Thoughts on Nigeria's motto and national ethics KAYODE KETEFE Today, everybody would agree the nation is reeking with disunity and fear, pandemonium and stagnation. While these four depressing nouns "disunity, fear, pandemonium, stagnation" might have aptly captured the current realities, they are by no means mere fortuitous sequence of lexical items by this writer. The words are, ironically, just the direct opposites of the lexemes in the "national motto" enshrined in Section 15 of the 1999 Constitution. The said section provides "Motto of the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress." With the rate of insecurity in the land a la Boko Haram, spate of mindless killings, destruction of properties and its concomitant pernicious effects on the country's socio-economic fortune and the quality of lives of Nigerians, it is one the of the ironies of our times that the nation now seems a perfect negation of everything each of those ideal concepts in the national motto denotes. But the paradoxical discrepancy between stated objectives and realities is not confined to the motto alone; it extends more palpably to the virtues described as "national ethics" under Section 23 of the Constitution. The said section states "The national ethics shall be Discipline, Integrity, Dignity of Labour, Social Justice, Religious Tolerance, Self-reliance and Patriotism" To project the palpable incongruities between our behaviours and each of these ethics would certainly require writing of volumes of encyclopedia-sized treatises. Let us briefly examine each of the virtues against the backlight of our experiences, starting with "discipline". What amount of discipline inheres in our socio-political and cultural contexts? How often do you see Nigerians jumping queues at public places in defiance of social etiquette, and in glorification of indiscipline? Do our policy makers set targets and remain committed to them in consonance with disciplined mindset? What about financial discipline, and moral discipline, too? At the lowest rung of the ladder, you see people urinating or even defecating ubiquitously in public places with utter shamelessness. Where is discipline? Integrity comes next, everyone will agree that if ever there is one scarce commodity in Nigeria, it is men and women of integrity; the extent of corruption in the land is a direct index of want of integrity in the character contents of a sizeable segment of Nigerians. What of dignity of labour"? Many civil servants are not only lazy, they see their offices as avenues for self-enrichment, the government itself has no workable blueprints for efficient, dynamic labour-force; People also have the attitude of looking down on many jobs for being lowly and menial as if white collar jobs are the only ones essential in the society. As for social justice, is our socio-political and economic order not structured in such a way that the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer? In justice sector for instance, you would realise the poor's access to justice is not only curtailed by the exorbitant cost of adjudication, it is also hampered by selectivity. Only last week, we read about a roadside mechanic who was sentenced to "death by hanging" by an Oleh High Court in Delta State, for stealing a car stereo. Furthermore, about two weeks ago, a 33-year old hungry, jobless man, Opeyemi Ayomide, was remanded in prison by an Ojokoro Magistrate Court in Lagos, for allegedly stealing a N20 worth of onion and a moderate-sized tuber of yam! This is happening in a nation where influential politicians who stole hundreds of billions of naira from public treasury find judicial refuge in plea bargaining- the farcical contrivance through which they give up a negligible fraction of the loots in exchange for watered –down, slap on the wrist sentences. Certainly, a poor man may find it difficult to get justice tempered with mercy, but a rich man has no problem getting justice tempered with absurdity! Then we have "religious tolerance" as the next ethic, My God! Religious what? The remains of innocent souls ruthlessly massacred on the Christmas Day have just been interned. Boko Haram, however, did not start inter-religious belligerence in Nigeria, our various faiths have always proved incapable of harmonious co-existence as a result of mutual intolerance, albeit Boko Haram has taken the affair to an infernal level of unprovoked, sadistic terrorism. Now, who is talking of self-reliance? We cannot even rely on ourselves just to refine our natural products like crude oil, having to import refined PMS from abroad. Don't we spend hard-earned foreign exchange to import necessities, luxuries and even vanities? Our rate of reliance on foreign expertise is so painfully enormous that it is debatable if we can survive without foreign dependency. In every household in any modern Nigerian city today, 98 percent of all items, utensils, fitting and fixtures are of foreign provenance. As for patriotism, where are the patriotic Nigerians? May be one in a thousand! The pertinent question here is why is our national character so diametrically opposed to our self-chosen, much-vaunted national motto cum ethics? We must remind ourselves that wishful thinking has never accomplished anything laudable; people as rational, sentient beings must purposefully and tenaciously work towards accomplishment of whatever worthy goals they have set for themselves. |
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