Did you know there was a section of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria where the ‘national ethics’/ values are listed? Honestly, I didn’t know that till last week. Chapter 2, section 23 of the constitution says: The national ethics shall be Discipline, Integrity, Dignity of Labour, Social Justice, Religious Tolerance, Self-reliance and Patriotism. Hmmmmm… sounds simple enough, right?
With all that has been going on in Nigeria, it is quite obvious, even to the blind, that we have thrown these values to the hyenas (throwing it to the dogs could mean we can still get it back, but hyenas? No way). Discipline? Na so! Indiscipline is our middle name. Whatever law they put in place, we’d scheme and plot ways to break or circumvent the law. Integrity and dignity of labour? What are those? I believe a lot of us don’t look at the page where the word ‘integrity’ is in the dictionary.
Over the weekend, one of my Igbo brothers executed in Indonesia for drug trafficking was tagged a ‘hero’ and given a heroic burial with all the pomp and pageantry accompanying such a burial. I remember someone said it wouldn’t be well with Indonesia because they killed our brothers. Really?? Because we don’t value our country and obey the rules, we think everywhere is the same, or should be like us, where we can wriggle our way out of every situation. A friend argued that the Igbo culture was not against drug trafficking; as such we shouldn’t condemn it so much. Is our culture in support of crime? Even the Nigerian law prohibits drug trafficking. I wonder why the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency has not gone to seize that mansion, as I believe the house was built with proceeds from the crime. We demolish houses built by kidnappers, why can’t we do the same with houses of drug traffickers? Really, we have no shame. My people will say that ‘we have sold our shame in the market’. When we valued integrity and dignity of labour, the family would’ve been ashamed that their brother died in such a manner, and such a person would’ve been buried quietly. Now we actually celebrate the death and indirectly, his lifestyle. What moral lessons are we teaching the youths? Another argument was that maybe the young man was a pillar in his community and helped his people a lot. Have we come to the stage where we don’t care about a person’s source of income, as long as he keeps doling out the cash to people? It seems we have. The thieves give the highest tithes in churches, make the highest donations at townhall meetings, and we cheer and clap. Sad!
The religious intolerance and social injustice have become very common that when we hear of any religious crisis, we ask ‘how many people died?’, and if the number is small, we shake our heads and move on. We fail to realise that the loss of one life or even properties is bad enough. On Monday, in Zamfara state, students of a Polytechnic (whom you’d think would be enlightened enough) beat a fellow student to a pulp for alleged blasphemy against Islam. The story has it that the young man was a Muslim before converting to Christianity and was always harassed by other Muslims prior to Monday’s incident. Another Muslim had pity, brought his car and took the young man to a hospital, the other Muslims burnt his car for that, proceeded to his house and burnt it down too, killing all the eight people in the house who were fellow Muslims!! Can you imagine that? The poor man’s crime was helping a fellow human being. How did we get here??
Patriotism is the ‘vigorous’ support for one’s country. Note the word, 'vigorous'. It connotes loyalty, pride, and strong emotional attachment to the country or homeland. This support should be irrespective of whom the leader is, and his political, social, ethnic or religious affiliations. However, opposite is the case here. We are so divided along ethnic, social, and religious lines that we fail to realise that Nigeria is first and foremost our country, and whatever affects her affects all of us, directly or indirectly. When a leader emerges, if he/she’s not from our camp/party/tribe/religion, we vehemently refuse to support him/her; we even pray they fail. We forget that when they fail, Nigeria fails.
Being a Nigerian is quite exhausting, I know. Our leaders don’t even value our national ethics, so why should we, right? With everything getting devalued, may we not devalue our values. These values are what make us human beings, and distinguishes us from animals. When we fail to value them, we’re not better than lawless animals in the jungle. Our children are being taught these national values in school, I hope they do a better job of imbibing them more than we are doing.
God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Hugs...
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