ON RESPECT AND OUR FAULTY VALUE SYSTEM

ON RESPECT AND OUR FAULTY VALUE SYSTEM.


This post is inspired by something I witnessed yesterday.

I'm at this neighborhood barbershop, waiting for my turn. Seated on my left is this woman with an adorable daughter, not older than 7. On the woman's left is this burly fellow, chewing—rather loudly—on whatever had the unfortunate happenstance of ending up in his mouth. Man Utd's match is on TV, but no one seems interested in it. Everyone seems lost in the reticence of their minds

Then it happens.

A plastic wrapper—that transparent garb, branded with the colors of capitalism and western consumerism, that always betrays its content (the content now lost in the dreary chasm that is Mr. Burlyman's digestive tract)—slips from his fingers and lands on the floor.  The young girl picks it up and, probably reiterating what she was taught in school, hands it to Burlyman and says

"unku, it is not good to litter the flo—"

She barely finishes when her mom's heavy hand finds hers, smacking the wrapper back to the floor. Her response, in Ibibio, is quick and surgical.

"Don't you have respect for elders? That's how you keep disgracing me everywhere."

The young girl begins to cry. Burlyman looks away, unconcerned. I turn my focus to my phone screen and comment on some random Facebook post with a sticker...

...and yet, there on the floor the wrapper continued to lay.

ON FEAR (OR THE NIGERIAN VERSION OF IT CALLED 'RESPECT')

Fear is the very backbone on which irrationality is propped. Fear, I daresay, is the  antithesis of rationality. Now here's the thing: ours is a society that has incorporated fear into our value system. Fear of the dead, fear of religious leaders, fear of elders, fear of our institutions, fear of different deities etc. What we call respect in Nigeria is just fear with a better sobriquet. As soon as a child can think, it is immediately bombarded with one form of this fear called respect or the other. What this does is evoke in the growing child an unblinking loyalty to and an uncritical attitude towards the things he's been told to 'respect': Children are taught what to think or fear. They're hardly taught why. This is how adults who go through life never questioning certain portions of it are formed.

ON CRITICAL THINKING

We're not that intelligent. Let's cut ourselves some slack. Evolution did not deem it fit for our brains to come with 'Baloney Detectors' (Carl Sagan's words) pre-installed. A handful of humans, however, have been able to develop their cognition to the point where it's able to sieve out bullshit among competing ideologies for space in our memory, through constant refinement of their critical thought processes. Most don't. To be honest, it is difficult to tell something is bullshit if you've been taught from childhood to respect/fear it.

POVERTY AND THE BLURRED LINE BETWEEN SYCOPHANCY AND RESPECT

Someone asked recently why African countries seem unable to shake corruption off especially at the helm of affairs; their leadership. I responded that we have exactly the kind of society that would allow corruption fester. The solution to our corruption problem lies not in electing populist, anticorruption leaders (Buhari for instance is spending everyday in office proving his ineptitude in combating the very corruption that his whole campaign revolved around.) Since Murtala, every successive leader had been interested in eradicating one aspect of our society: corruption. And every leader since then had been swallowed by corruption. Buhari is no exception. No.

The solution lies in overhauling our value system. Think about it: ever wondered why people swarm around public office holders—especially heads of public parastatals? People are hungry. And we have a culture that subtly informs people to respect leaders as a means to sustenance. Your daily bread might just depend on how well you're able to kiss ass. What we do is end up channelling power from our institutions—where it rightly belongs—into the hands of these leaders. And you know what they say about absolute power. How can we hold our leaders accountable when those around them respect them so much that they can't see anything wrong in their actions? "Don't you have respect for constituted authority?"

"I AM"

About two weeks ago, we were treated to Gov. Ajimobi's epic gaffe. Many a post went up on social media condemning him—and rightly so. But beneath it all—beneath his nonchalant and rather bellicose response, as captured in that video—was an innocent, almost childlike bewilderment: he simply could not understand why young students, no matter how angry could dare talk back at him that way. You see, Gov. Ajimobi was speaking to those students like a quintessential Nigerian father and elder... Or better put, he was speaking to them exactly how a father or an elder should not speak to his children. I don't blame him. He is a victim of a faulty value system and upbringing.

"respect me woman! I am the man of this house" "who do you think you are? Do you know how many degrees I have. Respect me" "respect me. I am your senior" "look at this child. Do you know who I am?"

You must've heard one iteration of this somewhere, at some point in your life. The truth is, we walk in the midst of too many Gov. Ajimobis. Our value system encapsulates it. Our societies encourage it.

Perhaps it is time to teach our kids—when elders demand for respect from them—to demand the elders give them something to respect.