THE CHRISTMAS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN

      
My Christmas day started as my other days start: I went out for a morning walk. Problem is, this day was going to be slightly different. Just as I got to the vicinity of the soon-to-be-completed Tejuoso market site, I saw a small crowd gathered by two cars, apparently one trying to tow the other. As I looked further, I discovered that the one to be towed was badly damaged on one side to the extent that the tyre on that side was mangled along with the headlights, fender, and all those front, right-hand parts. I stopped to witness the scene.

As I looked further, I saw that the damaged car, a Toyota Camry, shiny, recent model, was being attempted to be towed by a nylon rope suitable for hanging clothes on to dry. Of course as the towing vehicle moved, the rope snapped. After another attempt, I just laughed at the attempt and mumbled to the closest person to me how a car driver didn't know what would be suitable to tow a car, and that a seat belt would be needed if a chain could not be found. It then seemed to me they were just a confused bunch and so, to do my public duty, I decided to move further to have a chat with the driver, coming out of the car, who happened to be a young man. As I moved to gain access to him, I noticed he was unstable and seemed to be in a world of his own. I called on him and he just looked dazed and walked away. As an experienced "guy man" myself, I immediately knew what was up. I didn't know when my thoughts immediately came out "dis one don drunk".

Immediately I said that, come and see backlash! EVERYBODY turned on me; why would you say such a thing? Of course they also had an attack dog who was supposed to be a beast of burden to see "something" from the rich "oga". Now he had a new and more appealing job. He towered over them, pushed me with his dirtied hands and was spoiling for a fight. Now, note that my contributions in life comes from my brain and none by muscles. I then knew this could really be a special Christmas like no other; I had to think fast so as to survive the fiasco. I reminded them I wanted to come and tell them to use a seatbelt and that I had experience with cars. As all this was going on, one of the people who must gain a special advantage with "oga" had already told him and so buoyed by the hostility seen around me, he then reappeared determined to come and "fight" still babbling rather incoherently. He even picked a stone and hurled at me while being restrained by his "good Samaritans" not to come and "deal with" me. As Tupac would say, I saw it was me against the world so as I saw the little window I had, I took it and made a run for it!  I can not go into my personal circumstances now and why I should be the last person to get into trouble at this point in time. Once again the Nigerian system prevailed over a potential new order. Progress took to its heels and left Nigeria to continue in its way.

Now, a couple of things. I fully understand that many a reader will find no issue with what transpired. Indeed some would say it served me right but now, let's reason together. We have laws in this country against drunk driving just as they do in just about any country in the world. Drunk driving is dangerous because  it turns the vehicle into a potential missile and the safest person is the one inside the car. It could lead to life-changing injuries and even death of innocent passersby. Indeed I myself have been in a drunk driving situation back in the day in Ibadan which resulted in the death of a fowl on the dirt roads of Apete. I was perfectly compliant with the 500naira fine imposed on me(hey, it was 2004 ok).

In reasonable countries where they have a culture of obedience to laws, what happens is that when a group goes out for a night out, there's always one person designated to be the driver and that person isn't allowed to take alcohol on that occasion so that they might obey the law while still having a good time. If someone is ever caught drunk on the wheels, they feel a sense of guilt at their offence just as I did and certainly do not attack who discovers them. They certainly wouldn't have the army of volunteers who instantly attacked me on hearing that word "drunk".

If people are encouraged to run the laws into the ground in the small way they've been given, how dare they complain about some other person in a position to do even more? What happens to the good Nigerian trying to call anyone to order when he has no backing from society? Do you know how it feels when I am mocked at petrol stations because I question why they would not sell petrol at the official pump price when I buy in a jerry can or when I refuse to allow someone jump the queue at that filling station or when waiting for a BRT bus? Once when I prevented a woman from jumping the queue to stay in front of me while waiting for a bus, a man behind me gladly let her in just behind me and she declared to the guy that I was going mad because I was a "good Nigerian." How can I function if I am the only one in a sea of Nigerians? This is why to effect change in the country, activists can not be left each to his own. We need to have a network and support of relevant authorities so that we are not at the mercy of these champions of Nigerian backwardness. There are a few Nigerians willing to do what is right but they hide in the shadows so as not to be called out. But there is also me who is ready to also speak out. 

I have always and will always say: the problem with Nigeria is the Nigerian people themselves, a few of whom are in government. Their attitudes, values, traditional practices, all have a negative effect on the prospects of development of the nation. You dare to be different? You will be destroyed: you will be hated, pressured, rendered destitute and your life will be made untenable unless you comply with prevailing wisdom. On my part, I was so glad I escaped a Christmas morning of beatings and serious trouble to be inspired enough to write this. Merry Christmas.

Oseiwe Ibhagui
@OIbhagui

A Rejoinder to the Rejoinder: A Note of Warning to the Blogtivists

Let me tell you what you don't know: many of us are filled with the huge egos that is a major factor affecting those ruining the country at this time. That is a major plank in the original writer's argument.

The first major use of social media to force a "revolution" has met with deaths of close to 100,000 people and there's no proof that those people are better off than before they started(they are indeed much worse off in my opinion). There have been organising and movements and revolutions in the long history of the world and what we have now is a recent bonus but what do we do with it? We become armchair analysts or instant "revolutionaries" when the answer to the country's problems is neither and somewhere in-between. 

With the ever increasing portfolio of work on your blogs, what is the physical effect on the ground that you are passionate about, you "activist"? Do you think this is an abstract debate on some issue that does not affect your immediate environment? Think again.

Many bloggers and twitter activists can not come together to form a real physical organisation to do real work for the reason that the original writer points out: they're living in their own world and are more interested in writing than in studying the world, its history, and confronting their own self as a result to change the wrong ways their society has taught them all along which they're supposed to now know is not so appropriate.

Let this writer tell me what organisation he has tried to form, or join to advance whatever project he believes in and for us to know its progress report. With documented evidence, I have tried to form exactly such organisations starting in 2000 with efforts to recruit the likes of Festus Keyamo and Funmi Iyanda but couldn't get support. I am on a latest drive now to form a platform where people come to learn and give speeches physically and not just on twitter but I've still not yet found support: people just like to stay back and complain anonymously. If you knew my personal life story, you would know no one should be more bitter and cynical, yet I'm not. I did manage to get some support by way of a venue promised prospective members by a well-known Nigerian in Victoria Island but the twitter account I opened subsequent to that concession(@IntelNG) has only found five followers. So I am, by this, taking you all up on your claim to want to have a better society to live in. 

If we continue to live in our own little worlds and refuse to grow, learn, and change, we will not rise from the swamp in which we are because all the progress registered in this world was achieved that way. Leave your virtual world, come out and meet people to advance the issues you care about and society will be better for it. Social media and the internet is a means to the end; it is not the end in itself 

Oseiwe Ibhagui

@OIbhagui

Addendum to Soludo's Story

        

I really liked the presentation of Prof. Charles Soludo, a very successful man in every sense. I even loved more the quote he brought up by Plato. I would like that quote to be revisited and ruminated over. 

Plato meant that it is the people who loved to know how everything worked, how all the branches of human knowledge interact with one-another; those with that curiosity and intellectual depth, that should be the principals guiding society aright and by no means should they be addressed as President or Governor only.

The best people to know what to do in a society to advance it are the people who have a natural interest in that and have spent a good deal of time finding out about those issues through biographies, history etc and following the news as a habit, not necessarily someone who has specialised in one field of knowledge and obtained all the degrees and certifications in that field and made a lot of money ("successful technocrats" if you may).

What this society needs are people who will educate the general masses, to change their horrible values and so many items of their culture and to bring them into at least the 20th century so that they understand their civic responsibilities and relationship with government. If that is not achieved, no one will just come and change society in this "democratic setting." Only a dictatorship can achieve that but as our previous dictatorships, save one, have proved, even they are victims and products of society's backwardness in understanding.

The fact that Gov. Fashola of Lagos was used as an example of a "very successful" governor is exactly to the point I am making. The fact that he was very successful in his profession and then came and presented himself for office was used as an example of what other professionals should do. The fact which goes against conventional thinking is that he has been a rather successful manager, but I wonder how he has been a great example of what a leader should be. He brought personal decency to the office and (hopefully) judiciously managed the resources of the state. But is that the only role of a leader, a governor in this case?  What are those resources? Tax from residents and businesses in the state not previously meticulously collected, allocation from the Federal Government, and external loans worth massive billions. Can anyone truly say the people of the state have become more productive and developed a new capacity to generate wealth? The people see him as a special breed who is out of step with the "normal people" and they are just biding their time for him to finish his term so that they return to their "normalcy." This is by no means a criticism of the good governor who has done as good as he knows how. But that is the issue: the fact that you wish to do well can be limited by how much you know of what is right. That is the definition of value system we talk about. If he were making any headway in reorienting the people of the state and creating thousands of Fasholas all over the state then he would be leading people in a direction that they would continue on and ultimately arrive at progress whether he is there or not. But everything in Nigeria is made to depend on the "man", the "leader." 

Please let me part by reiterating that you are not going to be magically successful in governing Nigeria aright just because you were the best graduating student in some PhD programme at Harvard and had some very important job in some big international organisation. That creates the elitist insular arrogant bubble some live in today that is a part of the problems with Nigeria today.

The people of Nigeria, together with their knowledge, customs and values do not yet belong to even the 20th century of human progress even though we are well into the 21st. It is the state of development of the people that will determine the face of the nation and its government.

@OIbhagui