Nigeria and the “care –
free’’ culture
“Culture” according to Sir E.B Tylor
(an anthropologist) is that complex whole that includes Knowledge, beliefs,
arts, morals, laws, customs, and any other capabilities and habits that are collectively
acquired by man as member of society. While culture is a beautiful phenomenon
that creates a platform for uniqueness and group identity, however, certain
behavioral practices stems from dangerous and unpalatable habits of the people and
later expands into a full blown culture. Over the years as a result of
political shortsightedness and inefficiencies which created economic stagnation
and social nuisances, Nigeria according to my philosophy has eventually fit
into an analogy of a fleshy human body having its skeletal frame work made of
half bones, quarter sticks, with some parts held together by brooms, some by
straws, making the country one with a philosophy of a staggering drunkard that
stands and fall bedeviled with disappearing and re – appearing moments of
stupor.
From the day the Nigeria political
institution chose to be myopic in handling the steering of our economic train,
other institution followed suite, and now we have a nation which preaches hope
unending and longsuffering in the face of glaring mishandling of our Political vehicle.
In a Nation where nearly 89% of our persons knows not the provisions of the
constitution, except for some moments of swipe across the pages of fundamental
human rights in our schools and in dire situations, which many of us can’t even
recollect because the practicability of this rights have never smeared our
nostrils. In a society where Law makers hardly read or study enough to know the
problems confronting the persons on whose behalf, they are making laws. In a
nation that hasn’t found the basis to care for its environment, giving us
situations where nylons, tyres, broken plates, even unused chairs find their
ways into our drainage system, and funny enough, over the planks that crosses
our “gutters” as we call and use it in local parlance, are women serving hot ‘’Eewa gauin’’ with hot
akumu or bread as you would love to have it, in conjunction with the putrid
discharge from the gutter; Nigerians don’t care , “nothing they happen jooor”
as boys will yarn. When rain drizzles heavily especially for my Lagos goons,
and flooding bemoans, we will start reminding GOD of HIS promise never to
destroy the world with flood again, HE smiles and shakes HIS HEAD, and you know
what that means.
When I remembered that as at 2013
four teenage Secondary school geniuses as girls; 14 year-old Duro-Aina
Adebola, Akindele Abiola, and Faleke
Oluwatoyin, and 15-year-old Bello Eniola geared their efforts at trying to make
renewable energy available for use in Nigeria by demonstrating how the hydrogen
element in our urine can be converted into electricity by an electrolytic cell
with gas cylinders in conjunction with a generator. Having recorded many
instances of death by inhalation of carbon monoxide fumes, emitted by petroleum
fuelled generators in this country, one would have believed that such incidents
that has wiped out a whole family on several occasions, would be strong enough as
grounds for our governmental bodies, concerned agencies and ministries to not
only advance the efforts of these young ladies, but to also aid the large scale
production and commercialization of their invention, but no!!! the changeeeees
they are getting from large scale importation of generators from other nations
that on their own have sufficient electricity, has made our political actors
stiff necked and blind to the realities of our time and the unavoidable demands
of the future. Our National philosophy is built on spending and consuming and
legalized by provisions in the constitution. Petrol stations and breweries are
now jostling with residential houses and spaces across our roads, as long as
money can be gained or made from even selling our own defecation to the outside
world on demand, many Nigerians won’t mind, ‘’man most chop’’, even justice is
sold to the seemingly guilty folks. And when several nations are already inventing
automated vehicles that need no human driver, and setting years to implement
their proliferation we are yet to begin local sourcing and assembling of bikes/motorcycles.
Yet we are comfortable with our status of self made dumping market, where every
latest invention tried, used and dumped by Europeans and Co are shipped into
our ports and auctioned at crazy prices we feel overjoyed to pay.
Our Schools are
not left out of the picture, from kindergarten to the university level, a
child’s talent and competence are hardly noticed, to the extent that a child
who has developed urged for writing or poetry or say music is directed in the
way of engineering and physics and vice versa. Our universities are great
destiny changers, as students with viable UTME AND WAEC SCORES with stated
interest in a particular course or department, are Trans - loaded into
faculties and departments they had to struggle to adapt to (mathematics to
Performing arts, accounting to zoology). With the much publicized notion and spreading
public attitude of; you better accept what you are given, Na the wey GOD write
am be that o.
In a society where
we are currently battling to export locally made rice, and have started
exporting yams abroad (what a breakthrough), a society of decades of UP
Nepa!!!!!! Death traps as roads, corruption as a seemingly enthroned chairman in
every nook and cranny of our society, where a Giant called nation sits and look
up to island made nations for food and monetary aid. A nation where education
is a necessity but gainful employment is a blinking option. Of course I searched
and seek that context by which I sort to describe our lot as a society but I
just couldn’t find one until I stumble on John Breen’s description of culture which
seems to shed light on our woe; according to him, culture can be understood as
a society’s answer to a series of “fundamental questions” about what it values.
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