The dramatic rise in popularity of the so-called selfie—the
self-taken photograph—strikes me as a symbolic way of understanding a dominant
aspect of social behavior in the world. The selfie has, I suggest, further
encouraged the inflation of the ego and spawned narcissistic attitudes. In
making it chic to aim the lens of a camera at oneself, the selfie has helped to
empower the cult of the self, even a form of self-worship.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not a sourpuss out to scold people
for cleaving to a fad. I’m interested in the craze at all only because I have
recognized in it a metaphoric handle for explaining a particular malaise in
Nigeria.
I have often argued that Nigeria is a form of peacock society,
a society where the show-off is venerated. Anybody who attends a Nigerian party
and sees the way people dress—men and women—would understand this aspect of
social display. From the agbada that sweeps the floor to the gele (head wrap)
that scrapes the sky, the scene at a Nigerian party often looks like a human
attempt to recreate a gathering of peacocks. There’s the lushness of the
Nigerian party scene, its unapologetic celebration of color, its unabashed air
of gaudy exhibitionism, and the infectious gaiety of its atmosphere.
Depending on one’s taste, the Nigerian party scene can be
resplendent or repellent. But it’s always visually fascinating. It’s as if the
get-ups are in a contest, each determined to outshine the others.
This competitive spirit is present in other areas of
Nigerian life. Years ago, on a visit to Nigeria, I ran into an old acquaintance
on the streets of Lagos. I had known him in Enugu the year after I finished
secondary school, and when he and I were junior level employees in a state
ministry. In those days, he and I earned N100 per month. After paying rent and
putting aside some money for transport to and from work, we had very little
left. I remember how he and I often pooled money if we wanted to treat
ourselves to roasted groundnut and banana.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I met this young man in
Lagos and he was driving a brand new Pathfinder sports utility vehicle. It was
his car, he assured me; he was eager to disabuse me of the impression he had
borrowed it. And then he informed me that he owned three other cars. He was
still single. When I expressed astonishment, he told me that four personal cars
meant “nothing.” “There are other people like us who have 10, 15 personal cars,”
he wanted me to know. His desire, he said, was to put money together to buy a
fifth car, a Mercedes Benz, “for Christmas.”
As we talked, I got to know that the young man had not
earned a degree from a university. Nor was it clear that he owned a profitable
business. How, then, could he afford four cars—and aspire to buy a fifth? He’d
joined the breed of youngsters who used a variety of scams to prey on the greed
or gullibility of targets in Europe, North America, and elsewhere. That answer
emerged when he attempted to sell me on forming a partnership with him. Since I
lived in the US, he said, I should help him identify targets who had some
money. He’d go after them with his “419” schemes, and we’d split whatever cash
he was able to get. I said, thanks, but no. We parted in mutual
incomprehension. I could not understand why somebody would do what he did in
order to collect more cars than he needed; he, I suspect, could not fathom my
disgust—much less my lack of interest in owning a variety of cars.
That encounter has struck me, lately, as providing a prism
through which to illuminate certain compulsions in Nigeria. Why is it that too
many Nigerian officials take to the predictable, sordid path of corruption? Why
do too few public officials view their exalted offices as opportunities to make
a significant difference in the fortunes of society? Why do the vast majority
of public officials in Nigeria disdain the idea of legacy, the notion of acting
as agents to make their environments better than they found it?
I think that a great deal of the answer is to be found in
the craze of the selfie—an obsession with the self—and the preening, peacock
sensibility that’s dominant in Nigeria. There’s no question: other societies
are captivated by wealth and the wealthy. Some Americans go bunkers when they
see a Hollywood star. Professional basketball players like Lebron James and
Kevin Durant haul more than thirty million dollars for their ability to drop a
ball through a hole. Even the communist leaders of China finally figured out
that it would serve their country to enable aspects of capitalist investment
and the attendant reaping of profit. (It’s to be noted, though, that the
Chinese people are paying a huge price in environmental degradation for the
gains of capitalist expansion).
However, I don’t know of another society where so many
citizens, including ostensibly educated ones, are quite so complacent about the
open, mindless looting of public funds by men and women who are addressed as “Your
Excellency” or “Honorable This & That.” On the Internet, for example, a
growing number of commentators can be counted on to defend, justify or
rationalize every act of corruption, abuse of office, or sheer impunity by
Nigerian officials.
I am a fairly attentive student of the ways in which
language changes over time to express or accommodate equally changing social
attitudes. In this regard, I find the Igbo phrase, “O na eme ofuma” (“He/She is
doing well”) particularly intriguing. Years ago, that phrase was often used to
make a moral judgment, to applaud a person for acting in a morally admirable
manner.
In recent times, however, the phrase has come to denote—almost
exclusively—that one has accumulated material wealth. I am disturbed that a
phrase that used to specify and applaud excellent moral conduct has been
hijacked and coopted to the service of lauding material enrichment. It’s even
worse when one considers that the statement does not discriminate between
wealth earned through honorable means and wealth that is illicitly acquired.
Whether thief or entrepreneur, the same phrase applies.
It speaks to this evolving ethic of the individual, this
apotheosis of the self, this sanctification of wealth as the ultimate, singular
end. In order to serve this self-centered, money-based standard of achievement,
too many Nigerians embrace the absurd. When former President Umaru Yar’Adua lay
comatose in a Saudi hospital, his cohorts kept up the absurd impression that he
was as fit as fiddle and providing dynamic leadership from his sick bed! The
men and women who made that weird argument were not looking out for Nigeria;
they were serving their pockets. They reeled in a lot of cash from that
depraved enterprise. Yet, in a certain Nigerian parlance, they were “doing
well.”
In October 2012, Governor Danbaba Suntai of Taraba State
was seriously injured when a plane he piloted crash-landed at the Yola Airport.
He has received treatment in three foreign countries, including the US, but
anybody who sees or hears him can tell that he remains enfeebled. Yet, a small
group of political operatives in the state are insisting that Mr. Suntai is
ready to take on the challenge of running his state. It’s all part and parcel
of this ethic of the self. It’s the kind of illogic that makes sense in a
society where the selfie has met the peacock.
Please follow me on twitter @ okeyndibe
(okeyndibe@gmail.com)
Source: Sahara Reporters
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