The good book says, and I am not entirely sure where, that “The heart of man is desperately wicked”. When my brother asked me to give him my opinion on an essay he had to write for some psychology class he opted to take at uni, I think the title was “all human acts are driven by selfish desire” that was the first thing that popped into my head. The heart of man is desperately wicked.
So of course after a lot of deliberation, I responded to him: yep, I totally agree, most of the things we do as humans is to satisfy our selfish desires, the things we want, the things we want to happen, because as I pointed out we were all created that way, with wicked and selfish desires. Except of course we make a conscious effort not to be. I’m going to back pedal a bit here, and correct myself, or justify myself: our natural inclination is to act selfishly, but we can decide to take a stand and do what is out of character, nice, kind, sefless.
Everytime I drive in Lagos, I’m in the car alone, I see the worst form / version of me possible. I have road rage, I am always screaming at people that can’t hear me, pedestrians that cross the road as though they left their house in the morning and vowed to themselves not to return alive, okadas that believe they are immortal or are in a rush hour sequel and drive anyhow, lorry drivers that are already dead, so they don’t care what happens to other road users. I act crazzzzy. Sometimes I actually stop all the screaming and think to myself, what is wrong with you. Why do I behave this way? I think that a Lagos road at rush hour is the best way to understand the average Nigerian person, and the behaviour of that average Nigerian person boils my blood to the point of explosion.
The Average Nigerian is SELFISH; the average Nigerian has a hard heart; and the average Nigerian is bitter about something - be it the fact he has to do that drive, or the nasty place of work that he is driving to, or even the car he has to drive. Just the way people give you death stares when you are trying to merge into their lanes on that Alfred Rewane bridge or the way they hurl abuse at you when you cut in front of them even when you have the right of way. People are just selfish, angry, bitter, and WICKED. It just makes me wonder if they are that way because they are a product of their environment, or is the environment, Lagos, Nigeria, the way it is because we have these kinds of people in it. It’s one of those: “what came first the egg or the chicken” debates.
What came first the selfish Nigerian, or the downtrodden Nigeria? It goes around in circles, because people don’t have the bare necessities in life, things that are the duty of their country to provide its citizens we breed more and more selfish people that have to provide those things for themselves, but in the same vein it took a selfish person or a selfish group of people for the country to fall to the depths that it is at currently. Whichever came first, the attitude people have stinks, and the enabling social and economic environment stinks too.
Dipo O said after reading some of these posts that I seem to have an up one day and down one day opinion of Lagos. This is verrrrrrrrry true; my relationship with Lagos is completely schizophrenic. Sometimes I love it, and other times I just want to disappear, the people do my head in, and the inefficiencies grind on my last nerve. So it may be hard, and though it is in my base nature to be selfish, and wicked, and think only of myself, today I will make MORE of a conscious effort to do what is for the greater good, not just what is for my good. I hope everybody else will take a leaf from my book, because the truth is that just as every journey to greatness takes just one step, the journey to changing the selfish mindset of ‘the Nigerian’ just takes individuals making a conscious effort to be selfless.
Xoxo.
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