Time for a brain reset! By Wale Bakare

I guess I might consider myself a bit luckier than most of my generation in several respects. One, I attended the Nigeria Military School, Zaria while some of my friends and classmates in Primary 6 ended up in ‘ordinary’ schools like Kings College, the Federal Government Colleges, Saints Gregory’s, Finbarr’s, and Timothy’s. I remember one went to Gaskiya College and another to Ayetoro Comprehensive. It’s not like there was anything wrong with any of these schools. Some have produced some of the finest minds this country has ever known but if it wasn’t NMS, it wasnt. No debate. But this piece isn’t about colleges or the quantum of good fortune that you would have needed to see you attend the only institution of its ilk in the whole of West Africa (the only other one in Africa like it at the time was in Egypt), but the virtues and life-defining values the privileged few are imbued with from a very tender age. The merits of hard work, respect for constituted authority, disdain for laziness and short cuts, and intrinsic self-belief were drilled into you long before you understood the difference between the birds and the bees. You wore khaki like everyone else, you wore boots like everyone else, you wore one of the different head dresses like everyone else. What would make you unique in the sea of conformity would be how well you looked after yourself.

The extent to which these influences shaped my views about material wealth and how to acquire it is not something I can categorically state. My father’s influence probably also had a role to play since he was quite firm in his views about how to make money. As far as he was concerned, there was only one way to make money, and that was to work for it. If Allah decided to bless the work of your hands, then you would be rich. If Allah decided otherwise, then so be it. As long as you could feed yourself and your family, you were in a good place. His favourite boast when I was a kid was how he had been the Storekeeper at the Air Force Base for several years and not a single item was ever unaccounted for despite the encouragement from people to take this or take that and no one would know. “Yes, no one would know but Allah would know”, was his refrain. Contentment was his guiding ethos. At least as far as material things were concerned.

I am not sure at exactly what point our societal values completely upturned. Nigeria is at a crossroad. No, scratch that. Nigeria hangs precariously by its fingertips at the precipice. Swaying over a chasm of ignominy and threatening to let go as her fingers, bleeding and tiring from the relentless nibbles of its own citizens, clings on to hope, desperate to hold on to something, no matter how ephemeral, as the consequences of giving up will be cataclysmic. The country is buffeted on all sides, absorbing body blows, some of which are unavoidable in nature but most of which are self-administered. The whipping boy for our woes has always been the leadership, and rightly so. It is a time-tested maxim that when the fish rots, it starts from the head. Nations rise and fall on the quality of their leadership (note that I did not say the form of government they run). Leaders define the heights a nation can aspire to and visionary, motivational leaders can change the fortunes of a nation and lead the people to hitherto unimaginable heights. So, I will not talk about leadership today. Let us talk about the people that are being led.
There is a cancer that has crept into the land. It started out as a benign tumor. It was not excised but rather, it was fed a cocktail of lies and falsehood which helped it to metastasize. It has become malignant and if we do not do something quickly, it has the potential to be terminal. The love of money and the elevation of material wealth has led us to a place of infamy. Social media has been the oxygen in recent years, feeding the disease that is ravaging our country. The mindless celebration of unaccounted and unaccountable wealth has turned nearly a whole generation of Nigerians into dollar-worshipping minions. And encouragement for this mindset is not difficult to find. From the criminal conmen in designer suits who tell their congregation that material wealth equals spiritual right-standing with God and that poverty indicates godlessness or unanswered prayers, to pseudo-celebrities that social media suddenly dumped on the public who come up with inane phrases like ‘money is water’! We celebrate the here and now of wealth without a care for its pedigree. When we lament about our leadership, I ask the obvious question: are they from Niger? They came from amongst us and are a reflection of who we are. Is it any wonder that our politicians see nothing wrong in hobnobbing with people that should be parriahs? We have seen a former Vice President and perennial presidential candidate posing with Hush Puppi, a notorious fraudster. I will not even mention the nuisance from Kogi who once blighted the hallowed chamber with his unwholesome presence. At least we know of more than a few who used to be colleagues of these fellows in their nocturnal cyber activities who have moved on to legislative and executive offices while they open night clubs and become the world’s biggest importers of various expensive drinks.

Over the last week, the media space has been awash with the news of the arrest of a fellow who used to be a gospel singer but had become a ‘ritualist’. He was caught with his girlfriend’s severed head which we are made to understand he intended to use for money-making rituals. Though he claims he killed the lady out of jealousy over her infidelity, this appears to be an after-thought. Lest I forget, there are a few terminologies that have found their way into official use in society and are even now used by law enforcement which I believe should be discouraged. A murderer should be described as a murderer, pure and simple. Stop the inverse glamourisation of heinous crimes. Timileyin is nothing but a murderer who hacked off another human’s head. The purpose for which he did so is another matter but he is first and foremost a murderer. People who attack other people with weapons and steal from them are armed robbers, not ‘cultists’. They might belong to some group or the other but they are armed robbers, or assassins. They are not ‘cultists’. Members of Guru Maharaji’s love garden are cultists. People who carry out unlawful killings for whatever reason are murderers.

Sadly, the number of people who, like Timileyin, have bought into this lie that they could somehow become rich by taking another person’s life or by taking a bath, stark naked on the roof of a bank, or in the market place in broad daylight seems to be on the increase. I can never understand what makes people think that this works. Even if it does, how can you be comfortable with yourself knowing you became rich by drinking a compound made from the crushed skull of a baby. Or the eyes of your own mother? How, for goodness sake? I have never believed in the efficacy of ‘jazz’ for money making. I know a lot of those reading this piece right now might believe differently but everything I have seen in life have only gone on to bolster my beliefs that money-making rituals are a fallacy. If they worked, Nigerians would feature prominently in every list of the world’s richest people but the opposite is the case. The richest man in Africa is someone we can all trace his trajectory. Those who suddenly have more money than water are simply fraudsters.
I remember once as a young man some 30 odd years ago. My car had been stolen and out of desperation to recover it, I allowed myself to be persuaded to visit one ‘powerful’ man in Sagamu. After carrying out his divination to locate my car (which turned out to be a load of crap), he asked me if there was anything else he could do for me. I told him I had a concert the next day at a venue in Ikeja. I wanted the place to be full. He said that was a small thing. He got up, went into the inner chamber and came back with a small keg of water. He asked me to get to the venue before sunrise the following day and sprinkle the water round the venue, chanting some incantations which he gave me. He advised that whatever arrangements I had made for crowd capacity should be doubled. I was to come back to say thank you. I was excited. On getting back to Lagos, I informed my friend who was involved in the concert. We followed the man’s instructions to the letter. That was the biggest flop of my event management career. In fact, it retired me from staging concerts. And it reinforced my views on money-making rituals.

As a matter of urgency, the government needs to begin a reorientation of our youths. I know how difficult this will be when even a lot of those that should be driving that change also have that thought process. A politician believes going naked in the middle of the night to drop off a sacrifice at a T-junction would guarantee electoral victory. If he wins, he believes his juju worked. If he loses, he believes his opponent’s juju was stronger and that instead of sacrificing a goat, maybe he should have gone with the one that wanted him to sacrifice his son. How will such a person truthfully push for that mindset to be abolished? It however has to be done. Our houses of worship need to have a different approach to prosperity. Society need to start questioning the source of people’s wealth and not just accept “he don blow” as a viable explanation.

‘Yahooboyism’ has gradually become a regular profession in our land with family members happy to say their son is a Yahoo boy (or as I heard recently, Aza man) and there is no more real stigma attached to wealth by fraudulent means. Fraudsters are celebrated by our musicians, bloggers, and law enforcement agents who are ready to guard them with their lives. We cannot continue like this. We will fail as a country, no matter who is in power. The time to reset is now.