Numero Unoma
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye….well at least so it feels…the year is over again, gosh, where did the time go?!
Tbh, this Nigerian is glad that the year 2022 is over, since that end ushers in an era of ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’, and hopefully the chance for a fresh start for our embattled nation. Another fresh start. Yes, yet another one. Soon and very soon. Please God! Amen.
Seriously though, what can we promise ourselves of the upcoming February election? Will we finally set course in a direction that takes us to a better future? Will that eventually happen, after we have hoped and prayed and wished on so very many previous pre-election occasions since gaining independence from Britain in 1960? Alas, thus far not much good has manifested.
When will this Abiku child finally just stay with us? When will this Ogbanje have mercy on those standing around, anguished after each traumatising denouement? What will it take to make life worth living?
When you think about it, whoever gets the job of president sure is going to have his work cut out. It will take more than one term even just to get Nigeria back to Ground Zero after the awful and unprecedented decline of the the last 8 years. With the best of intentions, and even with a competent team, I am doubtful that real or potentially lasting change can be achieved in the short to medium term, and I would really love to be proven wrong on this.
Why do I say this? Simply because the overwhelming majority, yes the critical mass of our workforce has never actually known any normalcy. What they opened newborn eyes to experience was corruption, what they suckled on at their mother’s breast was compromise, what they took example from as prepubescents, in the conduct of their elders – and even that of their own tender peers – was downright dodgy, and definitely amoral and unethical. By the time they’d hit their teens, the guidance of the role models that shaped them was nothing short of nefarious, so that by young adulthood, they had been fully formed as unscrupulous, shady and consumately crooked.
Do I have some of you up in arms? Sorry o. Truth hurts.
We have all been guilty in some small or even ginormous way of cheating the system, if we are honest. We dismiss the feeble voices of protest with a wave of the hand and a haughty laugh. “That’s how out is”. That sentence infuriates me every time I hear it, because it needn’t be that way if we all just decided to do the right thing.
Don’t you know that your children learn how to be humans by on the one hand observing, and then on the other imitating your behaviour, your choices and your responses to the environment. Your behaviour will imprint one way or another.
Limbic imprint is said to be “the human emotional map, deep-seated beliefs, and values that are stored in the brain’s limbic system.”
Limbic imprinting happens in childhood, and can positively or negatively impact an adult throughput their lifespan.
“This means that if a child is born under traumatic circumstances, then as an adult trauma will register as normal in the brain. Trauma will become expected and because of this early imprinting, adults may be more susceptible to dangerous or abusive situations.”
The threat of social exclusion behind the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ mantra is our lame excuse for breaking the rules after making the rules. Who are we waiting for to stop the carousel? And why are we not jumping off if we can’t stop it?
I know that for those of us who remember a different and now long-gone Nigeria, we often ask ourselves when it was that we ‘branched and missed road’. That question in and of itself offers great comfort, albeit theoretical, in that if there was ever an act of taking a wrong turning on our journey, then there must be the possibility of finding the turning that takes us back on track…and taking it.
But hope is not a plan, just as failure is not an option. What’s more, as we approach Christmas and the watershed between this old year and the shiny new one ahead, I am not trying to be gloomy or depressing.
As always in this column, I am just expressing my opinion. I back it up with knowledge, personal experience and research. ICYDK is not trying to be an academic paper, and I thoroughly enjoy engaging with my readers, so keep those debates coming. Just the other day, after reading the column, one reader unleashed a stream of invective, the result of which was that he and I spent two whole days exchanging loooong essays about our individual POVs. They were laced with subtle and amusing intellectual insults, such as one might hear in the high drama of the British House of Commons, where courtly phrase and scholarly wit are not uncommon conduits for slur. I enjoyed it immensely.
Today, I would like to thank that gentleman, a Lagos Learned Friend, yes, a lawyer, along with every last one of you, my dear readers, for your support, your critique, and your generosity in the mutual exchange of our strong opinions. Long may it last!
Indeed, you are entitled to your opinion. But first, you are entitled to mine!
See you next year…..