Some four years ago when a wise elder in the community where I farm sensed that upon my retirement from service in Abuja, I was intent on staying and becoming a part of the community in my village, he invited me one day to his house and gave me what has turned out to be a very sound piece of advice which he assured me will guide my successful stay in the community.
He told me that there are four groups of people who cause trouble in the village. The first group, he said, are unruly and ungovernable youth, who because of the signal failure of elders to provide effective community leadership, have imposed themselves through brute force and intimidation as a part of the governing elite of the community. This people, he said very correctly, remain youth forever because of what they get through extortion by remaining in the class. They never grow out of that age group!
The second group, he said, are women. Women are known universally as trouble makers first, among themselves, through their gossip, envy and rumour mongering. Being mothers and wives, sisters, aunties and cousins with a wide network of relationships who see women and their troubles from essentially the sentimental angle, women’s troubles often tend to engulf or draft many into their conflict and sometimes throw the entire village into confusion. Men’s troubles are better viewed and handled. He also told me that apart from gossip and talk-talk, women also bring conflict sometimes through their flirtatious ways. Trouble ensures between their husbands and some wayward men and a generation of young men whose vocation seems to be to sleep with people’s wives.
The third group, he told me, are livestock, especially goats, sheep and cattle owned by most village men and some women. These animals when let loose, eat up people’s crops and bring conflict between neighbours who were once friends.
The fourth group, he further opened my eyes to see, are corrupt, crooked, cunning, greedy, gluttonous and wicked chiefs, whether of the traditional or warrant variants, who hate the truth because from telling and standing by the truth, they cannot profit from doing so. So they have elected to stand with the thieves and liars from where money, food and wine will flow ceaselessly to fuel their greedy, insatiable appetite for those things.
Four years on now, that wise elder’s counsel has proven so true. I can tell you from my experience so far that the best political office to aspire to and hold right now in our country is that of a village chief especially if you see public office as one not to serve but to amass all the wealth unchecked and unchallenged. The office of a village chief in southern Nigeria where I am most familiar with is a political one with quasi priestly, administrative and judicial powers. This office, as is the practice among its wielders in the rural areas of southern Nigeria, is the office of a potentate, an emperor, a dictator and a tyrant all combined.
For many of them, noble principles such as honesty, justice, equity and good conscience do not matter at all. They carry on regardless of the precedent set by their forebears that have become a part and parcel of the ‘tradition’ that their people live by and which they are supposed to uphold. The laws they have invented and by which they profit from cannot be questioned. Their decisions arising from those invented laws cannot be questioned. Most of them listen to only one side of the story and reach a conclusion. The man who reaches them first with money, wine and food is the winner of the case he is bringing before them. The party who goes to them later and without money, wine and food, is guaranteed to be the loser. I have heard things and I am amazed.
What that wise elder forgot to tell me was about another group of trouble makers- the police—whose failure or inability to play its role effectively has led to the thriving of those four groups he correctly diagnosed for me.
Our villages are becoming anarchical. You do what you want and go away scot free. The chiefs’ powers are not counter- checked by any legislative house or council of wise elders as was the practice in those good old days. You read in history about the great Oyo Empire and how the Oyo-Mesi can force a foolish king to commit ritual suicide by drinking from a calabash. These days the council of elders in a village are as corrupt and greedy and unwise as the chiefs. They have been baptized into evil by the chiefs.
The village chiefs of Nigeria have done much to make life hellish for righteous men and women who love peace and are guided by wisdom and do not like their trouble. If they have a kangaroo case against you and you say you do not want to dignify their court of folly, that will become a case of contempt of court against you. Tell them you cannot contempt an unrighteous court and they say to you that that is evidence of their accusation against you. If a man brings a case against you in their court and you say they should just declare him the winner at your own willing expense, they say that is a further evidence of your contemptuous mind.
Do you now not agree with me that the village chief is the best position to hold?
