The Anatomy Of Our Nigerianess

Every country, culture and people have their unique traits and characteristics, all these things responsible for the state of their environment, their economy, their responses to life, challenges and what-have-you. In the next few weeks I'd like to do a kind of check on what makes a Nigerian tick. How does he think? What are his responses to issues like money, safety, etc.

Before we go into the operating theater I need to clarify something. One of the major traits of the average Nigerian is the ease with which he criticizes. He seems to know how the Super Eagles should play, who should be on the squad and who should not, how Chukuwuma Soludo should run the Central Bank, how the Niger-Delta situation should be resolved, etc You get the gist right? I am not going to sit behind this window of mine to the world and criticize us and our ways. Olohun ma je! The purpose of this series is to challenge us to critically examine ourselves, change our ways and teach those we have influence over to live by the values that will build the nation of our dreams.

Nigerians seem to just know the best approach to doing something but its interesting how we refuse to "soil our hands" in the actual work. We have this siddon-look approach to life. We would rather keep sitting in our cars than do something about the traffic situation ahead of us. We would rather just keep watching refuse pile up in our street than do something about it. Even as children of God we seem not to be left out of the whole fray. One of the greatest injustices the Body of Christ has done this nation is our siddon-look approach to issues that affect our life.

We have left Politics to others but ourselves. "It's a dirty game" we say, very piously. So those we have labelled immoral mess the socio-political landscape up and guess where we live? You guessed right, in the rot these men have created. Before you blame them, let's consider the irresponsibility of our inaction.

Ever walked on a street where a church is just two buildings away from a brothel? I have. And guess what the outreach church has planned for these people, needing self-esteem and the knowledge of who they are in God? NOTHING! How can they even dare to think of having anything to do with such immorality?

One of the things that characterizes the average Nigerian is this siddon-look approach to life. What makes it even worse is that we don't just siddon-look. We siddon-talk. We know how to criticize the guy there and tell him how he doesn't know anything about what he's doing. We live on it just check out the number of talk shows we have on television, addressing one issue or the other.

I was at a conference where the performing governor of Lagos State, Raji Fashola, delivered a paper on Leadership. A paper most of our spiritual leaders (pastors, bishops, etc) will find very educative and enlighthening. He spoke of a professor of architecture, who approached him upon his (Fashola) assuming office. The professor had come up with an observation of the many traffic hotpspots and deadlocks in Lagos. I see you raise your eyebrows and ask "So what's so unique about that?"

Well this man went a step ahead and came up many different drawings of ways to loosen the traffic deadlocks in these different places. The governor immediately put these ideas into use and pronto all these deadlock began to ease off. This professor had gone ahead to spend his sundays doing traffic counts and watching traffic in all these places where there were deadlocks. He would then go to his computer and try to come up with constructive ideas to ease the tension. Now that is what I call taking responsibility.

What intrigued me when the governor spoke was the fact that this man had been doing this long before the governor came into office. He had been preparing these ideas of his and then one day the door of opportunity opened up. The governor said something that hit me square in the face. When we call on the government to solve some of our problems, can we come up with creative solutions? Instead of just calling in to say, "There's a flooding problem in our area we would like the government to come deal with", can we profer possible solutions to that problem and then present it to them? Can we begin to, not just see the problems and talk about them on the rooftops, but to see the solutions to the problems?

Its about time that we believers take on responsibility for our communities and not just siddon-look or siddon-talk.

I'M SORRY SIR

Have you ever entered a bus, had a verbal battle with the conductor over the bus fare that had been hiked, for no intelligent reason, and then have the driver of the bus drop you a few meters away from the bus stop the bus conductor announced simply because "oga this hold up plenti. We wan turn for this place"* Only for him to tell you "Oga no vex abeg. Sorry ehn." Did I get an amen there?

Or have you been on a commercial bicycle (phylum okada) where the rider almost runs you into a car, with his reckless and witless driving, and then upon your complaining, he tells you not to be upset and that he's sorry? Or had someone park his car in the middle of the road, while someone is trying to alight from the car, causing a delay in traffic and then he sticks his head out of the car and tells you "Sorry o"? Isn't it simply ( I don't want to sound insulting) out-of-this world that when we don't do things right and we expect it would just go away because we have apologised? Or this scenario where a person comes late to work b an hour or more and then is to be given a query. He begins to plead and if his superior goes on to give him the query and even deduct from his salary, the superior is seen as a wicked man without human feelings.

Nigeria has remained under, despite the great potential it posses, because of this culture (cultivated habits) of not doing things right and expecting our apologies will cover up for our ineffectiveness. We always want to ride on the wings of human sentiment and emotion so we hardly position ourselves to do the right thing. (I must say I am guilty of this too so I'm not pointing fingers here.)

We must embrace a culture of being effecient people. We must decide to do what is right and not bend the rules for the sake of sympathy or human feeling. I'm not saying we shouldn't be full of compassion. I just think we need to be more disciplined in doing the right thing. Let the bus driver take us to the destination he announced. Let the person driving remember that there are other road users. Let the employee get to his workplace on time. Let us kill this excuse-giving mentality. Let's embrace a no-excuse-is-good-enough policy. Its time we did what is right instead of looking for ways to plead our way when we could have done the right thing. W

We must understand that our sorry will never make things right. So let's stop apologizing and start doing what wha been assigned to us. Or what do you think?

Contact without Contamination

Nigeria is 48 and that’s something to be grateful to God for. For a country that has such a diverse ethnicity, its nothing less than a miracle that it has remained a single entity for such a long time (with the kind of leadership we have had and our general lack of vision). Why (you may wonder) am I saying this? Without vision a people will run riot, misbehave and just about do anything they like. Without any sense of direction, a group of people will ultimately run themselves and whatever resources they have aground. But enough said about our present situation, just like someone I met recently said, even a donkey on the streets can analyze the problems of this country so I won’t begin to chronicle the many challenges of Nigeria and how we should be truly the giant of Africa in deed and not in word. What I want to do is to get you to think of a way forward.

It’s been my observation that the church has been too quiet over the years, not recognizing the potential it has in transforming the society it finds itself in. And that’s why I was so impressed when I heard of the various initiatives by some of my brothers, members of the family of God, who organized two events that I believe were geared at making an impact on our national life as a nation. One was a rally that was focused on engendering patriotism and a sense of national unity. The second was a meeting that focused on entrepreneurship as a tool for national economical development. It is with a sigh of relief that I say finally it seems we are beginning to see our role in society.

Finally the body of Christ is seeing that we need to be involved to get any lasting change in this country. We can’t just poke one long pole at the problems and think we can solve them. Salt cannot expect to preserve anything if it does not come in contact with it, or can it? Even God had to experience the things we go through so that He can help us properly (Hebrews ). I mean it is completely impossible to think we can get to extricate ourselves from the society we live in and expect that things would just get better. We must take responsibility for the good of our communities. Or why has God left you on the earth after making you His child? However with this involvement comes one of the greatest challenges we can ever have, contamination.

The fear of the children of God in Nigeria over the years has been that if I mixed and mingled with them, won’t I eventually become like them? We’ve misunderstood God’s word where He tells us to come out from among them and be separate and because of that we refuse to participate in anything and eventually we become “heavenly conscious and earthly irrelevant” (12 o’clock Christians as someone put it).

So how can we be effective change agents without losing our Christ-like flavour? We can take a cue from someone who has some experience. Daniel was a young man who had been forcefully and unexpectedly moved into a new society and was expected to learn new values and lifestyles. Here he was exposed to all kinds of influences that were foreign to him. I believe Daniel’s secret can be found in the fact that he had another influence stronger than the external. If a child of God will really make any impact he must come with something different from what everyone is experiencing. Did you observe that Daniel’s diet was different from that of the others? Is it any wonder that he stood out? Daniel was able to live in that kind of society simply because he was connected to a Source different from what all the others were and if we will stand out in this age, as solution providers and change agents, we need to be connected to another Source.

So what is the solution to avoiding contamination? It’s a vibrant relationship with God. It’s a very clear principle in nature that once there’s space, it’s just a matter of time; it will be filled with something. So if there’s an empty can on the side of the road, in a matter of days, it would be filled with something, if there’s a leadership vacuum and a good leader doesn’t fill it, a bad one will.

So lets get deeply involved in God not just in some daily or weekly religious activities but an active participation in God such that His values rub off on us. Like a Nigerian proverb says, when the leaves have mingled with the soap enough, it eventually becomes soap.

What goes around...comes back crumpled.

Monday morning is usually traffic-heavy in Lagos and October 6, 2008 was no exception particularly as the week before had witnessed a very long holiday due to the Id-el Kabir and Independence day celebrations so at around 6.30am the trademark of Lagos roads, “go-slow” had already begun to develop at the Iyana-paja area of the Lagos-Abeokuta Express way. It was into this that I was “baptized” this morning and well that’s not even the reason for this post. As I sat in the bus that was taking me to my destination, enduring the slow moving traffic (and thanking God in my heart that I didn’t take my car out in this madness), what prompted this post happened.

One of the passengers was to collect twenty naira change from the conductor so the conductor handed him two N10 notes. The man took a good look at both of them and immediately retorted that he didn’t like one of the notes because it was worn. The conductor just collected the two notes and started looking for some other person who was willing to take the change. Another passenger collected it promptly (if you live in Lagos you will understand why he must have done that). After taking a quick look at the notes, he too quickly returned the monies for the exact same reason the other man had- the notes were worn.

Honestly speaking, the note that had become tossed to and fro was worn. You would think the note was like 5 years old. You know how a piece of an old newspaper that’s been trampled under foot and picked up from the roadside looks? Then you have a picture of what that N10 note looks like. It was dirty, worn and torn at the edges. It definitely was in bad shape and I understand the reason for the rejection.

What prompted this post however was this question that came to me as that rejected note was being passed around from conductor to passenger- who made that note what it was? Was it not the joint responsibilities of all the peoples whose hands had handled that note that made it crumpled, old, worn and torn? That note was once brand new, crisp and clean don’t you think? But now, not one year after its creation, you’ll ever believe that note was ever new.

In this part of the world we are quick to reject money that’s old, cello taped, worn or torn but yet we are responsible for the state the money is. Let me paint a scenario of what happens to the naira note daily. A young man collects the notes from the bank, crisp and clean. He steps out of the banking hall and being hungry, goes to a “buka” for a meal. After his meal, he pays the food seller and collects change. The money he gave her was still crisp and clean when he gave her and when she uses it as change to another man, who works as a dispatch rider in a courier company, it was still clean. The man collects the change and squeezes the money into his back pocket. On his way home, he pays a conductor transport fare and the conductor straightens out the note, joining it to the many ion his hand, folds them into two and then into four and squeezes them into his jeans pocket. With this kind of treatment, you can be sure it would only take a week before that note becomes crumpled, worn and torn, just like the N10 note.

Interestingly, the CBN had rolled out a campaign to help promote the proper handling of our monies but after a little hype, it has suddenly been quieted. However, I think as the salt of the earth, we should set the examples for those who don’t know any better, as to how our money should be handled because in the eyes of God, one who is undisciplined in handling naira notes doesn’t count as being responsible enough to handle societal change. The lesson for us is simple: our actions, little as they may seem, go a long way in affecting the environment we live in.