Unhygienic politics begets unhygienic societies

By Mubarak Ibrahim Lawan

With the trendy disrespectful behaviour of the youth; with public pre-wedding pictures of grooms almost kissing their brides passionately and their hands resting on each other’s bosom and hip; with the loud silence of some religious leaders about the trend; with some liberals jeering the righteous people publicly when they criticise such issues, morality is mortally blown to pieces. Similarly, the surprising official claim that the children voters seen on the viral videos of the Kano local government election were Kenyans; that the good performance of APC is the reason why Zamfara State governor and others are defecting to APC, these and hundreds more nationally official lies authorise public lying and teach the behaviour to the already morally dented youths.

Today we have few elders among the aged, political elites. They are only seen as the aged with grey hair, hoarse voices and gowns but commanding no respect. They traded their respect. They hide their kleptomania in robes only to be revealed when elected. The same aged elites bring public shames mounting to international ones on us. These include the rats’ daring of the president’s office, snake’s incredible swallow of 36 million nairas in the JAMB office, the president’s U-turn on fuel subsidy, his medical trips overseas, his sagas with the lawmakers, his silence on rampant killings and kidnappings in the country. These, among others, vie with one another to damage our image more and hatch more shameless leaders. And with this trend, the future could not be bleaker.

We are politically lost, socially derailed, and hence lost bearing as a nation and as northerners significantly for reasons like that. But those who ruled before were highly principled, morally sound and well-meaning. They were worthy of emulation. They did their best to build the nation and the image that our present leaders ruin recklessly. If this trend of lying and misgovernance goes on, how would our future look like? My fear intensifies more whenever I interact with the youths. Whatever idiot-proof explanation of the country you give to them they barely understand as they are only concerned with football, music, fashion, sex and other stuff of the 21st century. Although my hopes are dashed day in day out, I think we should prepare our youths for they are indeed the leaders of tomorrow.

On the insolent behaviour of the youth, a colleague sees no wrong about that. He says that we could not crawl out of this abyss of retrogression unless we let go of our anti-social culture. But I think we do not even have such a uniform culture to go out of today. Instead, we have a confused phantasm of a life born out of our frantic effort to “glocalise” the global so that we fit in the modern world. Yet, we end up in social chaos, identity crisis and moral bankruptcy because of a change in our worldview or ideological foundation orchestrated by flamboyantly thieving politicians and morally bankrupt artists.

Our worldview is warped. Hence this man sees no wrong in being at daggers drawn with his next-door neighbour, who reprimands his child for wrongdoing. He sees no wrong in allowing his daughter to dress scantily for a friend’s wedding ceremony or being taken for a “visitation” by a boyfriend. If a family friend or brother frowns on that, the mother would be the first to attack him for attempting to sabotage her daughter’s chance of getting a husband.

Our worldview is also being warped by the abject poverty we are living in. This man confessed to having allowed his daughters to prostitute themselves to bring bread for the family. He admitted that at a community gathering organised to warn him of his daughters’ illicit business in the neighbourhood. People cried as he narrated his tragedy. The man’s ideological foundation or worldview fails to make him see the rights from wrongs. The knowledge available to him, the political, social and economic awareness are only what the masters want him to have so that the masters exploit our resources to the fullest.

We often find it difficult, for poverty reasons, to control our boys who, subsequently, lead a carefree life. They become truant; they watch uncensored movies, access the Internet, wander off our radar, take drugs; and in ghettos, smoke all smokeable things, thieve and snatch people’s valuables, especially their phones. In comparison, my father once told me that they birthed more children than us. Yet, they were able to control their movement, educate them and feed them. I told him that that was when “to eat was not a problem”.

Similarly, our worldview is warped by the government’s nonchalant attitude towards our lives. We no more look up to the government schools, hospitals, electricity and all other basic life necessities. So we live a beggarly life. Frustration kills one when they or a member of their family is sick—no hospital in Nigeria. Even the president goes abroad for medical treatment. We buy everything here. He who has nothing dies untimely.

Still, “the government can not take all the blame”, they say! Instead, their body language blames the poor for producing “too many children that the government cannot cater for”. So they leave us to fend for ourselves while they serve themselves from the nation’s treasury. Unless we speak against injustice, fight for good governance and virtues, our future and that of our children is lost.

Mubarak is a lecturer at the Department of English, Al-Qalam University Katsina. He can be reached via abusfyy@gmail.com.