From local to global
Sorry for another cold porridge served at your inbox late today. It is coming straight up cold and bitter from my experience at the Nigerian consulate in Abu Dhabi. My whole day was spent at the premier consulate known for its lack of organization.
I can now confirm after this experience that this is correct. From extortion of passport renewal fees, to administration lapses, to favoritism, to cheating, to lack of effectiveness and the absence of efficiency with the staff/diplomats. The consulate scored full points. I wonder sometimes, if the government and its bureaucrats enjoy torturing its citizens only to show them who is boss. I still wonder why I have to attend the consulate to capture my face on a camera and take my finger print every 5 years! Although judging by the Windows XP systems they were using today (and at the slowest pace you can imagine), I can see why they might need to refresh our data every time (I am trying not to call bullshit on what I just wrote as many suggest it is just another way to extort). I also have to mention the lackadaisical diplomat entering my details in the system with his one finger typing skill. I thought to myself his average typing score would be 10 words per minute! I am not kidding.
Anyways, since Thursdays entries revolve around the subject of global governance, permit me to go one step down and opine on the nation state and its governance as I am fresh from their clutches.
Nigeria has a bad reputation in the international world, and a worse one at home. Having spent much of my day in the lobby of the consulate, and if you know anything about Nigerians, we can be the loud, and I mean LOUD even when having a normal conversation. This I love as it makes it easy to know what people are thinking and also to join a conversation at will as it is welcomed. Many people join in to comment on whatever thing is being said (usually about politics or governance). For me, this kind of activity is useful as research as I get to probe and share ideas with other Nigerians.
Many at times, I come home sad as I do today. As the reality hits me once again that majority of us are really not prepared for the kind of change we say we want. Many are waiting for the Big Daddy or Authoritarian figure to stand up and effect change to our detriment. We get so embroiled in the personalities of politicians while forgetting that there are policies in place that make things the way they are, and make them continue in its current path. I was in conversations where people just insulted the sitting president (as he makes it very easy to do), they talked about money been spent and corruption with a kind of envy/jealousy that makes it creepy and, focused solely on a selfish/scarcity mindset that you know if any of them gets to any position that wields any power, they will be worse that what we currently have.
Everyone I talked to seemed to have figured out the problem, and also the solution but no way to implement them. Many just wanted to take the easy way out. Simple solutions for simple people. Some would opine that we either forget the country for good (although impossible when we are rabid nationalists), or change the government. Only few spoke about the actual policies and its continuity or its discontinuity. The few that spoke about policies or actual change were derided and scolded and forced to comply with the popular narrative of politician bashing. This to me, seems absurd as many bathe in a creepy religious style of self righteousness, virtue signaling and imbibing a godlike/savior complex.
As a people and country, this is pushing us down a path that I cannot understand. We seem to be willfully blind of our own defects and nothing seems to be helping to point us in that direction. All the institutions are complicit with the government in distracting the populace towards insignificance and irrelevance to the world and to themselves. We seem to have been collectively abused and scarred that we are yearning for a national therapy program. Not another dictator style government that will merely push the people to the brink.
Personally I enjoy contemplating on the bigger picture and looking at the world from a global perspective but sometimes I forget about how the local affects us everyday and plays an important role, if not more. The local gets to implement the policies set from the global, the local gets to enforce the rules, and the local also has the mandate of compliance.
If one has to affect the global one must start from the local and go far as starting with ones community but the community is still two steps ahead of ones family and the individual.
Each and everyone of us has to clean up our mental rooms first!
See you tomorrow!
- Ope