Many Nigerians have accepted the Media label that Nigerians are naturally corrupt from birth. Though foreigners view Nigerians as DNA corrupt, the acceptance of the tag by Nigerians is more demoralising. After a historical evaluation of humans, and Nigerians as peoples before the colonial corruption, I maintain that Nigerians are not as corrupt as painted. Nigerians are not DNA corrupt like the countries who label them so. Nigerians are simply reacting to the circumstances arising from the terrible system of governance imposed on them. They know what they are doing, but they have not understood what is ‘doing’ them.
Wrestling has become a very captivating form of entertainment. The Royal Rumble match in which many people (usually 30) are seen fighting in a ring, seem most intriguing. There is only one rule in the ring: continue entertaining us by fighting one another while we place bets and make money from your pains. The rules in the ring are not set by the people in the ring, but by some businessmen outside the ring. The only instinct inside the ring is the instinct of survival. There are no permanent friends or foes in the ring; no stable love, trust or affection; all you get there is individual struggle for survival. You can collaborate with anybody to defeat another person, and immediately turn against your collaborator for a fight.
The bible says in Amos 3:3 that “two cannot walk unless they agree”. “Nigerians have never agreed – or been given the chance to agree – what Nigeria is.”[1] It is a country of about 250 ethnic groups, who have co-existed in mutual suspicion since 1914. Nigeria has fought a civil war and had several crises like other countries. “These wars diminished in number after the turn of the millennium, but their chief cause – the lack of common nationhood – remains.”[2] The “Africa’s nation states were formed by foreigners, lines drawn by Europeans on maps of places they had often never been to. They carved out territories, cut up kingdoms and societies of which they had little idea… They (African countries) lack a common conception of nationhood.”[3]
Without agreement to be, live and cooperate, Nigeria resembles a cage of wild animals, who struggle desperately to survive among themselves. They are like the Royal Rumble fighters, whose only instinct is to survive the moment. The humanity of Nigerians has been marred by the colonial encounter, which continues in the present style of governance. Nigerians are now desperate survivors of colonial encounter. Only that no one is allowed to leave the ring in the Nigerian royal rumble. The survival struggle and absence of agreement invalidates any possibility of planning and working together.
Nigerians cannot plan and work together towards industrialization and scientific production because they are distracted by the national infighting. The ‘Royal Rumble’ policies in Nigeria turn them to economic speculators, looking for opportunities to exploit one another in order to survive in the cage, in the name of entrepreneurship, looking for cheaper goods to import and sell.
This desperate survival struggle manifests in all the practices termed as corruption. Nigerians are afraid of themselves because there has never been a true agreement to cooperate and live in peace. They politicians are packing extra for their tenth generation because the system of governance in Nigeria does not guarantee the wellbeing of their descendants. The workers, who are paid peanuts, try to cut corners and do extra business, in order to get their families a decent life. Even the arrested criminals rightly point to the hopeless condition of Nigeria as the cause their involvement in crime.
A way out is seeking a new agreement between the ethnic communities in Nigeria on the mode of their co-existence. It will enable a discussion about the ownership and management of human and mineral resources in different parts of Nigeria. Nigerians are not DNA corrupt; the system of governance imposed on them is corrupt, and breeds corruption, even in the good people. Nobody can fight corruption in Nigeria, unless we change the horrible system of governance imposed and sustained by gun. If the style of social structure imposed on Nigeria was imposed in other places like in Europe, they would be worse than Nigeria.
[1] cf. Richard Dowden, op cit. p.445
[2] Richard Dowden, op cit. p3
[3] Richard Dowden, op. Cit. p3