The Nigerian Mindset

Most Nigerians do not believe anyone is seriously working to ensure that they get their fair share of whatever is due them. This makes most of us believe that we are on our own. This belief, in turn, drives a survival-of-the-fittest, every-man-for-himself mindset which pervades every activity, dictates the rules of engagement between citizens, and fashions the pattern of everyday life in Nigeria. This subconscious state or mindset, by guiding the thoughts and actions of the majority of Nigerians, is the brush that paints the picture of Nigeria.

While every Nigerian deeply and dearly yearns for some assurance that someone is looking out for his or her interests, the majority have learnt from experience to equip themselves as well as they can and protect their interests by themselves. As an observer of the Nigerian condition, once you realise this, it is as if the scales are suddenly taken off your eyes and a lot of confusing Nigerian behaviours immediately begin to make sense. Until you recognise the existence of this mindset, you will struggle to understand what appears to be the irrationality and complexity of Nigerian behaviour, and many people have been so baffled as to posit complex theories about the inferiority of the black race. But what we see is basic human nature at play.

This mindset of being on your own is not always true but is constantly emphasised whenever one hears of or experiences the various forms of injustice that go on in our society, and it tends to drown out every other positive act.

In Martin Meredith's The Fate of Africa, one Nigerian civil servant describes his experience this way: "You bribe to get your child into school; you pay to secure your job and also continue to pay in some cases to retain it; you pay ten percent of any contract obtained; you dash the tax officer to avoid paying taxes; you pay a hospital doctor or nurse to get proper attention; you pay the policeman to evade arrest. This catalogue of shame can continue without end."

When you consider the network of people and institutions connected in that "catalogue of shame", you see how pervasive this mindset is. And this mindset is particularly insidious because as people act to ensure their individual survival, their actions negatively affect others and reinforce to them that they, in turn, are on their own and need to look out for themselves. We thereby set up a vicious spiral of selfish, survivalist behaviour that has turned our nation into a jungle.

For instance, as a result of the experiences of that civil servant, he could easily feel justified to demand bribes at his duty post. As a matter of fact, a lot of the people he has encountered in that chain of corruption may have started their activities as a means of ensuring their own survival or because others are doing it.

This mindset tells Nigerians that they must get all they can now because they have no guarantees for the future. It tells them that the patient Nigerian dog will see no bone, and that has significant implications for every developing nation because it means that people live for the moment and are discouraged from thinking for the long-term in many areas of life. This is not helped by the fact that the young observe the poor treatment of government retirees and see no incentive to think for the long term. Pensions are stolen regularly, and retirees are treated callously when trying to obtain their pittance.

It is the reason being fast and smart is a national virtue while demonstrating trust is the worst social crime a Nigerian can commit. It also explains why a lot of Nigerians demonstrate systematic indiscipline, refusing to form a queue or respect an existing queue but rather spending their time looking for a way to get the better of the system. It is simply because they have no confidence that the queue will work for everyone. This theme is further explored in Part II of this book because it is symbolic of our current reality as a nation.

Indiscipline is very common and manifests itself in different ways which continue to entrench this mindset to observers and participants. People deviate from social mores and standards to favour themselves; for example, they urinate anywhere they like and drive against traffic. Government officials and their escorts terrorise others on the roads with constantly blazing sirens. People of affluence and power shove their power down the throats of less powerful Nigerians; military and police officers humiliate average Nigerians, make them kneel or crawl on the streets at the slightest offence, beat them, or mete out other dehumanising treatment that is aimed at putting them in their place in the social order.

One of the behaviours that completely baffles Nigerians and foreigners alike is the way people will often queue dutifully to board a plane at Heathrow in London only to start rushing for their hand luggage as soon as the plane gets into Nigerian airspace even before the plane taxis to a complete stop. Such behaviours have led to the absurd theory that there is something in the Nigerian weather that gets in people's heads. But in the light of our discussion, it is obvious that there is instinctive awareness by every experienced Nigerian in that plane that they need to get their luggage off the conveyor belt as quickly as possible before the luggage is stolen or the belt breaks down or something worse happens. At the end of the day, it is still a reaction to the mindset that no one will look out for you.

Many years ago, I read a Yahoo! Travels article which described Nigeria as a country that is filled with type A personalities. I believe that observation is the manifestation of this mindset; since everyone is required to be alert and on their toes to defend themselves or seize transient opportunities, the country has spawned aggressive citizens.

For the same reason, at any sign of confrontation, a lot of Nigerians ask, "Do you know who I am?" Careful analysis shows that this question shows up when people are worried about not being treated well, because they are not important. This omnipresent question is also a tacit admission that if you are not important or influential in Nigerian society, you are likely to get a very raw deal in your various dealings. It has been made very obvious that if you are not a Big Man – if you are not influential – you will not get served.

Being influential means having power or having the money required to buy power. The greatest form of this power is political power. This straightforward arrangement creates a clear trajectory that points anyone who wants a good life in Nigeria straight to politics or the pursuit of wealth by all means. It explains why virtues like hard work, patience, honesty, delayed gratification, and so forth are pushed to the background.

As the late Nigerian economist Professor Claude Ake put it in Karl Meier's This House Has Fallen, "we have essentially relations of raw power in which right tends to be co-existential with power and security depends on the control of power. The struggle for power then is everything and is pursued by every means."

In the context of our discussion, then, the struggle for power is also the struggle for survival. It creates a clear dichotomy in power relations between those who have access to power and those who do not. This dichotomy is well understood by both the strongest and the weakest (who often are the richest and the poorest people, respectively, in Nigerian society). They know how it works, and they largely go along with it. It is the middle class that rebels and demands a fairer system. Too often, however, their demands fail because they are – or are perceived to be – selfishly fighting to have more of the privileges of the richest rather than fighting to extend their existing privileges to the poorest.

A lot of people who analyse the state of the nation point at leadership failure as a major reason Nigeria has not progressed. Since leaders do not exist in a vacuum, it is possible that their failure is tied to some of the behaviours that are driven by this mindset. In the next chapter, we will examine the place of leadership in our challenges.

The Failures of Our Heroes Past

After experiencing fourteen leadership changes in the last forty-two years, Nigerians are still looking for a messiah who will bring the results they desire. As I write, we are two clear years away from the next elections, yet political war drums have been rolled out, war chests are being amassed, and gladiators are throwing their hats in the ring, positioning themselves for the fierce battle to control national resources for another four years.

Will Nigerians see the outcomes they want? Will there be a rapid reduction in the levels of corruption in the society? Will public services work? Will more infrastructure be built or existing infrastructure be better maintained? Will the rot in the educational sector be arrested? Will security greatly improve? Will there be enough capital investment to set a clear direction for growth? Will more jobs become available? Will there be better protection of human rights? Will the people become surer of a robust future for the country?

I very much doubt it.

But not for the usual reasons people give – not because the next leader may not have the desired character or because the politicians may be too self-centred and not care enough about the country. All of these may be true, but they are not the reasons I doubt. As far as I am concerned, Nigerian politicians are ultimately no different from other politicians. It is because our environment is less refined that their behaviour is cruder and more brazen.

The reason I doubt is that, to my mind, the problems we face today have less to do with the personalities running the system and more to do with the system they are running. If that is the case, no matter how many times we change the specific people involved, the chances of getting significant results will remain low until we understand what is required to make the system work.

This is very much like a situation where one hundred and fifty million people on a bus with engine trouble are heading down a hill and passengers are comparing driving skills among themselves! What we need is the skill of a mechanic who can fix the engine and tune it to its optimal performance so that any average driver can still perform acceptably. Until that is done, no matter how brilliant or honest a driver is, the best performance he can coax out of the engine will still be suboptimal.

Edward Deming noted that when people are giving their best and outcomes remain unsatisfactory, management should consider changing the system. Coming from someone who helped turn around the Japanese economy after the Second World War, this should be considered serious advice.

If I judge by what I hear aspiring leaders say and promise, I see that most do not understand the system well enough to bring significant change. In fact, they often believe that the incumbents are not giving their best, and as a result they naively believe their noble intentions will be sufficient to push reform through. I dare say most of them are missing it by a long mile.

We understand things a bit better when we take a look at the personalities that have been in charge of Nigeria since it gained independence in 1960:

1. Tafawa Balewa was a man of dignity who had the common touch.

2. Aguiyi Ironsi was a dynamic officer who restructured the country.

3. Yakubu Gowon was a respected army officer who successfully oversaw the Nigerian civil war.

4. Murtala Mohammed was a decisive army officer who enforced order though for a short time.

5. Olusegun Obasanjo successfully handed power over to civilians.

6. Shehu Shagari was a former teacher who became a politician.

7. Muhammadu Buhari was a strict army officer who waged a war against systemic indiscipline.

8. Ibrahim Babangida was a cunning and politically savvy military general.

9. Ernest Shonekan was a compromise president, and his administration ended before it could take off.

10. Sani Abacha was a military dictator whose policies isolated Nigeria from the international community.

11. Abdulsalami Abubakar was a resolute army officer who successfully handed power back to civilians.

12. Olusegun Obasanjo was a former military officer turned politician who operated like an emperor.

13. Umaru Musa Yar'Adua advocated for the rule of law but was largely absent due to ill health.

14. Goodluck Jonathan is a consensus-seeking president struggling to deliver on his promises.

These characterisations are my opinions, and I am sure different people will hold different views based on the information available to them, but in these past leaders, we see a fair mix of the good and the ugly but very few we can call outright bad. And yet progress, when measured against the acknowledged potential of the country, has been miniscule. Could that be because they did not give it their best shot?

I find it interesting that when Nigerians speak of former leaders, they speak from both sides of their mouths. When the consideration is how badly the country is doing, leaders are condemned for not having good enough intentions. But when there is additional insight about some of the challenges the leaders faced, there is often agreement that most leaders tried to do their best but were either playing out of their league or were undone by less altruistic political partners or subordinates.

When appraising the performance of a past leader, there may be different reasons for their failures and successes; there are oil booms and busts, civil conflicts, military coups, and so on. But when studied collectively, there is ample evidence that most aspired, at least at the outset, to achieve significant positive outcomes and leave a legacy for their country. It is also obvious that those few who survive to the end of their tenure often have difficulty explaining why they did not deliver on their promises. Their plea has often been that they gave their best shot.

These patterns suggest that the significant problems we face go beyond personalities. The person who reads between the lines realises that unless something fundamental is done, even the best-intentioned person will struggle. And since most aspiring leaders have very little that is new to offer other than their belief that they have better intentions than their predecessors, the likelihood of their failure is high.

On the face of it, the problem is simple and clear: in the presence of huge opportunities and resources, national progress has been slow or nonexistent. The obvious explanation is that the leader is bad; the obvious solution is to remove him and bring a good leader.

And that is the way a lot of people analyse the failure of leadership.

For instance, both Peter Cunliffe-Jones in his book My Nigeria and Chinua Achebe in his book The Trouble With Nigeria defined the problem of Nigeria as a failure of leadership. In Achebe's legendary words, that failure of leadership "is the unwillingness or inability ... to set personal example."

But the claim about personal example does not hold up very well under scrutiny. Julius Nyerere of Tanzania commanded the respect and commitment of his people largely due to his impeccable character. He was known to have been so accountable that he had to extend the mortgage repayment on his modest personal home in order to pay his children's fees. Yet he failed to deliver the significant economic results he desired for his people. In Nigeria, we know of Mallam Aminu Kano, who set a good personal example and was venerated in his region but did not earn enough of the confidence of the rest of the country to be invited to perform at a national level.

On the other hand, a country like Indonesia has made economic progress despite the continued prevalence of corruption in high places. Also we know Muammar Ghadaffi of Libya had lots of excesses, but there is sufficient indication that his country was doing fairly well economically before the Arab Spring swept him away and overturned the economic order.

One may argue that economic progress is not the only indicator of a successful country. And it is also true that where political freedom is significantly endangered, people are largely ready to sacrifice the economy, as we have seen in countries that were part of the Arab Spring uprisings. But wherever there is basic political freedom, economic wellbeing becomes the most important factor citizens use to measure national progress because it is the one that most impacts them. In Nigeria, most of the social ills we complain about are getting even more attention because of our dire economic circumstances.