Recently, while discussing the blessings and benefits of having and going to work, which, where available, has been disrupted by the rising and ebbing of the ever-mutating coronavirus and its global pandemic, a friend idealised about the therapeutic values – physical and mental wellbeing – in the banter around an office water cooler. And that got me thinking.
First of all, that office water cooler is a metaphor for a healthy, well-ordered country at peace, and in plenty. Ours is not. It has not been, in a long time. So much so that Millennials and their immediate seniors have known and experienced nothing in and about Nigeria except its dysfunction, its unceasing violence, along with its intolerant ethnic and religious activism, which, in itself, has become a lever of manipulation, a tool for political mobilisation, and for leadership recruitment.
And so, as a result, some people, and there are plenty of them, don’t have any work for which they will have that chance to banter around the office water cooler. They have never had a job, and there are dim prospects that they will ever have the chance to hang around a water cooler of whatever shape or nature.
They never had a job because they never went to school. Or they went to school but there have been no jobs due to a weak economy with no opportunities. Not even the little tools and skills to become self-employed with. And there is no hope to be otherwise employed because people cannot go out to the fields to farm – they’d be kidnapped, be starved and beaten up, get raped, and be killed. People cannot herd cattle, either. They have lost their cattle to rustlers. Herders get killed by former herders, and farmers get killed by former farmers who are now ‘yan-sa-kai (vigilantes). Others are killed by dangerous demagogue ethnic profilers, and sometimes by state actors. There is no adequate state presence and protection – suspicion, fear, bigotry, and hatred rule the land.
School-goers and those aspiring to go to school cannot do so because suburban and rural schools in Chibok, Kankara, Jangebe, Kagara, Kasarmi village, Buni Yadi, Afaka, Dapchi, or in any part of Northern Nigeria, are places to be kidnapped, held for ransom, and ultimately killed.
Kids cannot go to school because inner city schools are where you drink sewage for potable water and die from infections. The case at elite Queens College, Yaba, is still fresh in our minds. Inner city schools, like that infamous one around Obalende, Lagos, are where the boys of a graduating class go back to rape the female students of their alma mater in broad daylight, with cameras recording, and parents screaming. Inner city schools are where drugs are freely sold, freely used, cultism thrives, and teachers groom and serially rape students, males and females.
These are schools where “miracle” results are achieved in WAEC, JAMB and NECO examinations, without any learning in the heads of the learners. Inner city schools don’t run because they are disrupted by intolerance, bigotry, by unnecessary violence and closures, collectively brought about by teachers, parents, and government officials, over something as simple and innocuous as piece of female headgear. And for all of these disruptions, infections, miseducation, intolerance, radicalisation, rape, violence, and murder through sewage-for-water in inner city schools, there are no consequences, despite lots of journalistic noise and social media quarterbacking, which soon tire and fizzle out.
There are no jobs and there may be no jobs in the future because we do not grow our kids to have or create jobs, but to be yobs who become violent, drug-powered and blind political thugs, or they become bandits, rustlers, kidnappers, Boko Haram members, or of its terrorist equivalents that are sprouting everywhere around the country.
There are no jobs and no “water cooler” opportunities now or in the future because, for more than a decade, there has been no peace. Peace and jobs go together, in whatever direction.
There has been no peace for more than a decade because we have been underled, and undermanaged.
We have been underled and undermanaged because we have been misstructered, miseducated, misprocessed, misconstitutioned, misinstitutioned, and maladministered.
And we are so, in this terrible, mired state because we were colonised and forced together into the economic and administrative advantages and conveniences of Taubman Goldie, his sidekick Fredrick Lugard, and for the colonising power they represented.
As we all know, the Nigerian problem is historical, deeply structural, widely constitutional, and broadly institutional. If we want jobs and the water cooler opportunities jobs bring, we must have education. If we want education, we must have a sound economy and a functioning state. If we want those, we must have peace. To have peace and a functioning, functional state, we must have the right atmosphere. And that right atmosphere is where you have the appropriate political structure and an adequate constitution, both of which reflect the diversity of our society, and allow for aspiration, and the actualisation of those aspirations, for each group, while working collectively on the common areas of human existence – preservation and progress – without one group oppressing the other. And where any group or groups, if it/they feels/feel its/their interests are better served outside of the union, are free to cordially withdraw and be on their own.
Is such a process re-engineering of our battered and beleaguered country beyond our capacity? Can we not subject our country to this process re-engineering in good time, so that everyone willing and able can have that “water cooler” opportunity, in good physical and mental health? Can we not? Can we not?
Schoolboy is a pen name, and the person writes from Abuja.
