Senate SUVs and Nigeria’s smash-and-grab democracy… if we could turn back the hands of time (1)

My hope was that immediately after the new government came, they would ask for people who want to volunteer – work for free or next to nothing. The enthusiasm then was that high. I knew many people who supported the #CHANGE that would have done that at the drop of a hat. Let us think […]

My hope was that immediately after the new government came, they would ask for people who want to volunteer – work for free or next to nothing. The enthusiasm then was that high. I knew many people who supported the #CHANGE that would have done that at the drop of a hat. Let us think back to the heady days when we all felt a sense of satisfaction and great achievement. Perhaps every man and woman on the streets that supported change felt they were partly responsible for the victory at the polls. We had great moments of anxiety and fear. Some – like me – waited in the darkness to vote at 12 midnight, and used whatever resource was available to us on social media to track the votes and broadcast everywhere so that PDP will not spring any surprises.
Remember the days. They seem so far away now. We could never imagine that so soon we would have cause to entertain ANY complaints. Not from any Nigerian, least of all from those who struggled and took risks within their capacity to ensure that a change in government came to reality.
Many have forgotten. Sometimes, reality deals such a painful blow, the best thing is to revel in fantasy. It helps. For in this instance, it must be said that reality has given birth to a monster. We the people cannot recognize that monster. In fact, we are scared by it.
Nothing indicates and underlines our predicament better than the saga at the Senate.  The Senate President, Bukola Saraki is busy answering to his past misdemeanors at the Code of Conduct Bureau (I wish he would answer to more serious charges of corruption with a proper court or EFCC not this thing that daily looks like a charade). And as if that is not enough, the Senate decides to go ahead with what has been rumoured a few months back; the purchase of Sports Utility Vehicles, in a time when government has been telling the people how bad things are, even as they owe workers across the length and breadth of Nigeria. The senators insist that they need their cars else no work will be done.
Again, let us remember the heady days when we thought we owned this government. Let us remember the amount of sacrifice we were prepared to give for Nigeria. The senate and house of representative, whom we hear has also concluded plans for its own cars (N3.6billion worth as reported by Daily Trust of 19th April, 2016), have not wasted time in confirming to Nigerians that governance here is still largely transactional; it is all about what you can grab and run with. If any of us had any illusions of what it is all about, that illusion has now flown outside the window. As it was in 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011 so it is today. Maybe only worse. And we are meant to be under a #CHANGE government? What did we do to deserve this nightmare?
We should have known. When the rumour first filtered out, with the president even mentioning it in his first media chat, Senator Gbenga Ashafa, representing some constituency in Lagos State, among other senators, granted an interview where he stated categorically that they will not be able to work without these luxury cars. He asked if they were to trek to go and do this ‘oversight’ work. Someone suggested they buy coasters or buses that can convey multiples of them, they scoffed at the belittling idea. Now they have gone ahead, in the middle of this famine in the land, to buy luxury cars for their glory and splendor, each car worth N35million – or $175,000. Ehmm. Mention this story anywhere in the world today, from the USA to Kathmandu, from Australia to Russia, and people will hit the roof. It is the height of outrage, a totally criminal, unfeeling, disgusting, and outrageous act.
But the Senators have put up their defense. As asinine as it sounds; “others are doing it”, it is worthy of note.  Yes, even among presidential advisers, while we were being regaled of the ‘unprecedented’ malfeasance of the Jonathan era, these new people, whom we thought will go there and make sacrifices on behalf of Nigeria, have since settled themselves. Nigeria is kukumathe world’s biggest per capita and perhaps absolute purchaser of sport utility vehicles. In the height of the global recession in 2009/10, Toyota did announce in Japan that they could have gone under but for Nigeria for purchasing shitloads of their Landcruisers and Prados. Carlos Ghosn’s ears picked that up and pricked like an Alsatian dog, and he headed to Nigeria to start a plant… and produce Nissan Pajero, to take some of the market from Prado at source.  We gathered, deceived ourselves and hailed our achievements in ‘industrialisation’. Some of us said it then but who listens?

Mental illness
Nigerians are not corrupt, I have always insisted. A friend recently made a statement that we were all born as thieves, to which I strongly objected. We weren’t born corrupt. But many of us have not attained a certain level of intelligence and altruism, the type you don’t learn in any university in the world, no matter their claim to fame and knowledge. Nigerians are exactly as Lugard described them in 1912; many if not most of us have no inkling the results that our actions will bring in the near future on our society. We have no sense of collective. This translates to bad governance and everything else we see. And like Reuben Abati revealed last week, once you are in government, forget about acting differently; you are one of them, signed into a cult of secrecy and mass robbery of the commonwealth.
Nigerians are not corrupt. A correct diagnosis of our situation with these guys in government may reveal other ailments; a mental problem perhaps. Megalomania. Yes, it is a mania. And like nymphomania or kleptomania, it is a disease that can be managed over time, if not curable. It is this hubris, this ego-tripping, that leads to this mad grab for Nigeria’s resources at that level. Describing it as ‘corruption’ befuddles the problem, belittles it, confuses it, and helps us to lose the opportunity of managing or curing it because we haven’t quite identified and isolated the symptoms and causes.
As an aside, other causes of corruption at a lower level include fear; fear of the unknown, of illnesses, of job loss, of being stranded in old age, of debilitating expensive diseases, of shame from not being able to meet obligation to family. There is also corruption that stems from expired cultural pressures. Nigerians easily spend N20million on each wedding these days, and even more on burials. No one in developed countries spends like that and we are on this same planet! Add to these the fact that if we don’t put devices in place to block people from stealing money, many would because the money is just there for the taking.