, Nigerians criticise their country viciously as if the country means nothing to them. Well, it doesn’t— because it hasn’t bothered to achieve an emotional bonding with the younger generation who account for three-quarters of the population. And, conversely, the country does mean a lot to its citizens because, although they are fiercely critical of it, they are proud enough of its past and its potentials to defend it against ‘foreign attacks’.
Don’t take my word for it. Check out Naija netizens. Nigerians in cyberspace are the ones taking their country to the cleaners by themselves. A foreign commentator is not permitted the same privilege. Any foreign criticism, even when true and verifiable, is, by some strange logic to which many Nigerians subscribe, the ranting of either an interloper, a racist or a paid agent provocateur.
Whereas the older generation of Nigerians have many reasons to be loyal to their country, young Nigerians have not been that lucky. Since the rude intervention of the military in governance, ethical standards have nose-dived. Young people hear stories of the many benefits their parents enjoyed as students in the 50s, 60s and 70s. When they compare those stories with their squalid surroundings and woe-be-gone experiences while growing up, they see no reason why they should love a country that treats them with so much disdain.
Our values as a people have broken down. Standards have fallen. The children we have raised in these tremulous times have become adults and the serial idiocies we fed them with have graduated to become peculiar insanities of which we are ashamed, but whose source we are shy to acknowledge as the man in the mirror.
When a typical ‘Japa’ returnee lands at the Nigerian airport in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, or Port-Harcourt, he encounters immigration and customs officials begging for alms. How is that supposed to make him feel? He looks into the eyes of foreigners on the other queue and he sees bewilderment. What beggars’ colony is this, for crying out loud? He cannot even use the restroom in peace. There are beggars everywhere all over the pee-point offering either a kettle to rinse your unmentionables or tissue paper to wipe your hands.
Those who are returning after decades to spend their retirement in the land of their forebears are waylaid at the seaports where they are forced to pay a litany of bribes in order to clear their personal effects. The situation is akin to paying a penalty for ever thinking of returning home!
Young Nigerians abroad can’t comprehend a situation where an accountant general would dribble hundreds of billions into his personal account or where serving military officers become billionaires in plain sight on account of serving as commanders in the oil-rich Niger Delta. When the supposed catcher of thieves is himself a thief, now who is going to catch the catcher?
Last year, Lawyer Femi Falana SAN, screamed against the burning of a vessel interdicted by the Nigerian Navy for stealing crude oil, describing the development as an attempt to cover up criminality.
Falana said: “There is no provision in the rules of engagement that authorises military personnel or security operatives to set fire to or destroy vessels loaded with stolen crude. Apart from the sabotage of the national economy, the crime of oil theft has portrayed Nigeria as a nation where official impunity has been institutionalised by the government. Apparently embarrassed by the involvement of highly placed military officers and their civilian collaborators in the scandalous offence of oil theft, the Federal Government has adopted measures to end it.”
The lawyer noted that the vessel was set ablaze off the Niger Delta creeks by a group of military personnel and described the endorsement of the operation by the then Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor, as “an embarrassing justification of criminal conduct…”
Every Nigerian wonders why for a long time the country was unable to meet its OPEC quota due to the incidence of oil thieves. Massive oil tankers with a capacity for millions of barrels of crude routinely sail in and out of Nigeria while the navy and other security agencies snooze. Each loading trip takes many days, yet nobody sees them. Apparently, there is an omertà code in operation: “See no evil….”
What did we think we were doing when an incumbent governor of the central bank declared, through proxies, his intention to run for president — and scores of branded campaign vehicles were unveiled to convince doubters that we all were inhabitants of a land where anything was possible?
We have scandalised the young and the old. We have abandoned the ways of the founding fathers of this nation. We have thrown whatever remains of morality to the dogs — and yet we wonder why we are stranded on a parched island where we cannot as much as slake our thirst. “In the abundance of water, the fool is thirsty”, says the rastaman.
Since the days of military rule, Nigerians got used to the jackboot logic of the end justifying the means and might be right. Forget what you learnt in geometry — a straight line is not necessarily the shortest distance between two points. A Nigerian youth knows that for spherical surfaces, like the Earth, great-circle distances actually represent the true shortest distance. But why bother with all that when you can simply shift the two points in contention to suit your whim?
Wherever you turn, the goalposts keep shifting every day. Just the other day, the media went haywire with the news that a new kind of tax— Proof of Ownership tax— had been introduced by the Joint Tax Board. Every motorist was required, said the announcement, to pay one thousand Naira annually as proof that the payee was the owner of the vehicle in question.
An activist lawyer, Muiz Banire SAN, recently authored an insightful piece ( https://sunnewsonline.com/mr-president-let-the-vehicle-ownership-renewal-policy-be-rescinded/) in which he counselled President Tinubu not to allow the apparent fraud to sail.
Banire was miffed that any government parastatal could add to the tax burden of citizens without the constitutional power to do so. Nigeria is perhaps the only country on the planet where there is no comprehensive list of approved taxes. Sundry government organisations simply impose their own taxes and share the loot with co-conspirators.
That much is borne out of Banire’s disclosure: “I also learnt from the grapevine that the states are already promised and apportioned 50% of the accruable revenue from the illegal enterprise, while the Commission gets 25% and the consultant and other undefined stakeholders get 25%.”
Nigerians are waiting for a presidential declaration stopping the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) and its co-conspirators from further picking our pockets. The primary goal for the setting up of the FRSC is NOT to generate revenue. If they concentrate on their primary duty, perhaps our dream of having safer highways may yet be realised.
As with the FRSC, it is with the Nigerian Immigration Service. In 2019, the nation was apprised of the scandalous frittering away of revenue accruable to the national coffers. A federal high court sitting in Lagos in a landmark judgement delivered by Justice Rilwan Aikawa, declared as illegal the engagement of a private company, Continental Transfer Technique Limited, by the Minister of Interior to fix and collect the Combined Expatriates Residence permit and alien card Fees paid by all expatriates in Nigeria.
The court ordered the Minister of Interior, the comptroller-General of Immigration and Continental Transfer Technique Ltd to account for, refund and remit into the federation account all combined Expatriate Residence Permit and Alien card (CERPAC) Fees collected from all expatriates in Nigeria since 2014.
Before the bubble burst, the revenue collected from the CERPAC was shared and distributed as follows:
a. 5% to the Minister of Interior
b. 7% to the Comptroller of Immigration
c. 33% to the Federal Government
d. 55% to Continental Transfer Technique
Nigeria is a sprawling crime scene! A national re-orientation campaign is a way to start by co-opting the youth in what promises to be a war against impunity. A war in favour of propriety— at the vanguard of which is a National Orientation Agency led by a committed patriot with a proven track record of activism. This is not another job for the boys. Nigeria and its citizens ought to be better served.
Patriotism can’t be legislated. Get rid of these entrenched smuts! Return Nigeria to the era of law and order where bad behaviour is called out and punished — and watch patriotism flow like the river.
- Wole Olaoye is a Public Relations consultant and veteran journalist. He can be reached at wole.olaoye@gmail.com, Twitter: @wole_olaoye; Instagram: woleola2021
