By Chris Anyokwu
Nigeria is suspended as we speak on the spikes of silence, the type which usually precedes an earth-shaking explosion, only that this time, it’s not a physical seismic or volcanic eruption normally provoked by a shift in the tectonic plates upon which the very earth rests. After all, Nigeria is not Indonesia or suchlike rims of sulphuric fire. However, the explosion that is ticking, biding its time as it builds up towards tipping-point is a rather social one brought about by utter moral-cum-spiritual deracination and epistemic atrophy. The post-colony has finally gone berserk; it has at last gone unhinged, foaming furiously at the edges of its mouth, completely cut loose from its salvific moorings. But truth be told, it has been long in coming, and, like that mystical beast in Yeats’s “Second Coming”, Nigeria has been lurching dangerously towards Sodom (and not Bethlehem!) to be rid of its burden of monstrosities.
Sodom! Hmn… the name gathers to itself a welter of associated connotations, all of them flat-out unflattering and pejorative: “Then the LORD rained down sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah – from the LORD out of the heavens. Thus He destroyed these cities and the entire plain…” (Genesis 19: 24 – 5). In the Book of Genesis (as we have just read), God destroyed the two evil cities with a rain of fire and brimstone. Also, in modern discourse, Sodom and Gomorrah are deployed as metaphors for homosexuality or “crimes against nature”. Surely, older members of my readership can still remember that threnodic hit-track of yesteryear captioned “Lamentation for Sodom” keened by Tera Kota, a Nigerian reggae crooner. It goes something like this: “Tell me if you know the city called Sodom…” In the graphically gripping tell-all, the poet-lyricist itemises the constitutive elements, all the debilitating signs of the rigor mortis that pockmarked the allegorical Sodom’s body politic. He points the listener’s attention to social vices such as fornication, adultery, incest, armed robbery, ritual killings, abortion, fraud, corruption and bribery, perversion of justice or injustice, and, of course, sodomy.
Now, let us pause briefly to consider the second lexical item in our topic, to wit: “Apocalypse”. What do we mean by Apocalypse? “Historically, the term has a heavy religious connotation as commonly seen in the prophetic revelations of eschatology obtained through dreams or spiritual visions”. An example of note is the Book of Revelation which “depicts an “apocalypse”- the complete destruction of the world preceding the establishment of a new world and heaven”. Apocalypse, thus, designates God’s wrath against disobedience, His righteous judgement or, if you prefer, divine retributive justice. I write this without apologies to atheists and agnostics. This is because we have seen and experienced enough to know that this earth, this world is not a random accident of nature or of chemical activity on matter happening in time and space. The Bible says: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and all that dwell therein”, atheists and all. Logically, therefore, there cannot be an Apocalypse without a Sodom – a charmed circle of habitual disobedience and deviancy against the law. As social animals, we are all socialised to recognise the difference between Good and Evil, right and wrong. This is the job of such agents of socialisation as the home (read: parental guidance and control), the school system, law courts, church/mosque, the media, peer group. Sigmund Freud explores the shaping influence of Thanatos or reality principle and Eros, the pleasure principle on human subjectivity. Thus, conscience, man’s inner voice of reason, is a product of the countervailing leash of the reality principle, a psychological mechanism in humans that helps them keep in check taboo behaviour and anti-social acts. Accordingly, the law or the normative order guarantees the maximisation of virtue and the minimisation of vice in recognition of the fact that man is congenitally depraved, naturally prone to sinning and always obedient to the iron sway of resident evil. (see Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, 1651).
Since the departure of the white man from our shores as our Lord and Master and since we began administering our own affairs, life has been progressively miserable and grimmer for Nigerians. Firstly, the comprehensive betrayal of the heady hopes of Independence; the yawning gulf separating the haves from the have-nots; the ruling class from the people; secondly, the collective preoccupation with economic survival for the citizenry as well as the recourse to crime and criminality (see Femi Osofisan’s Once Upon Four Robbers – a histrionic parable on the culpability of power in the epidemic of armed robberies, and so forth in the immediate aftermath of the Nigeria-Biafra Civil war (1967 – 70). The so-called Bar Beach Show also finds fictive elaboration in Chinua Achebe’s 1987 novel, Anthills of the Savannah. This same official instigation and endorsement of evil is the thematic linchpin of Wole Soyinka’s satirical play The Beatification of Area Boy: A Lagosian Kaleidoscope. In this play, the master-playwright showcases the militarisation of society strikingly embossed by the egregious phenomenon of the Area Boy. Our post-military, neo-liberal “democratic” dispensation has witnessed only endemic mass immiseration, youth unemployment, and skyrocketing inflation which has unleashed an astronomical rise in prices of goods and services. Through it all, government at all levels appears to have gone AWOL, leaving the poor masses to stew in their own juices. This dystopian ground-zero of lack has spawned a zero-sum game of equal opportunity; a dog-eat-dog social inferno. As always, the rousing and ringing battle-cry of the STREET is: Get-rich-quick-or-die trying! Yes, the reigning ideology of our time is: CASH IS KING!
Little wonder, the Nigerian society is reeling and roiling under the fetid onslaught of sleaze, the result of the apotheosis of unearned plaudits. And all are guilty: the clergy, parents, the elderly, the so-called upwardly-mobile and well-heeled types, the professional class, school-children and students and, of course, our sybaritic political elite, distinguished only by their trademark bulimic appetite for power without responsibility. As they say in street slang “e don red” in Nigeria now, no thanks to years of official complicity in our moral deregulation and ethical atrophy. The chickens now are coming home to roost. We have brought home ant-infested faggots, now lizards have become our guests at eventide. As we speak, the media (print, electronic and social) is awash with the gory and lurid photos and videos of ritual killers comprising what in Nigerian parlance Yahoo-Yahoo Boys, Yahoo+ Boys and similar criminal types who are having the time of their lives, raping, maiming and murdering their victims, mostly girls and ladies, who themselves are looking for casual sex and life-on-the-fast-lane. Usually after hours of bingeing and carousal in hotels, these evil-boys would slit the throats of their girlfriends, disembowelling them and harvesting their vital organs such as eyes, breasts, hearts, and wombs. Such is the frequency and regularity of these diabolic incidents that it serves no useful purpose furnishing particular instances. Suffice it to say, these got-rich-quick maniacs do not flinch at anything to commit their atrocities. They sleep with their mothers, kill their fathers and siblings just to procure the ingredients for their occult brew. Thus this growing popularity of the occult, deriving in the main from our pre-colonial traditional practice of secret societies inter alia, is in direct contravention of the laws of our land.
Today, there is no consequence for wrongdoing and why should there be when the politicians are hiring thugs to kill, maim and destroy just to clinch power; when parents are so impoverished that they now rely on the proceeds of prostitution and internet scamming provided by their children; when pastors do not ask where their members get humongous sums that they drop in tithes and offering boxes; when the most beautiful girls and ladies are ready to fight to the death over a Yahoo-Yahoo Big Boy; where beautiful mansions and fast cars are the hallmarks of success regardless of the questionable sources of the wealth; where and when both old and young are ready to sell their souls to the Devil (like Dr Faustus, in Christopher Marlowe’s play of the same title) literally in order to “belong”, bedazzled as they are by the bling-bling of gaudy tinsel?
Who will bell the cat when all the prosecutorial apparatus of the nation are besmirched with a deeper indigo? Is it the police, the lawyers, the judges or government officials? Most of them are neck-deep in black magic and the Dark Arts. Like Jesus Christ told the Pharisees: Let him that is without sin cast the first stone! You can see we are in deep trouble. Internet fraud, prostitution rings, homosexuality and lesbianism, bestiality, paedophilia are all manifestations of our collective loss of innocence. Just the other day, we all watched on social media as some young men were seen eating their own excreta and washing it down with a drink of soda. It was the lowest a human being can sink in vain pursuit of filthy lucre. We understand these desperadoes also visit cemeteries to exhume corpses and perform unprintable rituals with the dead. Some wear “pampers” underwear to ATMs expecting the machines to vomit wads of currency notes, just like that. Needless to add, these occult-minded diehards drink human blood, eat human flesh and sign pacts with the Devil himself in order to make easy money. At the height of banditry, terrorism, abductions, raids on towns and villages, we thought we had seen it all; our eyes had seen our ears. But the dangerous and the increasingly daring ways ritualists and murderers are killing their victims, there is nowhere to hide any longer. No one is absolutely safe. The worship of Mammon, that is, the unbridled worship of money and crass materialism is at the root of our present tragedy. Traditional rulers are eager to confer chieftaincy titles on criminals who have made good; the police hobnob with them and provide them security; parents lionise them, using them as examples of achievement and success for their hardworking but less-fortunate children, and the society at large celebrates them as our latter-day heroes. No questions asked. More so, the politics of religion and the religion of politics now make our pastors and politicians boast and brag over who has more private jets in their fleets while the masses grovel in the dust. The apparent lack of immediate reward for hard work vis-à-vis the instant reward for corner-cutting, sharp practices and brisk business have equally contributed to the rise in diabolism as a detour to instant wealth. After all, as the Yoruba say: “Olowo laiye mo”/ Society celebrates only the rich. This Yoruba saying chimes with Buju Banton’s song “Destiny”: “The rich man’s wealth is in the city, the destruction of the poor is his poverty…”
Today, there is no consequence for wrongdoing and why should there be when the politicians are hiring thugs to kill, maim and destroy just to clinch power; when parents are so impoverished that they now rely on the proceeds of prostitution and internet scamming provided by their children; when pastors do not ask where their members get humongous sums that they drop in tithes and offering boxes; when the most beautiful girls and ladies are ready to fight to the death over a Yahoo-Yahoo Big Boy; where beautiful mansions and fast cars are the hallmarks of success regardless of the questionable sources of the wealth; where and when both old and young are ready to sell their souls to the Devil (like Dr Faustus, in Christopher Marlowe’s play of the same title) literally in order to “belong”, bedazzled as they are by the bling-bling of gaudy tinsel?
Is ours a hopeless situation? Are we condemned as a nation to a Sisyphean fate? Can we pull ourselves away from the brink? Or are we doomed as a people like the Gadarene Swine? Well, Achebe counsels: “Do not underrate a day when there still remains an hour of light”. That is to say, where there is a will, there is a way. This is the time for the National Orientation Agency (NOA) to redouble its effort in its drive for value re-orientation. It’s time to rescue the perishing and care for the dying. The police must pick themselves up, dust themselves down and charge into the fray. Every one of us must account for our sources of income. Landlords/ladies too are not exempt in this fight to rid our communities of bad eggs. Do your due diligence before you give your flats to “rich” folks. All that glitters is not gold. Parents must try and regain the high moral ground by setting a good example for their children. Religious centres must stop their so-called “Prosperity Gospel” and preach Genuine Repentance and Salvation. After all, we are counselled to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness… Government officials must be exemplary; they must avoid ostentatious lifestyles and lead by example. (The Social Contract Theory a la Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau). We must return to our autochthonous sources of social morality, our cultural and spiritual values embedded in our African Traditional Religion, Ifa among the Yoruba, for instance. The imported religions have led us astray and we are now stranded and lost in the wilderness. Nigeria is bleeding; Nigeria is weeping and wailing; it is panting after the water-brooks of spiritual renewal. The question is: are we going to back-peddle atavistically towards Sodom or continue to lurch unheeding towards Apocalypse? Is there still hope for redemption? Or is it a minute to midnight?
*Dr. Chris Anyokwu writes from University of Lagos