Tortoise, Nigerians and our vanishing sense of shame
By Emeka Oparah
THE tortoise or turtle, if you will, is reputed to be a wily animal, packed full of mischief and tricks. It is also known to be very wise and sagacious in his postulations. The African literature is replete with famous exploits of the tortoise, which oft reminds one of the satirical exploits of the animals in George Orwell's Animal Farm. On one occasion, all the men in the Animal Kingdom had assembled to discuss and decide on what to do with their wives, who have generally gone haywire with their chronic misbehaviours and growing lunacy. As the fable goes, every single animal came out and accused his wife of one misdemeanour or another including adultery, stealing, quarrelsomeness, obduracy, name it. And the tortoise was said to have derisively dismissed the infractions as mere jokes, 'small things', compared to his wife's heinous crime.
Challenged to name the crime, the tortoise shook his head wearily, smiled wryly, looked up and down and around, hissed and then said: "My brothers, your wives are saints compared to my wife. The crimes they have committed are too minor when juxtaposed with the intolerable and unpardonable behavior of my wife: lack of shame! When someone has no sense of shame, then he or she can commit all the crimes you all listed and still look for more to commit". According to story, all the animals applauded the tortoise for his sagacious contribution, as usual. Now, looking back at 49 years of Nigeria's independence, one can conclude with the certainty of the tortoise that we, Nigerians, have either lost our sense of shame or we don't even have it all. By the way, the only good thing about October 1st, otherwise known as Nigeria's Independence Day, is that it is, more importantly, my wife's birthday. So, we have always got, and will always get, a holiday to celebrate her day.
Regarding the phenomenon of our vanishing sense of shame, Governor Adams Oshiomole of Edo State was the first to point it out early in the year during the public lecture to mark the birthday of Prof. Pat Utomi. Then, recently, Monsignor Hoteyin of St. Agnes Catholic Church, in one of his usually hilarious homilies made reference to the same issue. On both occasions, I completely agreed with the man of God and the man of the people, who appeared to have reflected further on the problems of Nigeria beyond the failure of leadership. Let us consider a few instances and see how our sense of shame is fast vanishing.
A former politician or government official is accused with compelling evidence of embezzling public funds and he or she engages local and international lawyers, who brazenly apply the use or rather abuse of court injunctions to frustrate the prosecution of the crime. Then, the criminal recruits a Public Relations agency or blatantly bribes the media to publish inanities and lame defence of the indefensible. That is absolute lack of shame. Corollary to this is, a top bank official, for instance, who has mismanaged shareholders funds and looted depositors' cash, embarks on legal and media warfare to deceive and confuse the public and divert the attention of the public.
Still on politics, today we have people who went round their states, campaigned and won by hook or crook to become either Governor or Senator or even Local Government Chairman. Some did two terms of eight years and left their constituencies the way they were and even worse, at times. Some of them are currently occupying top government positions as ministers and all. They shamelessly visit their homes and bask in the inglorious castigation and aspersions thrown their way by their disenchanted constituents.
Have you ever heard of a Nigerian politician or government official resign in shame? Even when they are caught pants-down, in a manner of speaking, they hang on stubbornly and greedily to power, some of them even unto death. In Japan recently, Shoichi Nakagawa, the country's former finance minister, committed suicide after he was disgraced out of office. 56-year-old Shoichi, a well-known alcoholic, lost the battle with the bottle when he appeared at a Press Conference at the last G-7 meeting in Rome looking absolutely inebriated. Suicide seems to be a family tradition, because his father had died similarly 25 years ago, but Shoichi's fate was really sealed by the resounding failure of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). While I do not advocate suicide, the moral of this Japanese tragedy is that public officials should be contrite enough to quit their jobs when they fall short of expectations rather than take advantage of the rather slow Nigerian legal system.
There is no situation that most underscores our collective lack of shame as a people than the seemingly intractable electricity power situation. Way back in 2001, the federal government promised uninterrupted power supply by the end of that year. It never happened and has never happened and does not look like it will ever happen - going by the evidence on ground. When the current government 'threatened' an emergency in the power sector and followed up with the empanelling of a high-powered committee to sort out the energy crisis, Nigerians thought that would be it. But, it has been one excuse or the other. Later on, they promised 6000mw by end of 2009. We are barely three months away from the target date and there are not even subtle indications that 2000mw will be generated much less 6000mw! And government officials are shamelessly speaking from both sides of their mouths and carrying on like it is normal not to fulfill promises.
The rising spate of kidnapping across the country has also amplified our vanishing sense of shame. Imagine a 90-year-old woman being kidnapped by young men, young enough to be her grandchildren, who apparently hail from the same village with her! The general explanation is that these young men are being lured into kidnapping and other crimes due to unemployment, but where has our sense of community gone? We are no longer our brother's keeper! I remember the year some young men broke into our family house, six months after my father's death, and removed literally every item of belonging in the house. Someone was apparently monitoring my mother, a hapless widow, until she stepped out of the house and then they moved in to do their evil deed. The criminals were not from Mars or even from another town; they were locals!
I know it is no longer fashionable to grumble about the desecration of traditional authority via flagrant and reckless distribution of chieftaincy titles. We have seen renowned criminals, Advance Fee Fraudsters, Drug Barons, Armed Robbers and fraudulent businessmen and women as well as kleptomaniac politicians being "crowned" by traditional rulers. Even in the church, well-known criminals are knighted and appointed into Parish Councils. Also the obscene display of ill-gotten wealth in the midst of crass poverty is another pointer to the disappearing sense of shame. In their penury, mendicant villagers troop to locals events in the hope of catching some of the fresh wads of local and foreign currencies thrown around by the super-rich men.
Now this: Have you noticed the mode of dressing currently gaining popularity among women? As one comedian said recently, while the men are trying hard to dress up properly, the women are making serious effort to undress themselves. Even mothers or married women, who are ordinarily expected to show higher levels of sartorial decorum, now flaunt their cleavages like they are on Breasts Parade! Along the roads and even in offices, women ingloriously expose various parts of their anatomy, which are otherwise private and the exclusive preserve of their spouses. Sometimes, I wonder whether the men, their husbands, do not see anything wrong with the way their wives dress. I am not an apostle of Elizabethan dressing, but pray what are we teaching our children by allowing the women to flaunt their nakedness with reckless abandon? And how about that for the growing immorality in our society!
Perhaps, the most disgraceful display of this lack of shame is the one collectively put up by Nigerians. It seems nothing annoys us. The elasticity of our tolerance is limitless, so much so that anybody can do anything and get away with it. As they say, if you push a Nigerian to the wall, he will break the wall to get away. Even animals will resist!
Like the tortoise said, when people lack a sense of shame, they are capable of doing anything and accepting anything. Nigerians need to go back to basics to rediscover our lost or disappearing values. This can be achieved at the family level, religious level and traditional level. When we begin to insist on those attributes and behaviours, which boldly distinguish us from animals, we will start clawing our way back to sanity. In our homes, we must begin to demand high moral and ethical standards of behavior because the family is fundamental in the organisation of society. Ditto our churches and mosques. By the way, I thought we had a ministry of national orientation, which should have the mandate to drive an ethical revolution in the country. There couldn't be a better time than now to get to work and start changing the behaviour of Nigeria. We are fast becoming a shameless people, and that is very sad indeed.
- Oparah writes from Lagos.
