Upside-down thinkers and inverted zombies

When we’re supposed to punish, we forgive.  When it’s time to forgive, we kill. Bring a solution to Nigeria, and it instantly becomes a problem.  We’re upside down thinkers and unthinking automatons.  We invert every thought process of rational human beings.  Following, however, are five which drive me crazy.Wicked professorsAs near as I can tell, […]

When we’re supposed to punish, we forgive.  When it’s time to forgive, we kill. Bring a solution to Nigeria, and it instantly becomes a problem.  We’re upside down thinkers and unthinking automatons.  We invert every thought process of rational human beings.  Following, however, are five which drive me crazy.
Wicked professors
As near as I can tell, if there were a universities ranking, using a depravity scale of some description, our university teachers would emerge several standard deviations above normal.  For in this hall of infamy, the class is rather hemmed in in Nigeria.  We tick all the bad boxes.
Many of our teachers are not worth the chalk in their hands; and one finds them to be the most depraved fools ever encounter.  
Let me illustrate with a true story, to extract only one instance from Nigeria’s large corpus of academic cruelty and mindlessness.  In his first class, an economics professor, at a federal university in Northern Nigeria, introduced his philosophy to his students with a speech laden with rhetoric of fear.  “Even if Adam Smith comes back from the dead,” he said, “he would be incapable of earning an A in my class.”  
The professor explained that an individual with the aptitude to generate an intellectual output deserving of an A in his class had not been born.  As usual, the students, as they are wont to do, watched as he ranted – no one was able to pluck the courage to challenge this nonsense.  
After an examination, one of the more capable students was given a C.  This student was, you see, a rather capable scholar in many subjects, including Economics.  Thus, as students of his ilk often do, he balked at the score he was given, I deserve better, he said.  When records were checked, it was discovered that our student got 54 in the examination, but his CA test scores couldn’t be found. Upon further exploration, his CA scripts were discovered in another department – and he scored 18 on the test. When that was added to 54, he got a total of 72, which was an A at that university, I was told.
When the professor realized that the student got an A, he banged the table and said that wasn’t possible.  He hypothesized that there was a mistake somewhere during the marking and requested to re-score the papers.  The HOD, however, would have none of that.  To cut a mind-numbing story short, this visiting professor, on account of shame and anger, stopped coming to the university.
The question here is, what kind of a teacher believes that his teaching is not adequate enough to produce an A student?  And if other students from around the world are able to get an A in the same subject, does that make their professors inferior to this Nigerian useless professor?  What a depraved point of view!
This is not an isolated case, it is the general mental position of our professors, from which they view academic performance.  Their job is not to break down a complex subject, to make accessible its concepts.  Their duty, it appears, is to make complex what is easy and prove to students that the subject is really not that easy.  
Crazy driving and forgiveness
Another experience that Nigerians have got upside down is driving.  I’m often baffled by how Nigerians are able to forgive reckless driving and the attending infractions, but they are not able to forgive lesser crimes.  
I’m drawn to recall an incident that happened while I was in Malaysia.  I was backing away from an ATM after withdrawal.  My wife and son were in the back seat.  I miscalculated by bearing and scratched an undergraduate student’s car with my own.  Knowing the society in which I then lived, when I came down, the logical line of discussion was to ask how I was going to fix the damage.   In Malaysia, if you caused an accident, you’re expected to fix the damage, period.  Nobody begs.  And nobody has any time to entertain your entreaties.  If you’re unfortunate, however, and the matter reaches the police, the insurance company would fix the damage, but the police would fine you RM300, about N15, 000.  
In Nigeria, however, nobody expects to be paid for any damage on a conveyance, regardless of how recklessly the culprit drove.  The usual reaction is: “I’m sorry.”  The victim reassesses the damage and says: “Go, but don’t do this again.”  But the culprit does it again?  Why? He would do it again because he wasn’t punished the first time.  Economics teaches us that people’s behaviours can be modified by an incentive, which is what punishment for offences is.  In Nigeria, we don’t punish such offenses, we reward them.  
The same society however, sees nothing wrong in lynching a hungry thief who steals a N5000 mobile phone. Before they kill him, however, they strip him.  Southern Nigerians particularly enjoy the ritual stripping people to prepare them for punishment for every kind of infractions.
To be continued