The value system of the old, emptiness, delinquency of the new: The story of our tragedy (I)

In the last few weeks, so much has been said about our respected Gen Yakubu Gowon. I would not wish to repeat what has been said severally and eloquently by people far more qualified. I would rather save us the repetition and turn our thoughts to something that has not gotten our attention yet, but […]

In the last few weeks, so much has been said about our respected Gen Yakubu Gowon. I would not wish to repeat what has been said severally and eloquently by people far more qualified. I would rather save us the repetition and turn our thoughts to something that has not gotten our attention yet, but which, I believe, going forward, is very important. This is looking at the value system that produced those qualities of the respected General which had saturated the air waves and filled the pages of newspapers in the last few weeks.

The presence of the General reminds us of those good old days when this value system held sway. His presence, for which we remain grateful to God, elicits nostalgia for a value system that stood out among the value systems of their contemporary societies. His demeanour enthuses humility and reminds us of Lao Tzu’s observation, that “All streams flow to the ocean because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power.” His records remind us about how much we have veered off and taken a trajectory, previously inconceivable, resulting into the tragedy that our country has now become.

General Gown must be daily embarrassed, living in society which has lost its sense of shame and as the old line goes, “if a society loses its moral values, it loses everything”. Better still, as Mehrnaz Bassari would say, “Without a moral compass, the human mind will justify anything.” What I therefore thought may be more useful at this occasion and more honourable to our celebrant is to reflect on those values which defined their times and gave them the quality of life they had. The nexus between the quality of life and the values of society has long been established. An example more familiar to the elite in Nigeria is the American example, whose constitution and political system we borrowed.

• NIGERIA DAILY: What The Nigerian Constitution Says About The Vice President
• Unsold goods hit N2.14trn in 2024; MAN cites weak demand, high production costs

Fredrick Douglass, the black abolitionist, the orator and the conscience of his times, said that “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organised conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” This always happens where the political class focuses on their privileges and ignore their primary responsibility, which is the welfare and security of the citizens. As D. D. Eisenhower put it, ”A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” This discussion on values has become particularly necessary today, given our broken society, because it will be sad, to say the least, if the elite, the cream of society, should today gather in this air-conditioned hall, in the name of an honourable gentleman, our revered General, and fail to rise and speak about the moral crisis, which for the last quarter century, has afflicted our society with poverty, insecurity, decay of institutions and infrastructure and an unprecedented level of corruption that has frustrated our development and destroyed the image of our country globally.

Admittedly, this affliction has been occasioned precisely because Nigerian elites have ignored the values of old and embraced a new culture of insatiable greed, a culture of ignorance and arrogance, a culture of tip-toeing around our problems rather than confronting and resolving them. One of the benefits of the presence in our midst of leaders like General Gowon is to remind us of our moral degeneration and our failure to maintain the institutions they built and our failure to live up to our responsibilities and to hopefully work towards fixing our value system.

The list of these values is long and since time will not allow for an exhaustive presentation, I would like to limit myself to just five: Contentment, Conscience, Respect for Rule of law, respect for order and appreciation of and planning for the future. And briefly, too.

1. Contentment

• In the days of General Gowon, the level of contentment of leaders was such that they lived simple lives as evidenced in the houses they left behind. None of them felt the need to build and retire into a mansion or acquire streets of landed properties, or keep fleet of vehicles or even own hotels or tax collecting companies that will ensure a stream of huge income to guarantee a lush life-style. And all these at the expense of the public treasury. Indeed, society then, stood sentinel, watching out for those who may wish to live above their means. The moment one starts living above one’s means, one becomes suspect, the community starts keeping its distance from him and eventually he becomes ostracised by the community. Because of contentment, ostentation had no place in their society.

You simply cannot impress people by your wealth or the public office you occupy. People then, were rated by their character and craving for wealth or attention was seen as the worst of characters, and it was treated as such. The true worth of a man, then, was his character, echoing the stoics of Greek antiquity who, in the words of Marcus Aurelius, believed that, “the true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.” Ask yourself, how much did the Sardauna of Sokoto or Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa leave behind? Yet, 60 years after, their image continues to loom large in the Northern horizon.

• Just to be sure, it was not that there was no corruption then. Rather the scale, the frequency and the impunity then would appear so insignificant that the then perpetrators would look like saints today. Because of the absence of contentment today, people entrusted with public resources, at all levels, pounce on these resources to amass as much as they can before their tenure ends. Some even make arrangements to keep collecting tolls even after they would have served their tenure and gone.

In sane societies, this will be considered a mental illness. For example, today we have a former accountant general, who in the span of a few years was able to pinch off over N100 billion into his personal account, among many other spoils; only God knows what more. In spite of the publicity, this same person not only went scot-free but also received a traditional title from a monarch. When you look at a former governor of the Central Bank even this fades into insignificance.

It is not abating, for just recently, a renovation of an international conference centre built originally at N240 million, admittedly over three decades ago, today is being renovated at N39 billion; incredible stories of snakes swallowing millions of cash; all these point to the absence of contentment and the setting in of an insatiable greed that today continues to ravage public resources and subvert national development.

(To be continued)

Text of speech delivered to mark Gowon at 90, organised by Barewa Old Boys Association (BOBA) on November 9, 2024, in Abuja