Nigeria: In search of a people fit for change

The video of a blue trailer that broke down in the middle of an unspecified town in Nigeria is one of the trending videos of the week. The truck which was conveying rams and goats to an unknown destination possibly for sale in preparation for the Sallah festival broke down in a place that looks like a town in the Southern part of Nigeria and couldn’t be fixed immediately for the driver to continue the trip.

Instead of rallying round the poor driver to help him solve his problem, the youths in the town could be seen in the video running towards and around the truck to grab whichever of the rams and goats they could lay their hands upon.

One of the daylight thieves was struggling endlessly to carry the goat on his motorbike. The goat was determined to attempt self-deliverance. Another thief was tripped by his own loot and both the goat and the thief fell down on the walkway. In anger, the thief rained punches on the goat to register his annoyance for its foolish pranks and fierce resistance to the thief.

The video was funny but saddening. In a few seconds, it tells the story of Nigeria — unscripted, unedited and uncensored. Those who are not participating in the loot merely looked on or spared a quick glance and walked away. It reveals the character of most Nigerians and explains why Nigerians have been unable to experience the change many of them have been pretentiously or genuinely clamouring for.

If one is to give that video a fitting caption, it should be ‘This is Nigeria: A country of sinners searching for saintly political leaders’. It isn’t difficult at all for any sincere and truthful Nigerian to decipher why Nigeria remains a country groping in the darkness of self-discovery and stuttering on the pathway to development.

It’s a common phenomenon in Nigeria to see followers condemning the leaders openly for the same bad things they are doing secretly in their homes and darkplaces. They always forget that leadership reflects followers. Followership is the pool from which leaders emerge.

As the elders say: “The stone we throw at the palm tree is the same stone the palm tree throws back at us”. Whatever one gives to life is the same thing one should expect in return. That’s why they say “garbage in, garbage out”.

As an employer in Nigeria, one can’t afford to relax from the duty of keeping an eye on the affairs of the organisation. Even if you have several scores of brilliant employees, hundred eyes will never be like yours if you look away for 24 hours. If you don’t pay close attention to the employees out of trust, some of the staff will bleed the company into a coma before you could say, Jack Robinson. Most employees are only committed because of what they can get. They don’t really care whether the organisation shines or sinks. Ironically, the same wicked employees will open their mouths wide and be criticising ‘the leaders’ and the politicians for not caring about the people and the country.

Many business owners in this country are hooked on routinely cutting corners in various ways to cheat their employees, the customers and the government. They too will be criticising their political leaders for not doing well and will be calling them criminals without looking inward to examine themselves.

Unfaithful workers and selfish public servants who spend their employers’ time doing their own private business, skip work on cooked-up excuses, and offer poor quality services for the few hours they spend in their workplaces also shamelessly abuse their political leaders for wickedness.

Workers who cook books, manufacture figures at will and doctor inventories and accounts to further their lust for unclean wealth also criticise and abuse the government without considering the similarity of character between them and their political leaders.

Nigerians who run red lights at traffic stops; drop refuse everywhere without seeing anything bad with such attitude; offer bribes with impunity to get anything they desire achieved without minding the cost of bribery and corruption to the society at large also find it convenient to abuse their political leaders to feel good.

Those who surreptitiously use their privileged offices as ministers, governors, legislators, judges, chief executive officers, directors etc to channel the resources of the commonwealth into building their own personal and family financial nests will also be complaining about corruption in the system and heap the blame on the president and members of his inner caucus. Their reprobate minds and self-righteous attitude will always make them detach themselves from the problem and excoriate the president alone for the policies and programs of government that aren’t working.

As I looked at the young men stealing the goats in that broken-down truck, I saw the strong correlation between them and the men and women who broke down the progress of Nigeria by hiding behind subsidy to rob the country of nearly N55 trillion from 2017 to 2023 alone. I saw the forex subsidy thieves who collected dollars at the government rate in CBN to roundtrip it at the infamous black market. I saw the bakery owner who added a whooping N200 to a loaf of bread simply because the government has removed subsidy. I saw the traders creatively driving galloping inflation daily by using every flimsy excuse to add money to the prices of their goods weekly. I saw companies reducing the size of their products and increasing the price at the same time. I saw the Yahoo boys scamming people and the ritualists killing people in their quest to get rich quickly. They all remorselessly blame the leaders for not doing well while driving a knife into the heart of Nigeria through their wicked acts.

The attitude of most Nigerians is like the attitude of those folks who brought a woman caught in adultery to Jesus. They are all professional sinners and adulterers whose sinful acts were known to God and themselves but hidden from people around them. Shamelessly, these casuists dragged the woman on their own warped moral ground of hypocrisy, deception and fake righteousness to Jesus Christ for Judgement.

“And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?
She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” –John 8:3-4, 7-11.

I clearly understand that it’s not all Nigerians that are corrupt folks or pretentious moralists. Many genuinely have good morals and haven’t been part of the culture of corruption that is pervasive in the land. A few have been part of the rot but have now seen the light of deliverance. The big problem is that the preponderance of the self-righteous sinners and moralists who are refusing to acknowledge the truth about themselves makes the search for the truly righteous ones a task akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. The search for the needle in the haystack means that the needle is there. Finding the needle is only difficult because the haystack of the majority pretending to be who they are not is covering it up.

Utmost care and patience are therefore needed to seek out the needle in our nation’s haystack every time the needle is needed. The job will be easier if the Pharisees and the Sadducees amongst us can drop their stones in sincere self-judgement.

Nigeria will only genuinely change when Nigerians dwelling on the moral ground of hypocrisy and deceitfulness accept that both their secret sins and the sins of those unlucky ones who have been caught in the act of ‘adultery’ have hurt Nigeria terribly and are the ones holding down the destiny of Nigeria. If we can genuinely humbly embrace this truth, the next big thing before the big revolution we desperately crave starts is the willingness to repent and sin no more.

Osho is a passionate advocate of Nigeria’s emergence as the pride of Africa through quality and innovative leadership. He is a pastor, public speaker, development specialist and an apostle of leadership, governance and purpose. He was the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) for Senate in FCT during the 2023 elections