National Awards in Nigeria:
Matters Arising
By Abdulrahman Abdulraheem
Sunday,
March 9, 2008
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• Yar’Adua
Photo: Sun News Publishing |
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The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines award
as ‘a prize such as money etc for something that somebody
has done’. This particular period is that of awards
as we have had a couple of them here and there, is just that
most if not all of these awards cannot actually be said to
be earned, they were given based on some political and other
extraneous considerations.
Based on the definition above which says ‘…for
something somebody has done’, I cannot actually recall
anything most of the people whom the president recently honoured
has done that warranted the high national honours they were
given.
But where I have problem with the definition and where may
be the president and his award team exploited in the definition
to honour the undeserving persons is the fact that ‘done’
is an ambiguous word, it is either positive or negative and
the definition refuses to state neither of the option. And
because most of the people so honoured had in the not too
distant past done one or two unsavoury things, it might be
that the award selection committee now interpreted (or misinterpreted)
the ‘done’ from the negative angle and gave them
the awards. With Nigeria, all things are possible…
I keep wondering why we are in a nation that doesn’t
honour deserving national heroes but charlatans. It is not
that the question of who wins which award has any solution
to any of the major problems troubling the nation at the moment,
but honouring deserving persons just like giving award to
a student who has done brilliantly in his exams has a way
of encouraging the awardee to continue the good work. The
awardee feels those who matters are appreciating him and he
would want to do more.
On the other hand, any time we abandon true heroes to honour
villains, the former feels unwanted even in his own country
and he would most probably be discouraged from doing more
while the latter feels the nasty things he is doing are good
and he would continue to drag the nation backward through
his unpatriotic deeds.
May be it is high time this whole thing is subjected to a
kind of public opinion because most of those so-called leaders
that were honoured that day can hardly win any endorsement
even in their backyards, yet, they are winning national honours.
I still wonder why the people in charge think great Nigerians
who right from independence have been toiling day and night
in the media, civil society, law, business, academics and
so on to serve the country do not deserve to be awarded. In
this country, as far as you are not a politician who has stolen
enough money, rigged enough elections and stayed within the
balconies of power for a long time, no one would recognize
you with the ‘GCFR’ title.
The higher your position in government, the higher your award,
not minding whether you are one of the stumbling blocks to
real democratic practice in the country. Why do we derive
pleasure honouring crooks, I mean people of questionable antecedents
because of the position their dirty deals have taken them
to? How can a country like this progress? It is indeed very
ironical that a government that is waging a so-called war
on corruption is busy honouring undeserving elements.
I am not however condemning the whole exercise because there
were some of those awardees who I nodded my head in agreement
when I heard of their nomination, I mean people who have been
able to distinguished themselves in their chosen career and
contributed in no small measure to national development.It
is just that the percentage of the deserving ones were very
low compared to the people who were honoured more on political
basis than any good they ever did.
I feel the whole thing has a lot to do with the orientation
of the Nigerian public generally. This is a society that honours
wealth (no matter how filthy) at the expense of integrity,
selfless service and credibility. If you are not rich, no
one reckons with you even if you are the best using normal
and righteous parameters to judge.
But if you have succeeded in finding one dirty way to get
to the top, steal and come back to your locality, everybody
will bow before you, even if you have used one of their kids
for rituals to make the illicit money, no one cares. It is
only in Nigeria that someone who is putting on bathroom slippers
today will tomorrow start riding a hummer sport utility vehicle
(SUV) without anybody asking questions. That is why we have
not been able to produce too many people of integrity and
great people in the true sense of it, but charlatans who claim
to be what they are not.
That is why if you cannot carry gun to chase people away during
elections, you cannot win and no one will honour you, If you
cannot lead thugs to the polling booth and cause katakata
to make sure you win by do or die, your name will never carry
any of the prestigious (are they really prestigious?) national
honours.
Fellow comrades - in -struggle (for better Nigeria), with
awardees like this, we are in trouble, deep trouble. Cry my
beloved country!
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