By Pius Adesanmi
The
true measure of a society or a civilization, goes an aphorism, lies in
how she treats her weakest members. Between
France, the United States, and Canada, I have lived continuously now for nearly 20 years in imperfect civilizations and cultures that are obsessed with the weak, the poor, the minority, and the excluded. Every waking day in such civilizations, human consciousness is haunted by the question: what is our society doing to be more responsive to the condition of the weak?
The answer they try to find to
this question by constantly refining and recalibrating
their social dynamics is the first guarantor
of a place in 21st-century civilization for such societies. This is why it
is inconceivable in such cultures and civilizations to erect public buildings that are not accessible to
people in wheel chair. Or to put elevators in such
buildings that cannot be used by the visually challenged. It is either the elevator buttons have braille or there is an audio voice prompt.
Recently,
Canada’s Federal Minister of Health, Jane Philpott, was
in the eye of the storm for what some
newspapers here described as corruption and
improper spending “worth thousands of dollars”.
What did the Minister do? For twenty trips between
Ottawa and Toronto, she raked up a bill of about
$3,700 dollars. Much of that bill was for limousine
services and shuttles in Toronto. The public
outcry was deafening. The Minister apologized
“to the Canadian people” and agreed to personally
refund the $3,700 to the Canadian tax payer.
The owner of the limousine service in Toronto
also agreed to refund an additional $1,700 to
the Canadian tax payer. As I monitored that
case, what detained my attention was not the
fact that a Federal Minister nearly lost her job
– and certainly had her reputation dented –
because she spent less than $5000 dollars of
public money on transportation for official
duties – not private duties o. I was rather struck
that one theme was consistent in the national
outrage: what that money could have done for
the common man, for the weak, for the poor.
We are talking of less than $5000
spent by a Minister fa. It nearly brought down a civilization which felt that her responsibility to the weak had been betrayed.
A few
months ago, I sat in a meeting of academic heads of unit in my
University and listened, in considerable
sadness, to a Dean announce to the Professors
gathered in the room that academic units and
departments in my University are no longer
encouraged to organize conferences, seminars,
lectures, talks, and other events that may
attract members of the public without making ASL
arrangements. ASL is American Sign Language.
We
were told that the government of Ontario is encouraging her
Universities to be forward thinking in terms
of the accessibility of knowledge to the weakest
members of the public. If you invite Wole Soyinka
to address an audience of one thousand people
and there is a single member of that audience
who needs the Nobel Laureate’s lecture in sign
language, you must make the provision. I said
I was sad hearing all that. My sadness did not devolve
from my contemplation of a culture that is constantly
probing herself to be more responsible to the
weak.
On
the contrary, I was sad because my mind wandered, as it
always does, to Nigeria where the measure of
our own civilization lies in how we treat the
strongest, richest, and most powerful members
of our society. My mind wandered to Nigeria
where the measure of our own civilization lies
in how much national anger, rebellion, and revulsion
we can summon at the first hint of inconvenience
to the rich, the powerful, the strong, and,
therefore, the sacrosanct.
Consider
the ongoing saga of arrested judges. 180 million people
became Professors of Constitutional Law
overnight. Lawyers found themselves arguing law
with lawyers. But lawyers also found themselves
arguing law with brick layers and hair dressers.
Should the judges have been touched at all?
Was the invasion of their homes constitutional?
Even if it was constitutional,
does the Constitution allow a midnight invasion of private
domains?
These,
evidently, are very important questions and a government of
change, led by a President with a military
coup past, must always go the extra mile on
the path of constitutional propriety and due process.
However, I still couldn’t get past a considerable
feeling of sadness occasioned by the fact that
I kept wishing that 180 million Nigerians would
argue law and the Constitution passionately for
more than two weeks and 24/7 on account of the
treatment of a shoemaker, a mechanic, a vulcanizer,
a fisherman or a primary school teacher.
Nigeria is one of the most
socio-economically and institutionally inhospitable places to
the common man on earth. And in this day of
social media democratization of the image,
hardly a day passes without Nigerians
witnessing the brutalization of the common man
by institutions of state or the colossal
unresponsiveness of Nigeria as a project to
the plight of the common man.
The
Nigerian confronts this daily image of the victimization of the commoner with a grunt, a sigh, a shrug, an eeyah, and a recommendation of prayer and fasting to the victim.
However,
at the first hint of inconvenience to his Senator, his
Federal Rep, his state Governor, the Federal
Minister from his constituency or judges, the
lion in this docile Nigerian bursts out in full force.
That is when he wears the danshiki of his ethnicity,
the sokoto of his religion, and the fila of his
political party and heads out to the trenches screaming
war chants. What sort of culture, what sort of
civilization comes close to social uprising only
when the richest and the most powerful are at risk?
The
measure of Nigeria’s civilization lies in how she treats
the powerful and the rich. They must not be
touched. This explains repeated acts of impunity.
If judges turn their private domains to bureaux
de change and do not deny the presence of the
funds, there is a culture which measures herself
by how best she is able to defend them. If Senator
Dino Melaye loots and loots and loots and declares
a personal dancing owambe in his hotel room,
there is a culture which measures herself by how
best she is able to defend him. This same culture
will defend Dasuki and Patience Jonathan.
This same culture will defend
Goodluck Jonathan’s aptitude to spread wealth. This same
culture has been defending Buratai and his
snake-funded billions. This same culture has
been defending Dambazzau, Abba Kyari, and
President Buhari’s expanding clique of
untouchables.
The
brazenness of Nigeria’s rich and powerful is a direct
consequence of the measure of Nigeria’s civilization.
Minister Philpott has been keeping a very low
profile here in Canada since she was accused
of wrongfully spending $3,700 belonging to the
Canadian tax payer. She is keeping a low profile
because there is such a thing as social shaming
in her culture. In Nigeria, the bigger your EFCC
file, the more solicited you are by Nigerians.
Do not believe all the cursing and
the noisemaking by Nigerians on social media. There is no politician
ever indicted by the EFCC since its creation who
isn’t walking around in Nigeria with his head held
high as a VIP. The Nigerian cursing a politician for
corruption on social media will rush for a selfie at
the first chance he gets to meet the said politician.
Nigerians solicit indicted
politicians as special guests of honour, chief launchers, etc.
Nigerians will still stop in the middle of a
wedding, funeral or such other social
functions to “recognize the presence” of an
EFCC indictee who has just arrived five hours
late in a convoy. Dino Melaye is still heavily
solicited for high table presence at functions
in his constituency. Tafa Balogun, James
Ibori,
and Lucky Igbinedion are not social pariahs because Nigeria
does not shame the rich and the powerful.
French
peasants fought and beheaded Louis XVI because they had no
bread. Nigerians would have defended Louis XVI
and fought fellow Nigerians for expecting him
to provide bread in the first place. If you
did not become a Professor of Constitutional Law
when you heard that an ordinary Nigerian was arrested
for naming his dog Buhari but have now become
a Professor Emeritus of Constitutional Law because
some judges were arrested, pause, think, and
ask yourself this question: What is the
measure of my civilization?
No comments:
Post a Comment