How To Be A Nigerian



by Reuben Abati





Sunday November 2, 2003



The copyright for the title of this piece belongs to Peter Enahoro, more popularly known in his days as a columnist, as Peter Pan. He remains even in retirement, one of the stars of Nigerian journalism. Peter Enahoro has served this profession as reporter, editor, manager of resources and as an icon. I borrow one of the many titles coined by him, in admiration. But I believe also that the sub-text of Enahoro's words deserves continuing exploration. How to be a Nigerian is one of the more enduring challenges of our lives. The phrase raises questions about identity and national culture; it is about the interconnection between state and society. It is invariably also about survival. How truly can one be a Nigerian? To be a true Nigerian is to develop a sense of home and a feeling of belonging. But if a man is not a Nigerian at heart, does that make him a non-citizen? . If a citizen is not a Nigerian, in the sense of our intended construction, does that indicate a disconnect with the immediate environment? How to be a Nigerian is an important consideration because we live anyway, in rather challenging circumstances, which require greater creativity than may be needed elsewhere.

To be a Nigerian, you must learn the lesson that nothing is ever fair, and that indeed anything is possible, and you may have to pay your way through life by offering and taking bribe to facilitate many of life's processes. Babies are switched at birth in Nigeria and offered for sale; to leave the hospital with the right baby, and not fall victim of cradle-snatchers, you may have to pay the nurses a little "something" to guarantee their loyalty. Or better still you may have to patronise an expensive hospital where reputation is still important. Death is equally expensive in this country. Mortuaries and cemeteries are raided for spare parts by ritualists and their agents. To ensure that your beloved reaches the gates of Heaven or Hell, without a missing ear, tongue or genitalia, you have to pay the mortuary and cemetery attendants to have mercy on the dead from your household. Being alive in Nigeria is worse. Every activity involving life and movement has to be facilitated with cash. It is not for nothing that Nigeria is the second most corrupt country in the world. This is not a country of saints.



If you insist that you will not offer bribe, then you face a long life of frustration. You will never be able to get anything done. In Nigeria , parents pay a special fee to get their children into schools from nursery to the university. If you are a Nigerian parent, you may also discover that teachers need to be bribed before your child can pass examinations. To be a Nigerian truly, you must realise that official rules and regulations serve very little purpose. The meaning of the law depends on the man in charge of a particular office at a particular time. Positions and uniforms are to be respected by all means. Policemen, customs and immigration officials live on bribe. Local government officials expect you to grease their palms. To bend the law, you must pay a token fee, and once you do so, you are offered a special salute by the policeman on the highway or the immigrations officer at the border and allowed to do exactly what you wish. Thus, to be a Nigerian, you must learn to beat the system.



The law can be bought. Justice is available for the highest bidder. The man who is loaded with more cash than sense is king. If you can flaunt wealth, your contemporaries will worship the very ground on which you walk. Just get rich by any means and as quickly as possible. Nobody will dare question the source of the wealth. With money, you can buy the protection of the state. The high and the low will queue up at your doorstep to pay homage, what they really want is their own share of your loot. Traditional rulers will offer you chieftaincy titles. The state will offer you national honours. Women will throw themselves at your feet. And not just any woman, but the most beautiful ones who used to be beyond your reach. Newspapers will name you among the most fashionable men in society. A rich man is always fashionable. I have never heard of a poor man, being labelled the best dressed Nigerian. To be a Nigerian, you must be loud with your wealth and accomplishments. Even if you are poor, you must carry on with life with a certain amount of swagger. Don't ever forget that you are a Nigerian; your country is the sixth largest producer of crude oil in the world, the most populous black nation on earth, and the home of the happiest people in the universe.



Indeed, to be a Nigerian, you must be an optimist. This is the only way to survive in a country where there is so much distance between government and the people in form of widespread poverty, incompetence in high places and established disregard for the rights of citizens. The roads are bad, electricity supply is epileptic, salaries are not paid on time, there is food scarcity, and the scarcity as well of the basic necessities of life, but you must learn to take everything in your stride. To be a Nigerian, you must see even death, any death at all, in a positive light. You live in a country where accidents are common and death is cheap. But in the midst of it all, you must learn to be joyous. Every weekend, attend a party, wear the best clothes in your wardrobe, and tell yourself that the biggest achievement that any man can be proud of is to remain alive.



It doesn't matter if you are trapped in squalor. If you are lucky to have some means, then you are truly lucky. You can throw parties everyday if you wish. You can even dictate the kind of women you want at the parties and the kind of clothes that they must wear. You would be surprised that there are many women including housewives who are ready to appear half-naked just to be seen among the happening crowd in society. If you are rich, then you can create your own government inside Nigeria by providing your own basic amenities, and using the state to rob the poor.



If you are lucky enough to have a small business of your own with employees working under you, then you do not have to pay salaries. Nobody is going to arrest you for failing to pay your own workers. If the workers are not happy, they are free to go. But because they are Nigerians, they are not likely to resign en masse. They too will find a way. They will steal from your company. They will use company time to do business on the side. One day, try and investigate your workers, the same ones who are complaining about salaries and poor conditions of service. You will be surprised that this is the only country where a messenger who has not been paid for six months lives in a mansion of his own. Your managers have houses abroad. Your directors have their children in foreign schools. And you begin to wonder whether indeed a Nigerian labourer deserves his wages.



To remain sane as a Nigerian, you must be religious. And you must advertise your piety. Sleep in the church. Proclaim your religiousity from the rooftops. Mention God's name in every conversation. In a land where there is so much madness, religion offers you the only opportunity to cling on to a measure of holiness. It is the only way to remind yourself that you are human after all, and that there is something that you still believe in. There are too many forces compelling you to disbelieve the very existence of God. You will see highly placed persons who are no better than scoundrels. Wives of important persons who are no better than cheap prostitutes. Men and women of power who are sexual perverts: Fraudsters and common criminals who are nevertheless accorded the respect that they do not deserve: Children who have sold their souls to d Young girls who are in the hands of men who are old enough to be their fathers: Housewives who should be in Hell. To be a Nigerian, you can only look at all these and take your troubled soul to God.



If you are unable to cope, perhaps you may consider the option of exile. There are many Nigerians abroad eking out a living as economic refugees. Unable to cope with the many disasters of life in the country of their birth, they have fled to other countries where there is less stress and shock. To be a Nigerian, you must ordinarily learn to live with shock. This is a country where anything can happen. Public buildings go up in flames routinely. Bombs can explode anyhow in busy neighbourhoods, claiming lives and property and even government officials would join the people to express frustration and anxiety. This is a country where the police run away from criminals. It is a country where criminals consider themselves gentlemen, and are so treated in many ways. Politicians are not interested in public service; they want access to the public treasury so they can steal a part of the national cake.



To be a Nigerian, you must learn to relate to the National Anthem as if it were a disco tune. I have heard versions of the national anthem which belong more to the hip-hop genre. The average Nigerian considers the anthem a joke. There is a musician who has even worked out a remix version of the song, and it is played regularly in disco halls. To be a Nigerian, you must take life as one long joke. Don't bother about patriotism. You will be better served by ethnic affiliations. If you feel you are not getting your due in certain circumstances, allege that you are being discriminated against on ethnic grounds. Link up with persons of your own tribe, and get them to push advantages in your direction. It doesn't matter whether you are qualified or not. This is not a country where merit counts for much. Sycophants, mediocre persons and hypocrites stand a better chance of getting up the ladder than the man of talent. They know what to say in the right places. They are experts at blackmailing competitive and able rivals. For such persons, life itself is about politics, and they are prepared to push down anyone who stands in their way. To be a Nigerian, you must always remember this: you are in the midst of Sharks. Every other Nigerian has a small dagger in his pocket, hoping to draw blood. Get your own dagger! Be on your guard. And may the Lord be with you.

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God first, family second and career third.
www.marykay.com/adanna

Wow!

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Celebrate Africa, the continent of beauty!

Hmm...Nigeria = Contradiction! This is very sad! But how long are we going to keep writing such articles? When are we the youth, the current generation going to mobilise ourselves? Perhaps Nigeria should SPLIT!

Very, very funny! And sadly quite true... The above statement is the main thing that has always bothered me about home....

Unfortunately VERY true.

The article was written in 2003 and I believe when have improved some and as well progress and forward ever, it does not hurt to look at where we have been and have a laugh while pushing forward and improving on other areas that are lacking.

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God first, family second and career third.
www.marykay.com/adanna

By Rueben Abati

ACCORDING to our political historians, the country now known as Nigeria, with approximately its present size and international boundaries, was constituted into a British colonial territory between 1885 and 1914. But, as Obaro Ikime stated in his book, The fall of Nigeria, "the events which took place between 1885 and 1914 were but a culmination of a series of events, indeed a process, which began early in the nineteenth century". The territory was constituted from several chiefdoms, kingdoms, city-states, tribes, principalities and communities.

Many Nigerians still claim that Nigeria was an arbitrary creation; but some others insist that the creation was not so arbitrary. By this they mean that there were historical, geographical and economic factors that favoured integration. In other words, they are saying that if the British conquerors had not come, or had remained as traders and missionaries, a country with more or less the shape and composition of Nigeria would have emerged, with time.

Be that as it may, Nigeria did emerge in 1914. It was defined by its location, boundaries and composition. A people called Nigerians, also emerged and were also initially defined by these factors. That was 93-years ago. On Octoebr 1, 1960 Nigeria was granted political independence. A question which has not been exhausted by history is: To what extent has the original identification and definition of Nigeria and Nigerians been transcended? In other words, to what extent has Nigeria transcended the description of "artificial creation"? When we say the "Nigerian way", "Nigerian mentality", "Nigerian culture", "typically Nigerian phenomenon", what do we mean, if anything at all?

In 1966, Peter Enahoro, then 31-years old, but already Group Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Times newspapers, tried to answer these questions in a humour-loaded book titled: How to be a Nigerian. Enahoro had joined the Daily Times 11-years earlier as a sub-editor. By 1958 he had become Editor of the Sunday Times. Peter Enahoro, a younger brother of Nigeria's elder statesman, Chief Anthony Enahoro, introduced the publication as a "guide book for natives and expatriates on the conduct, deportment, comportment, bearing, demeanour, mien, carriage, actions, the misdoings, misconduct and misbehaviours of the Nigerian adult, male and female". The book carried the author's real name and not the pseudonym, "Peter Pan", by which he was known in his incisive and very popular column in Daily Times.

As How to be a Nigerian is more than 40-years old, we may need to recapture the historical background. Nigeria became independent as a federation of three regions-North, West and East - and a federal capital, Lagos. A fourth region, the Mid-West, was created in 1963. The population of the country at the time the book was written was 55.6 million constituted by about 90 "tribes" - the more edifying name, "ethnic group", was not yet in popular use then. Governance was characterised by a triple affliction: tribalism, nepotism and corruption. The first military coup took place on January 15, 1966. This fact was, however, not reflected in Peter Enahoro's book also not reflected was author's narrow escape during the counter-coup of July 29, 1966.

Why did Peter Enahoro decide to write this book? I can deduce two reasons from the preamble. First: "Too many writers are trying to solve Africa's political and economic problems, without looking at the people with whom they are dealing". Secondly, "I offer this book as a tourist guide to those Nigerians who wish to break with tradition and visit their own country. Nigerians are great travellers, except in their own country. They travel far and wide in Africa. You will find them selling diamonds to Ivoriens in Ivory Coast; they run small businesses in Ghana and make thundering good living selling hand-woven Ghanaian cloth to Ghanaians. You will find them in the heart of the Congo too, selling elephant tusks off Congolese elephants to the Congolese".

But at home, Enahoro lamented, "Nigerians are parochial. Flatters say we are a stable people. No doubt about that. At home, the Nigerian is intrinsically static. They are stable people who are immobile". That was 40-yars ago. How far have we evolved? The preamble ended: "This book does not pretend that it is a philosophical or sociological work; it does not affect to be of scholarly depth. Its aim is to enlighten in an entertaining way, to show that the Nigerian can laugh at his own idiosyncrasies. For this reason, I commend this book to the man with a large sense of humour".

The main body of the book has 21 short sections. From these I pick the section titled: The spirit of compromise. The reason for my choice will become clear at the end. Besides, the section give an insight into the entire book. Peter Enahoro opened the section with the declaration: "No Nigerian arrangement is permanent unless that which has been arrived at by negotiated compromise". He then elaborated: "This fundamental principle is more than a habit. It is a religion. A situation in which normalcy is achieved without compromise is suspect and every effort will be made to disrupt it so that a proper compromise can be worked out to ensure stability". He provided several illustrations from which I make the following selection.

First illustration: arbitration: "When a Nigerian is invited to arbitrate, he knows that he will be condemned by both sides if he does not find fault with either side to the dispute - and praise both for their infinite patience, at the same time. Thus, he will lean over backwards to blame the obviously innocent party and pick on a trivial trespass so that he can be seen to have been fair. The result of this arbitration would then be a compromise between a lasting scar and a fresh wound. The arbitrator's equivocate upbraid of the guilty party is enough to instill a sense of guilt; yet his censure of the innocent party is sufficiently unfair to arouse fresh hostility".

Second illustration: commodity prices: "In most parts of the world, a price tag tells you the exact cost of an article on display in a market. Not so in Nigeria. There are no price tags; although there are prices. Which is a fair compromise between giving goods away and having prices. What happens is that the market mammy knowing that the correct price of a dozen eggs is five shillings, asks one shilling more; the customer knowing that he should rightly pay five shillings offers one shilling less. Then seller and purchaser haggle and haggle and after driving a hard bargain, compromise on five shillings".

Third illustration: the civil servant: "Civil servants are also a compromise between incivility and servitude. They are inherently uncivil and economically servile. The civil servants is underpaid, which makes his service equivalent to servitude. On the other hand, the civil servant takes a razor-sharp tongue to work with him and will snap like the jaw of a crocodile at the least provocation. Thus, while he is not civil, he is a servant. It is a rare compromise".

Fourth illustration: diplomacy: "In the First Republic, our diplomats went to great lengths to see that they spoke when everyone else had finished speaking and half the conference were in the tea-room. This was in the great tradition of that technique of diplomacy highly favoured by the political leaders of the period. It was called the doctrine of self-effacement; or the overseas policy of self-concealment. In practice, it meant that if there was a slim chance to cancel ourselves out at any international affair, we had to snatch it. Most diplomats approved of this and would often tell journalists proudly that Nigeria's successful policy was to hide from exposure. In other worlds, our foreign policy was a compromise between bring physically present and being effectively absent. Like playing right full back in a football match, sitting among the spectators".

Fifth illustration: marriage and family: "Marriage is a rich breeding ground for compromise. In many happy monogamous homes, marriage is a contemplated compromise between bachelorhood and polygamy. This is largely accepted, as marriage itself is understood to be a compromise between promiscuity and public morality. The Nigerian family is invariably large. This is understandable, for the Nigerian family includes relations as far distant as the 12th cousin removed. Thus, in fact, the Nigerian family is a compromise between a village and a clan".

Six illustration: summons: "When you summon a Nigerian, saying to him: will you please come here a minute?" he will say to you 'I'm coming'. In fact, he is not moving. What he really means is that he will join you as soon as he can - which may be ages. Therefore, his answer is a compromise between outright refusal and rushing over to see you".

I commend: How to be a Nigerian to Nigerian patriots and genuine democrats who desire to engage the Nigerian question afresh, and from the roots. A monumental tragedy has just befallen the country - a tragedy that is all the more tragic and complicated because of its farcical form. But soon, an unprincipled compromise will be proposed by professional, but satanic, peacemakers. This compromise will then propel the country to a greater tragedies - until we arrive at the point those who want to bury Nigeria want us to be.

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In other words,naija is a fiction writer's dream.

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DS ON YOUTUBE.


The Ultimate
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We Are All That Is
We Are The Creator Of The Dance,As Well As The Dancer

It is fiction to the extent that Nigerians enjoy dissecting their country with impunity.Write-ups like this are common from Dr Abati who i must confess is a major league writer.However,it would have been more appealing to see suggestions for a better Nigeria.Afterall,we are all stakeholders-the latest adjective by the present government-and as in the days of MAMSER;Nigeria is our country and we must salvage it together!.
The essay was written in 2003 a year that Transparency International convinced themselves mainly out of perception than any imperical convintion that,Nigeria was the second most corrupt country on planet earth.I confronted them in a seminar where that year's(2003) global report on corruption was presented to the public and their top officials couldn't explain to me how they came to that conclusion-that is yesterday's ice anyway.
Moving on,this is 2007 and even Transparency International now agrees that we have improved from the situation of 2003.However,with the recent elections,i wonder were their barometer would place us in the next report!!
One cannot argue the evidence of undisputable truths in the essay but they are hardly ever typical of only Nigeria:Indeed every homogenous society the sieze and features of Nigeria must have disentigrated into tiny parts by now.
We need urgent re-orientation no doubt but that should also include Nigerians ability to sell Nigeria positively.