The stagnation of the Nigerian Character A somewhat response to The Metamorphosis of Boko Haram

If we really want to understand where we are as a country today, we only need to look dispassionately at the state of our written and living laws and our discourteous attitude towards law and order. This abusive relationship we have with law has recently and publicly shoved into our faces by the actions of the Nigerian Judicial Council and all who have been involved in the sordid affair. And whether we like it or not – just as the Americans had to self reflect in the aftermath of 9/11, we too have to look inwards about the reasons for our disregard for law and order and why Nigeria, the mighty dwarf of Africa, is now leading the continent in terrorism.

Right after the bombing of the United Nations Building in Abuja on 8/26, Simon Kolawole wrote a thoughtful essay on the Metamorphosis of Boko Haram. The first thought the article provoked was of a sense of comedy – the juxtaposition of Boko Haram’s evolutionary journey against the sad stagnation of the Nigerian character and our manner of dealing with issues. The blithe tone of the article about the underlying social and economic reasons behind terrorism – whether of the Boko Haram tenet/philosophy or the Niger Delta extraction sparked a disquiet about our usual focus on the symptoms and not the cause.

In 1926, in The Dual Mandates, Lord Lugard described the type of African he had observed in the West Africa – it was not flattering. Amongst other things he says the this race-type is “full of personal vanity with little sense of veracity, excitable, lacking in self-control, discipline and foresight, his thoughts are concentrated on the events and feelings of the moment, and he suffers little from the apprehension for the future or grief for the past”. He could be describing us today – from the degree laden professional in a pin stripe suit and a bow tie to the greased stained Ankara clad fried yam seller at the side of the road- we all carry these traits and have refused to develop our minds and our societies beyond the shallow materialism and vanity Lord Lugard noted. For those who balk at the harsh description by a foreigner and a colonialist to boot, maybe the descriptions of Anthony Enahoro in the 1966 satire “How to be a Nigerian’ will resonate better. A read through this thoroughly enjoyable and well-written book will have you crying tears of laughter and alarm about traits we like to think are ‘new’. Apparently, there is nothing new about who we are and how we behave right down to the moronic love of titles (vanity again) which has everyone appending ‘Barrister’ and ‘Engineer’ before their names.

What has this got to do with terrorism and law and order? Everything.

When a society is as unjust and unequal as ours is (Nigeria has one of the highest Gini indices in the world – a measure for inequality in society) where nothing, not even justice is without an ever escalating price tag, then terrorism is not out of place. Where people have two sets of rules, one for the rich and/or powerful and one for the poor and/or weak, then terrorism should eventually be expected.

Borno – the home of peace and the home of Boko haram is the 2^nd largest state in Nigeria in terms of land size and the 12^th in terms of population. It is also allegedly one of the easiest places to do business in Nigeria. However, Borno is in the North East, the region acknowledged by human development experts and maybe even the Federal Government as the poorest and least developed in Nigeria. This is where the rating of access to health, education, skills development, infrastructure, employment, gender development are amongst the lowest in the country and where despite billions, we are still far from achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Since it was formed in 1976, trillions of Naira have been poured into Borno and its indigenes have taken part in steering the direction of the Federal Government in line with federal character. Since then it, it has and Yobe carved out if it – which is technically supposed to mean that development would happen faster but no…Yobe and Borno are still some of the most backward places in Nigeria, with more alarming social data than much poorer countries. So what, do the people of Borno have to show for years of government and is this question not what is really at the crux of Boko Haram’s grouse?

What have years of ‘leadership’ styled on our version of democracy earned the people of Borno? Is there no iota of truth in people saying ‘if this has not worked, maybe we should try something else’? Is rigging elections over and over again and designing a quota system for leadership so that Nigerians never get good and sincere people in leadership not a recipe for disaster? Is it right that in states so impoverished by their government’s lack of financial responsibility, grand and lavish weeklong weddings/parties/celebrations can take place and even make the news? And is it really unreasonable to think that if a debtor does not open the door to the sound of knocking, then his creditor might be justified in breaking the door down?

Our disrespect for law and order – where everyone is above the law and no one can be called to account for their actions stems from our character – the traits that make us unable to visualize the future with any sense of wonder or fear – where like mindless locusts we eat up 50 years worth of harvest in advance and wonder why we suffer.

As much as we might regret President Jonathan’s choice of words when he tried to comfort us on the bombing of the UN office he is right: Nigeria is not unique. All around the world, it is natural that if people live with social and economic injustice and cannot change their circumstances peacefully, they will resort to violence. There will always be external forces which will play a role in our internal affairs - the Al-Qaeda, Libya, Somali, Sudan, CIA, Kissinger connections with our home grown terrorists and governments is scary and should be considered carefully by our security agents and all who really care about Nigeria. But we must ask ourselves too, what it is about us that makes Nigeria such a warm and fertile place to recruit and train terrorists and practice terrorism. Until we identify those issues and start changing the system so that life is fair, the situation with terrorism and all the evils that come with it is not going to get better.