Nigeria’s failing and collapsing system

A failed system, a failing state. Those words keep echoing in my mind each time I look around me, each time I have to see yet another instance of our failure. We see and hear of the tortuous experience we called schooling in Nigeria. Everywhere students are made to endure the inhumanity of classrooms with chairs full of nails, seats never quite enough even in that condition. We see horrendous pictures of students having to sit on the floor to receive across all the pedestals of our educational system including even in the so-called universities. And then everybody striving to reap and profit from the bad situation as officials at every level exploit others. You get to an office to transact business and what could be done online is turned into a messy process to make you stay there for hours, if not days, unending. And that is where even what you have been asked to come and do there is necessary in the first place. But who do you report to as everybody is a law unto himself/herself and nobody is in charge anywhere?  The minister with an allegedly  NYSC certificate is keeping tight to her job and nobody is there to call her to order. The truth is there are no standards here anymore – nobody knows what is permitted and what is not permitted as everything would seem to be permitted. And yet we wonder why people will do anything to leave this country even in inhumane conditions. It is because they have lost hope, hope that it could ever get better.

We live in a society that rewards ineptitude. A society that thrives on backwardness. A society without values or ethics. One with changing belief systems and ideologies or even without any belief system at all. It is here that something could be absolutely wrong yesterday and be absolutely correct today.  It is here that we buy our children results to get into the university then turn around and complain the police are corrupt. It is here that we condemn a man for stealing bread to eat then turn around and talk about getting into power to take our own share of the national cake. It is here that a bag could be blue today but tomorrow could be red. There are no clear cut values here, nothing is sacrosanct; not even human lives. Everyday, lives are lost. Everyday, tragedies go on but we are more comfortable having debates on why feminists do not concentrate on serious issues like FGM instead of the gender stereotypes they try to abolish. We are more comfortable making jokes about serious issues rather than trying to find solutions. We condemn the killings with our words but we will never act against it after all, it has not got to our particular villages. Nothing matters unless it affects us personally. We are a society gradually losing its humanity, its sanity, its very life.

• Siege on Saraki, Ekweremadu troubling ― Atiku

A society that fails to put its values first will eventually fail. Values – the ideals we hold dear – seem to no longer matter. We cannot determine exactly what should be important or not. Whether socially, politically or physically, we have made money our only value. In a way that, without money, nothing matters. Our lives revolve around how much you own and what you can buy with it. The rich keep getting richer and the poor, poorer. The rich are comfortable driving beautiful cars on roads full of potholes, living in big houses built on water. We take pride in how many of our children are abroad rather than how many we raised right. But then, how can they be raised right if our very ideals are not founded on sacrosanct and unchanging values? We wallow in poverty yet live in big houses. No one seems to care about the little kid hawking on the streets when he/she should be in school nor does it seem to matter that our children are being violated. We only care about the material and getting it. We do not even bother about the means of getting it. Money over everything.

Yet, our society claims to be moving forward. We hear everybody pretending to be working at something great, with politicians celebrating themselves when the society is going down. We are confronted by statistics of growing poverty, yet everybody in government is given awards for superlative performances. And you begin to wonder where all the celebrated achievements in infrastructure are when the reality does not bear such out. Every Governor is the best performing Governor, yet the states are going down in development. It is as if we have perfected pretense and not telling ourselves the truth. We celebrate fraud and inanities and go on amusing ourselves with nothing. We have a society whose educational, social and political system has failed and we all tell ourselves that we are moving forward. And the whole world keeps wondering whether we are really getting or going anywhere.

The redeeming factor in all of this, however, is that we built and did it all, we caused it all, we allowed it all; we are the ones responsible for where we are now, and we have power over our own actions and activities. It is, therefore, not beyond us to overcome the present failure and seek to turn a new leaf and erect a proper system. Indeed, the onus lies on us to change, to reorganize, to rebuild, to rethink. We are the authors of the current failing system, a failing state that has continued to fail its citizens. One that has continued to leave pains in the hearts of its people. This system is collapsing and the people are groaning; this present system is just not sustainable as it is bound to get worse and worse. We must realise that continuing with the present system is to have certain failure on our hands. Under this system,  we are fighting a losing battle and it is time to change tactics. Regain our values, rebuild our lives. Or else, we will be left only with pieces of a failed state.

• Wale-Olaitan is with the Faculty of Education, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.