There is an old African tale in former times used as a universal allegory. There was once a flourishing pond with an environ full of animals and provided enough for all their needs. Strife was minimal. A Monitor Lizard in the pond had a big reputation for perpetrating wickedness, slander and treachery against other animals that inhabited the environs of the pond. The pain of others was his chief daily joy. His stripes, complexion, eyes and movements made him look both alien and wretched – perhaps the source of his deformed personality. Lying by raising reasonable doubt or obfuscating facts was the essential deception he used to harm and ruin others for no good reason at all. He also had gotten many animals severely punished and banished from the pond despite their innocence. Above all, he was a master flatterer who could easily get former victims to support him and his many schemes. Alas, the animals that lived by the pond accepted the Monitor Lizard’s evil ways as inevitable possibly because they dreaded him. Then a day of reckoning emerged.
There is an insightful article for those interested in governance by Taiwo Makinde titled Problems of Policy Implementation in Developing Nations: The Nigerian Experience. In the paper, the Makinde explains quite persuasively why policy implementation in Nigeria routinely fails with successive governments. He implicates, among other factors, a lack of continuity of policy implementation from a previous government to a succeeding, e.g. from Presidents Babangida to Abacha [or Jonathan to Buhari]. Ego [of the leader] is the reason he provides for this. The logic is simple; it is better for the current president to sabotage the good works of a predecessor and initiate his own that will place his mention high on the lips of posterity. It holds for all forms of organisation in Nigeria. The significant exception is President Muhammad Buhari and for strange reasons; blamocracy [and claimocracy].
Taba and Tomos were left at Marioka’s place alone together, the host had a sudden emergency to attend to on the other side of town. It was a lovely well-decorated three-bedroom house overlooking a leafy park in South London. Both men were in one of the bedrooms upstairs working on the computer server for the organisation they belonged.
Tomos was up to his evil heartless old tricks yet again. Smartly dressed as ever, Tomos was smugly taking a nasty verbal swipe at Taba. He haughtily boasted of his father’s exploits as a notable architect while associating his on-and-off friend, Taba, with peasantry and obsession with parvenu. Tomos was patronisingly educating Taba with as nasty sarcasm as one could muster that one is either well-born or not and that self-made men are usually ‘one generation wonders’. Taba was in his trademark leather jacket, polo shirt and jeans which always looked cool on him and seemed very relaxed.
The Nigerian university campus grown fraternity (UCGF) tended to start well but end up acquiring a good number of psychopaths. Most members of these fraternities are serial victims of these psychopaths (sometimes the same ones) who eventually and permanently hold the reins of power. Why would educated men endure being repeat victims indefinitely? Richard Dawkins’ Self Gene holds the answer; these fraternities are enclaves that contain cheats (psychopaths), suckers (victims) and grudgers (resistors to psychopaths). The tolerance of Cheats in fraternities reveals far more about them than is sanely desirable.
One growing and disturbing phenomenon of Nigerian university campus grown fraternities (UCGFs) is their transformation into “charities”. It is a purely psychopathic phenomenon, set up by psychopaths purely for the benefits of a cabal of psychopaths who run these fraternities. It is just another ruse for fraternities to hit the goodwill of funders of charitable agencies with criminal and fraudulent activities in the name of do-gooding. Continue reading →
