By Tony Afejuku
We continue our reading of Professor Godwin Sogolo’s moral conundrum about Nigeria.
Moral Disruptions
Morality, like religion and law, is an instrument of social control, designed by nature to curb the excesses of human conduct – to punish and discourage behaviour that is dysfunctional to the well-being of society, and to reward and encourage attitudes and conduct that contribute to the survival of society. However, no human society functions perfectly or strictly in accordance with natural or social designs. There are, therefore, disruptions or dislocations caused by a variety of factors. Among them are:
- Failure of the educational system/other socialization processes to inculcate in the individual moral principles that sustain inter-personal and group relations;
- Failure in governance and loss of faith in the state;
- Severe conditions of material needs provoked either by man-made or natural causes, and
- Cultural invasion such as military conquest or colonial incursion, like what we experienced in Nigeria, resulting in the imposition of alien social values or violation of the existing value systems.
Any or a combination of these factors may cause disruptions and weaken the moral ties that exist among individuals or groups. It is important to note that moral disruptions range from the mild to the severe, and then to the total breakdown of norms. The pattern/degree of disruption in a given situation depends on the intervening social factors. Human history is replete with instances of societies that have suffered from varying degrees of moral disruptions, but there have been rare cases of total collapse of morality.
While moral disruptions due to ineffective education; or damage caused by failure in governance tend to be more gradual and less perceptible, the effects of disruptions caused by severe material needs and cultural invasions are more dramatic and impactful on human character.
A major dysfunctioning of the social system derails the mind of the individual and causes havoc to the collective psyche. The result, in most cases, is the failure to comprehend the goal of life, leading to moral apathy and unwholesome acts of violence, aggression and criminality, especially among the youths.
Is Nigeria in a Moral Crisis?
There is hardly any reason to suggest that the Nigerian society does not share the moral universals that characterise other human societies. And, like other cultures, what we are today is the product of our history. More than anything else, colonialism remains the most critical part of Nigeria’s history. While I feel reluctant to indulge in the common practice of heaping our current challenges on the nation’s colonial experience, it will be unfair to downplay its negative impact on Nigeria’s social cohesion. Even, then, I believe that we have had enough time and opportunities to overcome the challenges caused by the colonial incursion into Nigeria. Sadly enough, we are still trapped in some of the social distortions of that experience.
When some 49 years ago, the renowned Nigerian Sociologist, Professor Peter P. Ekeh, of the University of Ibadan, made observations about the social disruptions caused in Africa, especially Nigeria” , by colonialism, nobody would have thought that the situation would remain the same or even deteriorate well into the 21st century. That, unfortunately, is our fate today. According to Ekeh, colonialism led to the restructuring of the existing kinship systems into larger units. Two consequences of that restructuring are now well-known facts of our social experience.
The first was the transformation from kinship units to larger ethnic groups which gave rise to the emergence of new ethnic and political consciousness that did not previously exist in pre-colonial Nigeria. Thus, the Yoruba of South Western Nigeria, the Igbo ethnic group of the East and the Hausa/Fulani of the North are new formations.
The second consequence, arising from the first, was what Ekeh describes as the creation of two moral realms: “the primordial public”, which is moral and operates on the same moral imperatives as the private realm, and “the civic public” which is amoral and lacks the generalized moral imperatives operative in the primordial public. Ekeh describes the dichotomy as the fragmented moral perspectives of contemporary African societies where moral principles applied at the primordial level are often not extended to the broader civic public. What Ekeh means is that there are two separate sets of value systems: one that applies to our immediate communities and ethnic groups and the other, the very opposite of the first one. So, a person can steal from government, cheat or destroy official properties without feeling any sense of moral guilt. But his conscience would not allow him or her to do the same to his community or ethnic group.
A similar observation is made by Wraith and Simpkins in their study of corruption in Nigeria. According to the authors, the same people known to be corrupt in their places of work show a remarkably decent record of financial propriety in matters affecting their ethnic associations.
To put your fingers in the till of the local [Government] authority would not unduly burden your conscience and people may well think you are a smart fellow … to steal the funds of the [ethnic] union would offend the public conscience and ostracize you from the society.
The truth, which many of us, especially the educated elite, tend to shy away from is that the moral divide described by Ekeh and others continues to be openly displayed by us. Who, among us, can deny that his or her reactions to the accusations of corruption against public officials have never been coloured by ethnic biases, sometimes to the detriment of moral principles?
The renowned legal luminary and social critic, Femi Falana, SAN, was quoted to have said that:
Nigeria is the only country where corrupt individuals are celebrated rather than made to face the wrath of the law… if you steal money in China, it is public execution. Nigeria is the only country where you hire drummers and people [people of your own ethnic group, especially] wear aso-ebi to court premises … There is nothing more contemptuous because you are challenging the state for charging you to court.
Although Falana attributes this warped morality to a corrupt system, involving the judiciary, police, civil service and other state institutions, it is a vivid manifestation of Ekeh’s two moral realms.
Such solidarity and show of support for a kinsman is never concealed even in situations where particular persons have been proven guilty of serious offences, whether civil or criminal. In Nigeria, if a civil servant or politician embezzles public funds and, in so far as a part of the loot is utilized for the development of his community, that person is, from the point of view of his local community, innocent. And, a judge who sends him to prison is condemned as an enemy, not interested in the progress of their community.
There was, sometime ago, the publication of a letter written to former President Mohammadu Buhari by the Council of Chiefs of one of the States, demanding that their daughter, a former Minister from their area, who had been accused of some infractions, be left alone. The Chiefs, enthusiastically, promoted the idea that their daughter had done nothing wrong and was, merely, a victim of a witch-hunt by malevolent people from other regions and other ethnic groups. Ironically, these were Chiefs expected to be the custodians of moral values in their respective domains.
No doubt, this kind of attitude is a perversion that rises to the level of moral schizophrenia in which the distinction between good and evil is defined almost entirely in terms of ethnic interests. It is tempting to misread the perversion implied in Ekeh’s “two publics” as meaning the collapse of moral values in post-colonial Nigeria. To be fair to the author, he is clear and unambiguous in insisting that moral principles are still applicable in post-colonial Nigeria, albeit only at the primordial realm. The only problem, according to him, is that the principles applicable at that level are not extended to the civic public. This, I believe, is a manifestation of the fact that every moral system has its own imperfections. That is to say that, in spite of all the pretensions and claims of objectivity, our personal orientations, biases, interests and feelings always interfere when we make moral judgements.
To be continued
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