Law, order, and accountability are conspicuous attributes of humanity in a well structured, organized social space. However, these attributes can gradually collapse under extreme, inclement circumstances. Then humans could descend to a feral, desperate, power-hungry, and brutish level in harmony with their new depraved environment. But even within a perverted human habitation, the doctrine of hierarchical determination in social life prevails.
The foregoing explicitly captures the events in William Golding’s iconic novel Lord of the Flies. When a group of innocent, British boys maroon on an uninhabited island, free from law and order, they transmute from refined school boys to brutish natives, gradually embrace anarchy, and accept it as a new normal consistent with their forced environment.
Two boys, Ralph and Jack emerge as leaders on the island but as with every perverted group, order gradually collapse and the boys reject the more reasonable and responsible leadership of Ralph while accepting the deviant, disoriented leadership of Jack. Having transformed into a typical bloodthirsty savage, the popular Jack kills a pig and offers the head as a sacrifice to an imaginary beast on the island. A few days later, the decomposed head of the pig inevitably attracts many scavenging flies, its insipid odour polluting the atmosphere. It becomes the Lord of the Flies.
Jack’s emergence and creation of the Lord of the Flies is a critical metaphor for a society like Nigeria where law, order, and accountability are consistently suppressed. In our country, it appears that law, order, and accountability have flown out of the window creating a possibility for the emergence of double–dealers, economic predators, and implacable plunderers as leaders. As the 2023 elections approach, these people are making a dramatic re-entry into our social spaces, to cajole, deceive, and mislead. They attract human scavengers by presenting them with rotten, filthy bait, in this case, money and other items of materiality. In many ways, Nigeria shares a lot in common with the island where the British boys found themselves. In contemporary times, it is apparent that we have steadily degenerated in terms of morals and values and like the boys on the island, we are marooned, in the thrall of national disaster.
For the sake of this essay, let us stick with Lord(s) of the Flies because there are many of them, incubated and nurtured by a scrambled political culture in Nigeria. We must identify the progenitors of Lords of the Flies in our country given that 2023 is around the corner. Having ensured that law, order, and accountability are all dead in the country, completely erased from the good books, those who ensured their annihilation are now offering Nigerians rotten, filthy bait to attract the hungry, scavenging masses. Jack in the novel under reference said he was offering a sacrifice to the imaginary beast on the Island.
Our metaphoric Jacks in Nigeria are offering money and other material items as a sacrifice for leadership positions. Unfortunately, their monetary sacrifices are attracting people and may lead them to their ultimate damnation.
If we agree that Nigeria is bleeding from all pores (there is no argument about that) there are people who are responsible for the injury and numerous wounds on the body of the country. Look around you, set aside ethnic
bias, fellowship, blind optimism, and other materialistic gains from these people. These same people have held leadership positions in this country, they stole, stole, and stole even what they did not need. Their only ambition is to amass wealth to a confounding, mindboggling level. Having helped to ensure that the country descended into savagery where all institutions of the state are destroyed because they can only thrive on such troubled waters, they have killed a pig and offered the head as a sacrifice to Nigerians.
I have always maintained that the only people that can rescue Nigeria from final collapse are Nigerians. This mob mentality of egging proven thieves on into public offices, this mentality of scavenging on the rotten head of a pig, this mindset of supporting a harbinger of lord of the flies should cease forthwith.
Those who have plundered our collective patrimony and now force hungry people to scavenge on stolen wealth towards 2023 should be promptly identified and called out. By this, I refer to anybody who has served the
government in the last twenty years and have, through that service become a billionaire.
The money is stolen, simple. Anybody who has stolen public funds, converting the same to personal use is a thief and we must reject thieving criminals among us. That man in my state, in your state, how much did he have before joining the government? How did he become a billionaire? Former/serving local government chairmen, Perm Secs, House of Assembly members, Governors, Ministers, Presidents or Vice-Presidents – let us get a piece of paper, write down their names and scrutinize them one after another. How much did they have, what was their economic conditions before they took office and what is it now? Have they preserved Nigeria or vanquished the exchequer? Are there thieves among them? Is there any one of them that deserves to be celebrated?
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Some people have stolen Nigeria dry and now, on their way to finally bury the country, they offer a fragment of what they stole to Nigerians. Like scavenging flies, the people are gathering around these offers. It is indefensible
that in a country where poverty holds millions by the jugular, someone will boast to be richer than a state. There are past and present government officials that have boasted to be richer than some African countries. A former
governor of my state Imo, now in the Senate, once boasted that he is richer than Imo State.
Some other past governors have vomited the same vulgarity. How did they make the money? They stole it from Nigerians, simple. Nigerians should all go into the inner recesses of their rooms and ask, should we continue to empower thieves in this country, to run after them to pick crumbs? Are we all helpless in the circumstance? Is the 2023 election won and lost? If the answers to these questions are in the affirmative, then let us all close shop, go home, and wait for the final burial of the country.
•Dr. Adiele is of the Department of English, Mountain Top University, Ibafo, Ogun State.
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