Restoration of trust

The Federal Government evacuated around 4,000 Nigerians from Libya and closed the embassy in Tripoli. I overheard two Nigerians discussing this, and lamenting the fact that Nigerians have so low an opinion of their government that some did not think the government would lift a finger to help stranded Nigerians.

They have a point. An important one. Too many of us Nigerians take the pessimistic view of things. It is a drawback to our progress and one of many reasons you won't see Tunisia/Egypt-style popular uprisings in Nigeria.

It is a paradox really.

On the one hand, we are the most optimistic people on Earth. We offers prayers to the Almighty, give thanks for our many blessings, and look toward the future with hope. As we say in pidgin, somehow, some way, e go betta. Our optimism is a disadvantage actually; so many of us believe we might one day rise to a position of power and influence that it is impossible to rally people to fight sources of dysfunction like corruption -- no one wants to fix the dysfunction until after they have had a chance to milk it and enjoy it for themselves (after we have enjoyed our share and left office as wealthy men, we convert and become latter-day believers in reform, criticizing all of our successors, one after another, for doing the same exact things we did when we were in office).

On the other hand, the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti mocked us all as being so afraid of dying we are incapable of rallying to fight for our own commonweal. We assume any effort made to improve things will fail, that anyone who believes otherwise is a mugu, and that people who fight for a better Nigeria will suffer while they live and die unlamented by a populace that never cared enough to lift a finger to help. Apathy set in long ago, long before our villages sold our fellows as slaves, long before our twins were killed in the bush; we have been apathetic so long, I am not sure we remember how to fight for our rights. It is like people believe it is better to have no constitutional rights and be alive, rather than die in a fight for rights that you do not believe you will ever have.

Both my blogs reflect this Nigerian duality.

If I didn't have faith in Nigeria, if I didn't believe our federal republic could be so much more than what it is, if I didn't think only a brief period of reform, restructuring and transformation lay between us and our ideal destiny, then I would have given up hope long ago and would not be as passionate about the issues as I am or so disappointed that the necessary reforms are not even being contemplated. I have no apathy in my bones, none!

On the other hand, anyone who reads my blogs will get the sense that I don't think anything will change anytime soon.

Funny, isn't it?

No, not really funny. Kind of sad to be honest.

Our spiritual duality as citizens extends to our opinions of politicians and captains of industry.

On the one hand, we praise them and hail them, partly in admiration and respect, and partly because in our society you have to kiss the arse of the man above you (and oppress the man below you) if you want to maintain your own little niche in our insufficient economy.

On the other hand, our society assumes every politician and plutocrat is a thief, a vagabond, an unprincipled, unethical, philandering, nation-destroying rogue. Citizens assume they are all "guilty until proven innocent"; if any prove to be innocent, citizens view him as a mugu who doesn't know he is supposed to enrich himself.

So, yes, those two Nigerians I referenced in the first paragraph are right. There is a profound cynicism among us Nigerians. Religion, Football and Cynicism, the three core Nigerian beliefs.

With that said ...

Most of us Nigerians spent at least some of the first two decades of our lives believing the best, making the optimistic assumption, and hoping with all of our hearts.

We were disappointed again, and again.

Our beliefs, optimism and hopes were used, abused, manipulated, distorted, betrayed and then discarded like trash ... again and again.

This kills our hope. This kills our dreams.

They destroy our trust.

The idealistic part of our souls is crushed by the weight of reality slapping us in the face, and we are left most of us bitter, twisted, cynical, frustrated. We are a happy people, but beneath all of our smiles lies simmering rage -- one small spark, and we go off! Eventually, most of us give up on our dream of a better Nigeria, and shift our ambitions towards exploiting the many dysfunctions of the existing Nigeria for our personal pecuniary gain.. Those who succeed become dependent on the dysfunction, and are inspired to destroy anything and anyone that might want to reform the country. Those who don't succeed remain hopeful, first that they will one day get their chance to hammer, and later that their children will get the hammering chance they never had; these children become adults who have been taught to be both fervent in their religious observance and at the same time frighteningly sociopathic in their pursuit of wealth (at the high end) and survival (at the low).

As I type this, it occurs to me that I must still be extremely optimistic about the federal republic, because I refused to make that transition. Usually when you say that, people laugh at you and say it is only because you have never had a chance to "chop" ... but I did have such an opportunity, as I noted in this recent blog post, and turned it down. A powerful person offered me what would have been a dream job in Abuja, based on the job description anyway. But as is often the case, what the job really was, and what the job had been advertised to be, were two different things. I very quickly realized that in practice I would be working for someone whose job was rigging elections.

I couldn't do it.

I didn't do it.

You don't have to believe me. That too is a reflection of the loss of trust. A Nigerian is the one person on Earth who will never believe that another Nigerian turned down a chance at illicit money and illegal political power.

Believe it or not, I was thus briefly exposed to the inner world of the people who run elections in Nigeria. They were so comfortable with what they were doing. Joking and laughing at people who criticized them. If I had opened my mouth and said, "But what you are doing is wrong," they would have laughed even harder. As it stood, I smiled and nodded, told him I would let him know in a couple of days, then sent him an email to say "No".

Moments like that make you feel that we are quite far from where we need to be.

Which brings me back to the two Nigerians in the first paragraph who were complaining about the pervasive cynicism in Nigeria.

Again, I say they are right, but it is not on us the people to spontaneously start trusting institutions that have betrayed us and continue to betray us even now.

It is for those institutions to EARN our trust back.

And that cannot happen if we the people remain estranged from our institutions.

We must take them back and make them be what we want them to be.

The people who currently run our institutions do not believe they need to earn the public's confidence. Like the man who offered me a job, they would laugh if you earnestly asked them to do their jobs in a manner that would restore your trust.

In fact, that is the funny thing about Nigeria. The way our country works, you are supposed to kiss the arse of the man above you ... and oppress the man below you. The idea that somebody who is "up" should work hard to earn the trust of someone who is "down" is anathema. "Democracy" is supposed to moderate this natural human tendency; since there are always more people "down" than there are people "up", the "up" people agree to all sorts of wealth redistribution systems and constitutional rights of pro forma equality so as to make nice to the "down" people who could (in theory) vote to seize all their wealth. But in Nigeria, there is no such moderation; as Machiavelli might have said, power exists to do whatever power wants (maybe he did say it, I don't know, I've never read Machiavelli).

There is an arrogance, a shamelessness to it. Take the Nigerian Police Force, who routinely look us all in the eye and LIE about extra-judicial killings. When exposed, they make it quite clear to all and sundry that they could care less about being caught lying about something so important.

Everyone in Nigeria assumes the Police lies about everything. Everyone knows that most people killed and/or arrested by the Police are not guilty of anything. Everyone knows the Police are incapable of properly investigating a crime. Everyone knows the Police defend corrupt leaders against the people, rather than defending the people against corrupt leaders.

The Police have an AWFUL public image, just abysmally awful.

And guess what? The Nigerian Police Force do not give a damn about it. They are not interested in earning the people's trust. The upper echelon of the Force holds all of us Nigerian citizens in contempt. Who are we to talk when they are talking? If they hear pim, they will unsheathe their AK-47s and shoot us down like dogs.

I don't understand it.

The phenomenon runs across-the-board phenomenon, embracing even the national pastime, football.

All over the world, people are suspicious of the "official age" of Nigerian football players. In Nigeria itself, cynicism rules, Nigerians don't trust Nigerians, and we all secretly assume every player is guilty of age cheating until proven innocent. Those players who do use their real and true age live under the same cloud of suspicion as their less honest colleagues.

We all know this suspicion exists and that it is pervasive.

Age-cheating thing is driven by the desire to make oneself attractive to European clubs ... and by the Nigerian public's any-means-necessary desire for "glory" in age-restricted international competitions for small boys.

The thing is, age-cheating doesn't achieve what the cheats want it to achieve.

As of 2011, it would be politically incorrect for the managers of European clubs to say out loud that they make adjustments in magnitude of pay and length of contract offered to Nigerian players to hedge against their suspicions that the players are four or more years older than they claim.

And as far as fans' desire for international success, we all know our senior national team suffers in the long-run. We all know that we are paying for our small boy trophies with the loss of the really important senior trophies.

Yet we keep doing it. We know we are not deceiving anyone. We know we are only shooting ourselves in the foot. But we keep doing it.

In fact, it is a very good example of how optimism is killed.

Nigeria hosted the last Under-17 World Championship in 2009, and we were all happy when the MRI scan ruled out so many players the NFF had been planning to use in the tournament. Our optimism soared.

Then came Fortune Chukwudi and Kayode Olanrewaju ... and the realization that MRI scanning was not scientifically fool-proof.

Mind you, I don't want to gang up on these two young men. I understand the financial pressures they are under, and I realize a contract in Europe would change their lives and the lives of their families.

In fact, right now I am not concerned with Fortune or Kayode, but with the Nigerian Football Federation. We were lucky that the broader football world does not take small boy competitions as seriously as we do, so the issue didn't get HUGE media coverage. Nevertheless, the revelations about Fortune Chukwudi did go around the world.

Here was an opportunity for the NFF to once and for all quash all those rumours about Nigerian players by proving Adokiye Amiesimaka was wrong or mistaken. Unless Fortune and Kayode suddenly emerged out of a vacuum, they would each have built up a young lifetime's worth of documentary proof (even if they have nothing else, they have school report cards) and character witnesses. If I put on my cynic's hat and speculate, the NFF could even have forged documents, faked proof, and paid witnesses to lie.

What bothers me is they didn't do anything.

FIFA has always known teams cheat at age-restricted competitions, but strangly prefers to act only when it has no other option. As soon as the NFF realized FIFA was not going to torpedo the tournament by making a big fuss out of the Fortune Chukwudi affair, they flat out didn't care that everyone was talking about us as cheats. The NFF pretended they had heard nothing from Adokiye, had seen nothing in the news. Vague allusions to saboteurs and enemies and unpatriotic behaviour was as much as we got. We even kept using Fortune in matches, as if to give the world a middle finger. It is like we were saying "Ha ha ha, we cheat and you know it, and we don't care, ha ha ha!"

Tomorrow when people say they don't trust the ages of Nigerian players, someone will say we are cynics. Here is the one agency whose duty to Nigerian players, Nigerian football and Nigerian fans is to restore CREDIBILIITY in the system, and it quite clearly does not care about the fact that it has no credibility.

Heck, the Nigerian Football Federation is the source of the "21 or 28" song the Newcastle fans sang about Obafemi Martins. In the last few years the NFF have occasionally put up websites and occasionally taken down websites. On one occasion when a site was up, they listed a birth-date for Martins that was different from his "official" birth-date. Now, it is quite possible it was a genuine mistake, and that Martins is using his real age .... but there is so much doubt swirling around, so little credibility, that managers in Europe likely assumed Martins was 28 (his club career has certainly become rather erratic of late).

And they don't care! The NFF doesn't give a damn about the fact that it generates nothing but distrust.

I am glad the Federal Government evacuated those Nigerians in Libya. On behalf of my fellow citizens I say thank you and kudos.

But I still don't trust you.