October 1992 & February 1997
Most adults should be able to recall having had to feign
anger against a chair or a stool that has tripped a child in
order to halt its crying. Very often we have to abuse or
even hit the ‘offending stool’ before the child would be
pacified. So natural, so native to humans is this desire to
hold somebody or something responsible for a misfortune
that we hardly ever manage to outgrow the habit. It is a
habit that helps us feel good and innocent as individuals.
At the societal level, this simple childish habit is tactfully
developed into rituals. In every ancient culture there exist
elaborate religious ceremonies of purification involving the
scourging or killing of sacrificial scapegoats. This helps
assuage the powerful instinctual drive amongst all people to
purge sin and guilt from the imperfect human system by the
transfer of responsibility for shortcomings or disasters unto
some notorious or even popular chosen victims. Thereafter,
people in the community feel psychologically relieved of their
personal sins or faults.
Let us clearly understand that whether the scapegoat is a
stool, an animal, a stranger, a relative, a criminal or a
reformer is quite beside the point. Once society has chosen
its scapegoat, Christ or Devil, he has to be found guilty and
sacrificed. To the Jew, the scapegoat was Jesus; the one
who by his teachings threatened the Judaic traditional order.
To the modern Pentecostal Christian, the scapegoat is
Satan; the one who, through his demons, is behind every
fornication and every forgery conceived by man’s lusts. To
the Nigerian, the scapegoat is Government: the ones who
have dared to wear the hubristic mantle of leadership. Is it
not common knowledge and is every Nigerian not fully aware
that the Government is behind all our suffering? And despite
our fabled lack of freedom (you know we are in a ‘military
dictatorship’) we are never scared to day-in-day-out point
this out in our newspapers and in public discussions.
Unfortunately for us all, the illusion of attaining socio-
economic prosperity through the flagellation or even, as has
often been the case, replacement of our leaders, is the
single greatest obstacle to the country’s evolution as a virile
and self-reliant nation. For, once we reject responsibility for
our shortcomings, we can spend thousands of naira burying
the dead, organizing receptions at marriages, buying
expensive clothes, jewelry, designer shoes and recklessly
changing our hair styles while our children starve or fail to
buy essential text-books and pay their school fees. The
absence of free education would be to blame.
We can spend all our meager income and in addition borrow
heavily to buy colour televisions, video cassette players,
antennae, decoders and portable generators. The poor pay
packet and fiscal attempts to create a balance of trade
would be to blame. It would not matter to us if someone
came up to us and told us that some ten years ago, China
(which today has a phenomenal growth rate of 25 percent)
had had to ban the importation of televisions and radio sets
in order to conserve foreign exchange.
If we buy really expensive cars of ostentation, cars most
Europeans cannot even afford, and ‘grow’ pretty little
mansions in costly plots (we have all seen how these
houses just spring up) the devil trying to disturb easy access
to bank loans is our goat. We would not want to hear that in
Russia only 5% of the population have cars. We are
Nigerians, you know, such self-righteous sons of the
Almighty, having a limitless right to the pursuit of our
happiness.
Another of our God-given rights is the right to our full bellies.
So, if a hundred million people who have suffered no natural
disasters whatsoever fail to grow enough food to keep
market prices reasonable, policies regulating the importation
of food grown by other more industrious people are to blame.
If we over-load our vehicles, fail to produce valid road
documents on request, strongly resist any attempt to take
us to the over-crowded courts; our uniformed young men
(born and made in Nigeria) are to blame for accepting our
corrupting bribes. Maybe, what really annoys us traffic
offenders is that the highway extortionists do not issue
receipts to us. Because it could not possibly be that we are
actually demanding the childish privilege to violate laws and
go scot-free.
This is the beloved country where public servants are
ceaselessly crucified by people who thereafter retreat into
the dark recesses of their minds to hatch and execute crimes
more heinous than those they publicly condemn. If public
servants (policemen, soldiers, customs men, lecturers,
examination supervisors, ministers, ministry workers,
councilors, politicians, in fact, governments) had been
imported things, we would since have stopped their
importation. But they are ‘locally-manufactured’ by us. They
are our uncles, our daddies, our brothers and our sisters.
‘Everybody is talking about crime: tell me, who are the
criminals?’ asks Peter Tosh.
The vilification or expulsion of a scapegoat might produce a
brief euphoria. These euphoria followed the stepping aside
of General Obasanjo, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, General Buhari,
General Babangida and Chief Ernest Shonekan; persons
who to us were responsible for all our suffering. In reality,
however, life remains one unbroken continuous existence
‘new year’ after ‘new year’. No change is possible except
there is a change within the people themselves.
Renewal is not possible through the transfer of guilt, since
the imperfections are merely covered up. Scapegoatism is a
primitive ritual designed to shield the individual from self-
recognition. It prevents us from seeing how we are co-
operating in the stagnation of Nigeria, how our individual
lusts pull against one another to ensure our collective
retardation. It prevents the exhumation of sin, which alone
is what can lead to conviction, remorse and repentance.
Positive societal changes will come about more readily
through non-political social criticism and sincere self-
examination than through what has become a
sadomasochistic national ritual of scapegoatism.
