HONOUR AMONG THIEVES
Edward Theberton finds the Nigerians as endearing and as corrupt as ever Port Harcourt, Nigeria 'WHAT about me?'
'What about you?' I replied to the policewoman who had attached herself to me at Lagos Airport, had seen me through immigration and was now waiting for my luggage to appear.
Of course, I knew what she meant, and I gave her £3. She looked at the coins.
`Dis uniform no be cheap,' she said. 'I am not a two-naira woman.'
The naira standing at 23 to the pound, I pointed out that she was, in fact, a 69-naira woman. This mollified her, and we went through customs together like a knife through butter. I have never had better value for money.
Nigeria hasn't changed much since the last time I was here two years ago. The Young Shall Grow Transport Company has a new bus, but otherwise the trucks and buses look the same, painted with their pious slogans: The Gift Is From Above, All Things Shall Be Possible, No Money No Friend, Salutation Is Not Love. The Ultra- Modern buildings still smell of mould. When I asked my driver how things were going in Nigeria, he said with a broad 'Hail Macbeth, thou shalt be an 0-level set book hereafter.' smile, 'We are suffering'. That is exactly what he said two years ago, and two years before that. He tells me that the Structural Adjustment Programme (a series of IMF- type reforms) is filling the hospitals with children with kwashiorkor: but he said the same thing two and four years ago.
When I visit his village in the river delta, shoals of children come out to greet me. Shamefacedly, my mind turns to A Modest Proposal. The government is trying to carry out a census: I wish it luck. The Muslims want to prove that they are more numerous than the Christians, and vice versa; every state in the federation wants to inflate its population to justify a bigger share of the government budget. In Niger- ia, nothing is straightforward or a matter of brute fact.
I am glad to see that the Eternal Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim (whose communicants dress up in white robes on Sundays) maintains its rivalry in the village with the Brotherhood of the Cross and Star, and that the Native Doctor still guarantees automatic relief ('Why die in silence?') from gonnerrehea, weak organ, utching, scraches, pregnancy, belly boiling and organ pinching. It is rumoured that the delta villages still sacrifice a child to the river god (the crocodile) once a year, but as with everything else in Nigeria, I have no idea if this is true.
Anyway, the children are malnourished and have protuberant bellies, probably full of parasites, but they rush around naked and laugh and play as if they were happy. It is surely high time we sent qualified workers to teach them to be miserable.
In the cities, every big oga carries his prosperous stomach proudly before him like a pregnant woman. It is his badge of success, and as it says in Ban i and Com- pany, the immensely popular soap opera about a typical Lagos rogue, 'What's the point of having a radio if you don't let everyone know you have one?'
Everyone knows where every big oga's money comes from, of course, but some- how no one really minds because everyone also knows that he would do the same if he had the opportunity. Here, any man who doesn't use his position to accumulate quick wealth is not only a fool but a bad man, who is failing to do his best for his family and the community from which he comes. The endless protestations to the contrary in the newspapers and by the government are purely formal, the same kind of protestations that the Portuguese and the Spanish slave traders used to make to the British Navy after the British had given up the trade for themselves: para que los ingleses vean, so that the English may see, as their contemptuous phrase had it.
Corruption has its advantages and dis- advantages, so long as you have money: in the words of another Native Doctor, it makes the impossible to be possible. On the other hand, it is disconcerting when the traffic police climb into your car to demand a bribe to prevent them from imprisoning your driver on a wholly trumped-up charge.
The Nigerian press is as lively as ever. My favourite is Lagos Weekend, a scandal sheet which fears no libel action and which makes the News of the World look reticent. Auntie Gina, 'Africa's Greatest Advice Columnist', still answers questions such as, 'Why do lots of girls want to give the impression that they are virgins when they are not?' and 'Am I a nymphomaniac?' Omo Saloro still interprets dreams. 'Seeing a living dog eating a dead one signifies that you will defeat your enemies.' To men- struate in dream is bad. It is handiwork of satan. It always makes women barren if not quickly stopped. Also it brings stomach ache to some people.' And the classified advertisements offer hope to the hopeless. 'Dr Mahatma (Indian) offers Highly Spir- itual correct 4 Draws to win Naira 50,000 JACKPOT', while King Super Barn Agent, under the heading Get Rich In Few Days, asks 'Do you want progress in this year? or to pass any exam local or foreign, love on ladies/boys, detect food or beer poison, Conquer of enemy.' King Super Barn Agent advises readers 'please don't deal with dupers', but send away for his booklet at once.
I know of no society or country with such an obsession with quick wealth, prestige and the appearance of things. Since the advent of oil, Nigeria seems to have been gripped by a cargo cult mentality, which it cannot shake off. No doubt the universal belief in juju (I know a chief who recently found a severed head in his house, deli- vered by his enemies) also fosters such a mentality, with its assumption that achievement can be secured by the correct performance of arcane ritual without furth- er prolonged effort. This belief invades every aspect of modern life, in which the forms but not the content of an alien but highly attractive culture are imitated. Thus, the author of a booklet entitled How To Organise Meetings And Know The Work Of A Chairman, Secretary, Treasur- er, Auditor, Financial-Secretary, Publicity Secretary, Provost & Committees assures his readers that any organisation that follows his prescriptions is bound to be successful. And the Nigerian press discus- ses, in all seriousness, Nigeria's future as a world power, with its own nuclear prog- ramme, as if it were all just a question of the correct forms which until now have been lacking.
Nowhere in the world (outside of com- munist countries) is thievery so richly rewarded and honoured, and honest, con- structive work rendered so nearly impossi- ble. As they say, 'Monkey dey work, baboon they chop' — monkeys work, but baboons eat. Nigeria, then, should be terrible, yet there is something endearing and profoundly human about it. In Niger- ia, fantasy rules, untrammelled by reality. One cannot be angry for long in a country where a radio advertisement says, 'Be successful, be important, use Colgate!'
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