Through years of lowering standards and accepting bad service, we as a country and a people have come to develop an abysmal tolerance for mediocrity and low standards that has eaten into the core of the Nigerian mentality. The result, from governance to societal relations, is the shocking level of poor service, bad and downright irresponsible governance, corruption, breakdown of virtually all social and economic infrastructure never seen before in a peaceful and functioning society.
So entrenched is the culture that what we expect from ourselves, from our colleagues, subordinates, leaders, relatives and friends is couched in different euphemisms: “I can’t come and kill myself”, “he tried” and “manage like it that”, perhaps the most popular phrase that describes this phenomenon.
In his book, “The Trouble with Nigeria” Chinua Achebe refers to it as the cult of mediocrity and traces its emergence to the early days of independence and the corrupt tendencies of politicians: “By the time the Third Republic arrived, we found ourselves in the grip of former military dictators turned ‘democrats’ with the same old mind set but now donning civilian clothes. So, Nigeria following the first republic has been ruled by the same cult of mediocrity – a deeply corrupt cabal – for at least forty years, recycling themselves in different guises and incarnations. They have then deeply corrupted the local business elites who are in turn often pawns of foreign business interests,” the literary icon surmised.
From politicians, the mindset percolated to the society and every fabric of the society is now corrupted so much so that very few people have regards for standards, process and quality.
Of course, there are Nigerians, at home and abroad, waging a consistent battle against this plague. Two Nigerians, Chigozie Obioma and Bernadine Evaristo are on the shortlist for the 2019 Booker prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world. The Famished Road by Ben Okri was the first novel by a Nigerian to win the award in 1991.
That is not all. There are Nigerians in different professions who don’t, won’t and aren’t settling for less. They are competing with the best globally and standing out for excellent work.
Sadly, this culture of hard work and excellence is the exception and not the norm in Nigeria. As Kingsley Moghalu puts it, “the Nigerian way is to manage… We are constantly under pressure to lower our standards in every area.” This can be seen more clearly in our vocational and artisanal spheres where poor quality of work and service is the norm and everyone learns to ‘manage it like that.”
Because of that kind of mindset, nothing really works in the country. Somehow, we have learnt to cope with poor or absent infrastructure, services, injustice and just manage it. We manage everywhere; at home, at work, in hospitals, at conveniences, at airports, and places of worship.
But like a perceptive Nigerian quipped, “every single time we accept to manage something, we pass up the opportunity to fix a problem. Nigeria is now the poverty capital of the world because we failed to fix millions of problems.”
If Nigeria is to attain prosperity, in Moghalu’s words, “we must learn to stop managing. We must learn to stop making excuses for one bad leader after another because of where they come from or how much money they have or whether we like them personally.”
We need to decrease our tolerance level for bad governance and learn to hold our leaders accountable, to compel them to deliver good governance and solid infrastructure. Perhaps, that could be a starting point for changing the culture of “managing it like that” in the country.
