Small, small issues that bother me

Well, for me, I believe that the truly major problems with our country are not the so-called big, big issues but the little, little ones we all seem to ignore or pay no regard to but which in my opinion are acting as great hindrances to the achievement of our so-called lofty goals. My advocacy […]

Well, for me, I believe that the truly major problems with our country are not the so-called big, big issues but the little, little ones we all seem to ignore or pay no regard to but which in my opinion are acting as great hindrances to the achievement of our so-called lofty goals. My advocacy is that our politicians should in fact be made to dwell on some of the little, little issues which I think are impinging even more on the polity than the so-called big issues of the economy, unemployment, insecurity, falling oil prices, qualitative education, the 16 million housing deficit, etc.
You may laugh at some of the small, small things I will point out shortly but to me they represent my own big issues that need to be addressed urgently by our politicians. Take, for example, the issue of the general lack of honesty in our inter-personal and public lives and the resulting atmosphere of general distrust in our country. In this land, you cannot believe anyone who gives you his word on anything. If you are naïve enough to trust anyone, no matter how high, sophisticated or God-fearing you think he is, you do so at very grave risk to your interest. I sometime think that the legend stamped on some T shirts in the ’60s and ’70s such as ‘’Trust No Baby’’ should now be revived and changed to ‘’Trust No Nigerian’’.
In our country today, it is becoming a given that you should trust no one because he or she is not going to be true to you. All our artisans seem to have in their profession code the need to cheat customers. Your mechanic will cheat you. Where you take steps to ensure that he does not rip you off, say in the purchase of spare-parts for your car, he will connive with the spare-parts sellers to ensure that both get a pound of flesh from you. Your driver will cheat you. Give him N5, 000 to get fuel for the car and he makes sure he keeps back a thousand or two for himself. Ask a block moulder to give you a certain number of blocks from a bag of cement, he will strive to keep back some bags by giving you blocks with 70 per cent sand and 30 per cent cement. Many buildings collapse in our country are traceable to this form of cheating. Many Nigerians have since stopped buying vehicles and giving to drivers to ply and give a daily return because no driver will be true to you.
It is as if the rule of the game in Nigeria has been re-written specifying that everyone should be out to cheat someone else. It is not uncharitable to say we are more or less living in a jungle. As trivia as some of these examples look, they are actually issues of civilisation and barbarism.  And if you ask me, we are living in a most barbaric jungle where you are commanded to eat or you are eaten. And we say issues like these are not major? What can be more major than these which speak of the very foundation of society itself? Without the rules of trust, honesty, reliability or dependability gluing people and acting as the prop, society collapses and we all are imperilled as is the case now in Nigeria. We need to talk about this sort of malady we have brought upon ourselves with even greater fervency than about the economy itself. If we do not get this right, there is no way that we can have an economy that will prosper for the benefit of all. What we have now is a jungle economy where the fittest in cunning, jungle tactics, brazenness and impunity survives and prospers while the rest are reduced to beggarly status.
This has profound effect on our lack of economic progress. It is the reason I appreciate why the Bible has devoted large portions on God’s laws meant to guide our interpersonal relations here on earth. Once interpersonal relations cannot be conducted based on truth, honesty and good conscience, the society breaks down and everyone in it suffers. For me therefore one of the major issues for debate is how our politicians will address this issue of extreme dishonesty in our conduct. How do we revive our moral values whose degeneration has made us vulnerable to bribery and corruption? How come even foreigners bribe with great ease even the top echelon of our leadership in order to have a leeway to plunder and destroy our economy?
I warned earlier that you should not laugh because my next ‘’big’’ issue may cause some to do so. It has to do with bumps or speed breakers on some of our major highways across the country. You see, bumps, some of them so crudely made that they destroy vehicles especially the low bed ones, are springing up in such alarming rate everywhere in the country, greatly hindering social and economic intercourse. Let me speak about a route I am most familiar with. A trip by road from Abuja through Keffi, Lafia, Makurdi, Katsina- Ala to Ogoja in CRS is now becoming pure torture. Every little village along this route, especially in Nasarawa and Benue, now constructs a speed breaker to slow down vehicles, apparently to prevent over speeding which kills members of their community. Nasarawa and Benue states have the highest numbers of bumps per capita in the country. A journey that used to take about 5 hours now takes about 8 or 9, all because of too many and dangerous speed breakers. This, to me, represents retrogression not progress. We need to bring this in as a major campaign issue.
My next little/ major worry is the level of sexual immorality in our country. The ease with which our children enter into sexual relationships these days is quite worrisome. Sometimes they do not even recognize boundaries. Incest is silently and steadily becoming a major issue but not many seem to care. And our females seem to have acquired a certain kind of strange moral attitude.  In the good old days, even if a woman will eventually agree, she must give the man ‘’tough time’’. That does not happen anymore. The ready answer from our women, young and old, these days if a man bothers to ask, seems to be: ‘’why not? It’s not a big deal after all’’. As a result, the kind of whoring that is going on in our country puts to shame the one we heard about the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. We should begin to ask our campaigning politicians how they will tackle some of these seemingly trivia issues but which have such a profound effect on the quality of life and living in Nigeria.