KWAM 1, KWAM 2: Foucault in Nigeria again

In late October 2021, I wrote in these pages about how the French philosopher, Michel Foucault understands the connections between language and power through a concept he calls “discourse”, and how such an idea is useful for understanding everyday social relations in Nigeria. I am happy to report that my teacher and Professor of English […]

In late October 2021, I wrote in these pages about how the French philosopher, Michel Foucault understands the connections between language and power through a concept he calls “discourse”, and how such an idea is useful for understanding everyday social relations in Nigeria. I am happy to report that my teacher and Professor of English Literature at my alma mater, Bayero University, Ibrahim Bello-Kano subsequently told me that many of his students found the piece useful for their “Literary Theory” classes. I also took that class with him more than 20 years ago, and then read more about it at universities in Britain.

In the debates sparked by the two airport incidents we now call “KWAM 1 and KWAM 2”, I found myself thinking back to the ideas of Foucault again, in particular, his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975). I thought the incidents reflect more about the collapse of what Foucault calls a “disciplinary society” in Nigeria than they illustrate double standards in our justice system that many commentators framed the incidents to be. Let me explain.

Foucault’s crucial argument throughout his works is that power is not concentrated in government or politics, but is diffused everywhere in society across everyday interactions, discourses and institutions. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault argues that there is a wide range of instruments by which a society regulates and enforces individual conduct and behaviour. Social institutions like schools, hospitals, workplaces, religious bodies, and even the family (elsewhere in his work) function to regulate and enforce what individuals say and do just as much state institutions like the police, courts, prisons, military barracks and so on.

It is just that, Foucault notes, these varying instruments wield power differently. Where the justice system uses coercion to compel obedience, social institutions like the family, religious bodies, schools and workplaces do so more subtly, by transmitting ideas about norms, expectations and what is acceptable conduct or not in given individual and collective circumstances every day. These institutions enforce discipline and compliance through a wide variety of seemingly simple and ordinary techniques such as duty roasters, schedules, deadlines, examinations, official records, norms, moral codes, and even language use itself.

In other words, families, schools, religious bodies, and workplaces also help to create a “disciplinary society” comprising compliant and more productive citizens. Conceived in this Foucauldian sense, then, “discipline”, both personal and social, is central to the reproduction of the modern state and society.

Now, it is easy to dismiss the foregoing as no more than high theory or “academic jargon”, as we normally do with anything that involves even a bit of thinking. But it is just as real as the air we breathe. Consider, for example, an otherwise mundane yet revealing example as the use of deadlines in schools. In many educational systems around the world, deadlines are taken very seriously and come with all kinds of real consequences, penalties, and sanctions that are almost unfailingly and, in most cases, evenly applied to all concerned.

Missing a set deadline by a school or teacher can mean waiting another year for admission, enrolment, graduation or failing the course. Deadlines and schedules in schools, hospitals and workplaces are a serious business, not just because they help schools and workplaces run according to plan, but also because they represent a tool for disciplining individuals to respect rules and comply with them.

In other words, although Foucault wrote disapprovingly about these social institutions in the context of his arguments about how power is widely distributed in society, schools, family units, religious bodies, workplaces, etc, nevertheless help to ensure that individuals internalise and normalise compliance with rules. And they do so by enforcing simple rules like deadlines, as well as by teaching people certain norms, expectations, and codes of appropriate behaviour in innumerable contexts, at least for the most part.

This is where I get to my main point. The trouble with Nigeria, as Chinua Achebe did not say, is that the proper functions of these institutions have collapsed in Nigerian society, or at least almost. The family, the school, and the church/mosque are perhaps the worst hit. One consequence of this development is the near complete loss of any sense of right and wrong and the collapse of shared standards for appropriate conduct in public spaces or contexts, which, in turn, are manifested in millions of everyday social interactions and encounters among Nigerians throughout the country.

One marked space in which this collapse of shared standards of conduct manifests as daily chaos is in the provision and consumption of services of any kind, whether at a hospital, a restaurant, a banking hall, a classroom, or inside an aircraft. Service providers are generally rude and uncouth in Nigeria, but in equal measure, so too are the customers of any service. If you have ever gone to a hospital, a bank, a motor park or an airport terminal, a security checkpoint for any kind of service, you will have an idea what I am talking about.

Everyone is rude and impolite to the other person. I always wonder why Nigerians are so rude to one another but so polite to foreigners. Every Nigerian demands “respect” from other Nigerians, but is unwilling to give or return it, in the street, on social media, or wherever. The result is a million cries of “do you know who I am” shouted at one another everywhere every day. It is difficult to know who is right or wrong in this mess because the very idea of “respect”, in the sense of a shared sense of human dignity and compliance with basic rules, is poorly understood in Nigeria. If you are respectful, you might receive disrespect in return; if you are disrespectful, you might get away with it. Everyone, then, learns to be disrespectful while demanding respect for themselves at the same time.

This is what I think happened in both airport incidents. KWAM 1, the musician Wasiu Ayinde Marshal, tried to disrupt a flight because he would not follow the simple rule of giving up his flask for inspection for alcohol, which is prohibited on flights. “KWAM 2”, the young lady Comfort Emmanson refused to switch off her phone as required by flight boarding rules. The argument is that KWAM 2 was treated harshly because she is an ordinary Nigerian, and not a celebrity.

That argument is probably valid, but it really misses the point about the state of affairs in Nigerian society today. You could easily find a million Nigerians who will act in much the same way as either Marshal or Emmanson, and many will actually get away with both actions. If you switch the context, both Marshal and Emmanson would easily have gotten away with what they did. In fact, the same Miss Emmanson could well have assaulted a school teacher, a nurse, or a shop assistant somewhere, and she could have gotten away with it. Depending on the social context, many Nigerians will readily abuse their privileges or violate the rights of others without blinking.
There are scarcely any “ordinary” or “innocent” Nigerians in this country when it comes to playing by rules. We must bring back social discipline or rebuild it anew.