Ranar Wanka
Sometimes, I wonder why human nature is so obsessed with self-victimhood. The fact that I have to wonder is itself a figment of that moral and intellectual convenience institutionalised by the culture of social self-interest and apparently this is at the heart of every human being. Since there is an exception to every rule, I […]
Sometimes, I wonder why human nature is so obsessed with self-victimhood. The fact that I have to wonder is itself a figment of that moral and intellectual convenience institutionalised by the culture of social self-interest and apparently this is at the heart of every human being. Since there is an exception to every rule, I refer to those of us who are mere mortals of course.
This spirit, what Friedrich Nietzsche called “the instinct of vengeance” typifies many human events in which a duplex relationship goes sour, or someone(s) felt wronged by someone(s) else’s acts of omission and commission.
As a Nigerian, born and bred, I have cause to believe that this self-righteous persecution complex is an auxiliary device found in the package deal we are all created from. About half the time, this gets in the way so much we end up blind, deaf and dumb – clinically incapable of reason and objectivity.
In about a little more than a month, it will be one of those days we have to bathe ourselves – and this will be like nature holding up a mirror to us, both individually as whoever we are and collectively as Nigerians. It will show us what we really look like – warts and all, without the self-serving delusions. Nigerians will decide those who will rule them at all the three tiers of political administration.
Kano Pillars land in Dakar for Jaraaf FC clash
Amia sure of Kano Pillars’ revenge against Jaraaf FC of Senegal
We have complained about the quality of those who have led us since before Dan Fodio showed up and that has not yet changed. It boggles many minds to learn that even the consecrated founding fathers of this nation were political villains to many during their time. We have been like lost sheep in the desert, with no Moses in sight probably since the beginning of the political history of our part of the Sudan and that still persists.
But all said and done, the big picture emerges, our problem is not leadership even though this also circles back to being a symptom of the problem. When you really think about it, those we call our leaders are in fact our victims, not just the other way round. We keep stuffing round pegs down the throat of round holes and in the process we compromise and break the peg, while also decimating the board itself. That means you end up with an eyesore.
This scenario mirrors that hypocritical sentiment against lawmen almost everyone in the world harbours. A cop is a pig much more than he is not an accoutrement of civil sophistication even though they are meant to be the latter and never the former. Their crime is falling victim to the “curse of Nietzsche” – “Those who hunt monsters must take care lest they become monsters themselves. If you stare down into the abyss long enough, the abyss will stare back at you.” Nigerian cops are an especially repugnant eyesore indeed… but when there is a documented mass propensity by a whole social demographic for something, you need to take a closer, objective look at the fundamentals. We send our lawmen into the abyss of society so we are shielded from it but they stayed and stared too long – what do you expect?
The foregoing is just the functional logic the context is derived from. Through the instruments of society, we encourage and goad and coax and seduce and bait mere mortals into the lawlessness of frontline leadership – that exposure appears to mangle and spoof a moral compass no matter how tightly wound it is. They become plutocrats, monsters without even knowing it. As products of lawlessness, plutocrats are apex predators who do not recognise the supremacy of the law over them, the lawlessness having gone into their heads and it became their new normal. The Hausa translation of the word “jungle” is the compound word – dokar daji, literally “law of the jungle”. A jungle denotes lawlessness, and you do not expect someone natured and nurtured by a jungle to understand or recognise any limit to the frivolity of their carnal whims. The political frontier in Nigeria is lawless because our institutions of state have proved incapable of policing and enforcing all relevant laws and regulations in that sphere anywhere near the extent at which the rest of society is under the leash of civilised order in a way that echoes and institutionalised Louis XIV’s “Le etat c’est moi” – the “state is me” sentiment. His immediate successor, Louis XV perfected the articulation of that totalitarian ideal in his own declaration, “après mois, le deluge”. That is Leadership 101 in Nigeria. For all our “leaders” care, society can crash and burn by the time they are done with it.
They were never leaders, they were not equipped for life in neither Sodom nor Gomorrah, but that we never cared about or never cared to care about. Either way, the verdict is right in our faces.
The hypocrisy here is in our petty contempt for our policemen as well as our politicians. A policeman is not only a pariah but an abomination. The eugenicist culture of ancient Sparta somewhat looked at the disabled veterans of its wars with disgust, so much so they chose not to return to the city and formed a colony of their own somewhere. If you believe this was unconscionably outrageous, you might be right. But back then, there was no moral question here. The way there is no moral question about why our policemen and politicians disgust us – because we sent them out into the abyss and they were left mangled after the abyss stared back into them.
On the February 25 and two weeks after that, Nigerians will have to go naked for a bath. The Hausa people have a saying – “ranar wanka, ba’a boyon cibi”. Literally, this translates into, “on bathing days, you cannot hide the navel”. On those days there will be nowhere to hide… you will have to see your cibi, the umbilical livewire of who we are both individually and collectively. You will have to take a hard look at your nakedness.
There is a silver lining though. It will be a bathing day. You know what that means. Take a good hard look at our belly button, drop the victimhood platitudes and make that an opportunity to cleanse and redeem that nakedness. Part of the pain we must face that day will come from the fact that all the foreseeable outcomes would be choices between the devil and the deep blue sea. Such is our predicament, but we can start from there.