yesterday?” I asked my friend, who
answered slowly, head bowed,
that she did. ‘It was our sad story.’
“Beeni,” I told her, and for almost
one hour afterwards we went
through the piece again. It was
an
expatriate, Tim Newman’s last line
on his assignment in Nigeria. From
the piece, the writer was obviously
an engineer in the oil sector. He
encountered corruption on a scale
he had never seen in all his years
working across countries of the
world.
“The corruption, theft, and graft (in
Nigeria) can take many forms,” he
wrote with the rare insight of a
genius. “... falsifying a CV (I don’t
mean enhancing, I mean
pretending you’re a Lead Piping
Engineer of 12 years experience
when actually, until yesterday, you
were a fisherman); selling
positions in a company; stealing
diesel from the storage tanks
you’re paid to protect.” – That one
sounds very poetic, metaphoric.
Look around you, how many day
guards turn up at night to steal
what they protected firmly in day
time? And I mean ‘guards’ as in
ALL who have the nation’s nod to
protect the general spring head
from being poisoned. Have they
not ALL turned up to be bearers of
hemlock?
My friend asked that we read again
the white man’s piece: “... selling
land which isn’t yours” (This one is
common). Now this:
“...deliberately running down the
country’s refining capacity in order
to partake in the lucrative import
of fuels; falsifying delivery notes of
said refined fuels in order to
receive greater government
subsidies; deliberately restricting
the country’s power generation
capacity in order to benefit from
the importation of generators
(which must be run on imported
fuel); theft of half-eaten
sandwiches and opened drink
containers from the office fridge;
tinkering with fuel gauges at petrol
stations to sell customers short;
conspiring with company drivers
to issue false receipts indicating
more fuel was supplied than
actually was; supplying counterfeit
safety equipment; falsifying
certificates related to professional
competence (e.g. rope access
work); paying employees less than
stipulated in their contract (or not
at all); cloning satellite TV cards,
meaning the legitimate user gets
their service cut off when the
other card is in use (the cards are
cloned by the same people who
issue the genuine cards); the list is
literally endless.
There is no
beginning or end to corruption in
Nigeria, it is a permanent fixture.”
Judgement from abroad! Very
shameful.
Quite intriguing in the white man’s
clinical analysis is the assertion
that Nigeria’s super-rich wants
even the crumbs for himself. Very
tragically true.
‘It’s a curse,’ my friend said.
“Really? You think so.”
‘Yes. When an abominable trend is
established, it becomes a curse.’
“So, that means the nation and its
people need deliverance? Abi? So,
who does it and where...?”
‘Baaad boy!’ My friend fired back
with a look suggesting she knew I
was aiming a dart at our pastors
and Imams who have turned
religion over to the power class.
My friend knew I had very deep
disdain for these characters who
think only the super-rich have
NAFDAC stamps for deliverance
unto the benevolent laps of the
Creator.
‘Never mind. God Himself will visit
soon to cleanse the land. The rich,
the poor will die, the powerful will
go, then God will prove to us that
only He remains forever,’ my
friend waxed philosophical.
It has to be, she said, because like
the white man noticed, Nigeria is
the only country in the whole
world where there is no social
class; a queer, weird, classless
society where everyone thinks
alike, craves the same items, has
same values, dream same
dreams...
Hear him: “I came to the
conclusion about two years into
my assignment that Nigeria is
probably the only genuinely
classless society I have seen. Class
is very different from wealth.
Upper class people can be dirt
poor (bankrupt dukes) and lower
class people can be fabulously rich
(Russian oligarchs).
Class is about behaviour and
attitudes, not wealth (a point
made very well in Kate Fox’s
excellent book Watching the
English). And insofar as behaviour
goes, I didn’t see a shred of
difference between the top
politicians, down through the
officials in the national authorities,
through the middle class
professionals, through the service
providers, right down to the area
boys. The behaviour was identical
across all strata: I want more
money, and I will do absolutely
anything to get it...”
Hmmm. ‘The guy is mad!’ My
friend exclaimed at the razor-
sharp precision of the white man’s
analysis of the nation.
Are we condemned to go on like
this? When is that divine visitation?
My people say God’s coming is not
in 20 years? Before then, my friend
added, ‘We all need to go through
a process of rebirth. That process
will be birthed by God Himself.’
Then, there shall be no more
pain? I asked, but got no reply
from my friend. She looked away,
fiddling with the crime pages of
the day’s newspapers.
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