Nigeria: Who Is to Blame?

 Nigeria: Who Is to Blame? 

For over 60 years, Nigeria’s problems have always largely been attributed to corruption. But most of our people don’t understand that corruption is actually obviously the foundation of capitalism. For one to have a capitalist society, you have to have a mechanism that takes resources that belong to everybody—I mean resources that belong to the public. And you also need to privatize those resources and give them to the few for them to then enslave everybody’s else labor to make money in the capitalist system. And that’s why I sometimes opine that it was after 1914 that the capitalist system became so manifested in Nigeria that we began to have writings on the context, with the amalgamation of the two separate entities; the protectorates of northern Nigeria and southern Nigeria. However, some believe that the extent action of capitalism was done during the top days of Royal Niger Company, believing that George Goldie was the most proponent of the system. But it was in 1914 that the British government discovered that the north had been running on a budget deficit—something against their wish. As a result of this, British Treasury paid grants-in-aid to Northern Nigeria (totaling over £4 million) in the years of its existence. But remember, this was not to the advantage of the region; it was to the greater advantage of the capitalist country, Britain. They could use their little resources and take the public resources. So, it’s the people who started that system that have to be blamed first. These are the very first layer to be blamed. 

It’s us the public who accept capitalism as a system forgetting the centuries of enslavement it has brought, because we hope that one day we will be one of the few that are sucking the blood of everybody else, that are also part of the problem. All of us are trying, in one way or another, to get to the table. We are not trying to break the system. And doing that, we talk corruption when we are corrupt ourselves. Thus, we become complicit in the crime. 

Then the next layer is our politicians who are us again. But they are the ones that we then choose from ourselves to say you become our representative. These men and women have the ability to change the laws and the systems to reset them. 

We the society that bring the politicians because the politicians are our son. We elect him. We are the problem. We the publics who continue to elect the politician who doesn’t bring results are the problem. We the publics that continue to accept a system of politics that actually doesn’t allow us to choose leaders but it just allows us to choose a beauty contest where we select the most famous or most popular person, we are the problem. We the publics that have not demanded the change of our education system, for us to have an education system that empowers to, of course have the mind to think intellectually to know how to bring solutions to our own problems, but we always work to bring solutions to other people’s problems or other people’s benefits, we are the problem. 

Your writing, show, resources, ability to convince, patience, or endurance can make a difference if you begin to apply them in a way they will transform the mind of our people. 

If we are not doing these, we are all to blame. The day we fix that. The day we begin to separate ourselves from the system. The day we begin to refuse to be part and parcel of it. How do we do that? You can not say you want to be empowered when you are an advocate of alcoholism; you are an advocate of consumption; you are an advocate of abusing women and children; you are an advocate of pushing the wrong person to represent us; until we begin to win ourselves from these; until we stop  watching nasty movies in our houses; until we stop celebrating our politicians when they separated us and gave us small a small fish at the expense of the public; until we start saying let’s create things of our own to be independent; we are playing and we are also to blame from the system.

Mu’az Ahmad writes.