Who Watches The Watchmen?

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?” – Who watches the watchmen?

                                                                                                            Juvenal (Roman Poet)

I will speak and I will be heard. I will be harsh as truth, uncompromising as justice.

The government we ring everyday has failed us. Yet this societal turn political apparatus every day churn out encomium on itself of promises kept and others to be. You hear a political governor in his speech say “Take for instance; the road linking here to there was in a deplorable state before we assumed office.”

Of course the followers have encumbered themselves with their own share of the governmental woes. Silence has become their only handy weapon to fight an ever roaring wild boar. Accountability we have decided to leave to the prowling bookies and political parties that fill national dailies with incredulous propagandas while we whine away within the corridors of our huts and in the landscape of our farms. After all, as long as we can eat to scare death away, we are satisfied. However, that that is changing is no gainsaying! Go to Osun State and ask the proponents of the ‘stomach infrastructure’ and they will tell you how they suffered from the hands of the enlightened proletariat and dusk-eyed citizens.

Now to the trickiest question, what went wrong? I will tell you what the problem is. The government as the custodian of the rights and privileges of the people it was supposed to serve and govern has grown too big and we remain tongue-tied.

Charles Dunoyer, an early sociologist, explained that “there exist in the world only two great parties; that of those who prefer to live from the produce of their own labor and of their property, and that of those who prefer to live on the labor or the property of others.” To which party do you think the government falls in?

The government falls in the second category. The business of sustaining a state is done by the citizens by producing wealth while a few; come to be seen as the government, was elected by popular choice to protect the citizens doing this. However, the government has shifted focus from its core job of protecting the party that produce wealth and instead of trying to appropriate the wealth, has delved into the business of making the wealth and at the same time appropriating it. That is why every sphere of the society is now controlled by the government.

The government is simply an organization that is supposed to extract surplus from the producers of wealth and facilitate its equal distribution.

“If you have been successful, you did not get there on your own… If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help… Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive, somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you have got a business – you did not build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Guess who said that? President Barack Obama of the United States of America – the land of the free did.

The government has gone too big that it now defines our sense of consciousness, our personal identity, our freedoms, our wealth, our happiness, and even our deaths. Yet none of these ironies happen to affect the government directly. A civil servant in government service must go on a compulsory retirement at the age of 65 yet Gov. Jonah Jang of Plateau State while defending his chairmanship of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum which was in contention with Gov. Rotimi Ameachi of Rivers State said to the press that he was over 70 years of age, therefore old enough to be Gov. Ameachi’s father.

The late Roman poet, Juvenal, asked a simple question that has never fully been answered. “Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?” – “Who watches the watchmen?” When the government that has lost its primary function due to the lackadaisical attitude of its people becomes too powerful, who and where do we run to?

The only solace of the minimum Nigerian on the streets is also very much smeared in the political mud; the law and its rule. Of course the law is supreme – only in its written form. The modern government claims to be the sole and supreme source of laws. Our political governor who are the custodians of these laws live in mansions and drive bullet proof cars thereby knowing nothing about the average Nigerian they sit to discuss and devise laws to protect. How then can we trust these bogus laws when they seem to be above it?

Upon scrutiny, the government is NOT the sole or the supreme source of laws. The constitution that harbors these laws is just a compiled book of customary laws garnered from different various cultures and sometimes from Holy Books. Typical examples are the Anti-Gay Law that was passed and the Child Not Bride Law that was not passed. The proponents and opponents of these laws based their arguments on the cultural background of different cultures and backgrounds that make up Nigeria as a country, and some on religious grounds. These clearly shows that the government is NOT the source of the laws that governs a state and so should not be the decider of the fate of its citizens as they are more familiar with these laws than the pot-bellied aristocrats that put them in the compiled book; the constitution.

Yet again, we have various laws that are not products of the government. When you shake the hand of your friend and agree not to sleep with his wife, you just made a law. When you kiss your child goodnight, you just formulated a law. As the great jurist Bruno Leoni said, “Individuals make the law so far as they make successful claims.”

Due then to the failure of the government, a lot of profiteers and exploiters have now sprung up in taking over the role of the government. Every day, we discover the gradual decay of the moral thread that hung sanity close with unity. The affinity between the government and its people has now experienced profligate dehumanization.

The ubiquity of the failure of the government throughout history has given the institution a certain level of legitimacy – the legitimacy of familiarity.

I will attempt to give an insight into two particular sections of the country that has witnessed proliferate degeneration and subsequently causing a great deal of concern to well-meaning Nigerians: Education and Religion. These two form the other legs that comprises the tripod on which a country stands – the last being politics (government).

Of course the government with the task of providing quality education for its citizens also has the duty of providing a conducive learning environment for private institutes of education that will supplement its efforts. However, reverse is the case as the government only provided schools which they won’t dare to send their kids due to the degrading facility and poor academic conditions in such schools. A lot of Nigerian kids are called stupid when it is clearly not their fault – they are taught by teachers that cannot distinguish between a noun and a verb and leave the school to attend to their personal business. Some even sell to these kids.

Subsequently, upon its failure to adequately provide either of the above two, the supposed private sector that has interest in education has become Money-making Machines who exist only to gulp the depleting kobo in the pockets of the minimum Nigerians; for those who still have that is. Nigeria sweats through her nose to educate its future. The ever growing business that will forever find a ready audience is starting a school; be it primary, secondary or university.

Religion on the other hand always has been the opium of the masses. The blind and fanatical approach to religion has thrown the country into religious terrorism and put into power selfish power-drunks. Little wonder we find religious institutions preaching financial empowerment and faith that works blessings monetarily. From this background, they build lofty schools with high extortionate fees and expect children of only those who they have preached to and God has blessed financially to attend. These are schools the lecturers can’t even afford to send their kids.

How many of us work in hospitals we cannot afford to get sick in? How many of us work in a school we cannot afford to send our kids? How many of us work two jobs just enough to be broke? How many of us work in supermarkets we cannot afford to shop in? How many of us work in a city we cannot afford to live in? How many of us work in a hotel we cannot afford to stay in?

These are the dire questions that beg for answers. They won’t go away simply because we wish them gone. Conscious and concerted efforts need to be put in place. What are these efforts?

First, the governed must be ready to make their governors accountable. The business of government is not the business of a selected few that has metamorphosed into a cabal. As it has been rightly said; “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, we need to restrain the power by breaking our oath of silence. Everyone is a major factor in the sustainability of the country’s sanity and improving on the dividends of governance.

We also need to greatly reduce our dependence on the government. When the government becomes too powerful that it meddles even into the personal lives of its citizens, development is shifted to the government only. Japheth Omojuwa, the social agitator for liberty once said during a conference; “You can have a prosperous nation and have poor people, but you can never have a prosperous people and have a poor nation.” The people of this country need to produce wealth and restrict the government to only appropriate the wealth by creating a free flowing, wealth distribution atmosphere. The government is not going to do everything for us. It was not designed to. We need to achieve a level of independence and allow the government to work and walk.

We also need to create a clear distinction between politics and religion. According to Frank Idodi, Nigeria’s problem is trichotomic. He said “Politics has been religionized, religion politicized and both politics and religion has been commercialized”. Religion has become an institution of hypocrisy and deceit and it has been smeared in partisan politics. We have to keep a clear head and approach governance and its parties with non-religious sentiments.

On education, we have to make education a level one agendum and improve on its prestige. Youth nowadays shy away from education because it is gradually losing its importance. More get-rich-quick avenues are beginning to crop up to displace education in its power to create wealth. Why should I spend years getting educated and still serve as a boss-boy to those that are not or less. Literacy is gradually shifting from being educated formally to your knowledge and experience of the world and its twists. The exorbitant price paid to be educated is becoming too much to bear. Of course you will be quick to say “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance”. True. However, even the word expensive has limits. These days, we find the non-educated making the money while the educated help in counting, calculating, and even protecting it. Ironical!

Finally, I leave you with the words of the popular Hip Hop artiste, Jay Zee, “Whatever deity may guide my life, dear Lord, don’t let me die tonight. But if I shall before I wake, I’ll accept my fate.” This is the prayer of Nigerians that have resigned to fate and go to bed unsure of what their leaders will surprise them with upon waking. The January 1^st declaration of the President on the withdrawal of fuel subsidy is still fresh in their minds. It’s time we change that prayer.

I will speak and I will be heard.