By Dr. Jide Afolayan
There’s a rather funny thing they say in English when a person shows good judgement or a smart disposition. They say he or she has their head screwed on straight. As with many English sayings, it leaves one to wonder. Was there never a time when heads were fitted with screws?
But my reference to the saying has nothing to do with Head Engineering. It rather pertains to the much graver and pertinent matter of the general nature of our national discourse in this obodo called Nigeria.
As individuals, we strive to ensure that we reason out our issues like persons with their heads screwed on straight. We suffer the consequences when we fail to do so. We learn our lessons and move on to tackle the next challenge. However, when it comes to analyzing and figuring out issues with our collective “national head”, the level of crookedness we daily see in the screwing of it is quite baffling.
Let me make it clear first of all that it is to our shame that we still have a huge population of uneducated adults who for all intent and purpose are effectively unable to partake in any national discourse. These are essentially empty sectors contained in our “national head”.
How do you explain government policy to a man who can neither read nor write? How do you explain to him that he has rights? It is an uphill task and a major cog in the wheel of our collective intellectual progress. I will never forget an encounter I witnessed many years ago between a health worker and an illiterate elderly man. This passionate health worker was trying to tell the man about the HIV virus and the importance of using condoms.
For lack of better options, this woman described a virus with a word that means the same thing as insect in the local language. The man may be illiterate but he was intelligent. And he was offended. “I understand your point about birth control but how can you be attempting to scare an old man like me with what you call an unseen insect? Do I look like a toddler to you? What insect is there in this world that I have not seen before? You can’t even tell me its name!”. I left the scene so my laughter will not add to the poor woman’s frustration.
The point of my story is, we have among us millions of men and women such as that old man with whom we cannot discuss many national issues and expect useful inputs. Meanwhile, these people are parents who determine the fate of their children. They are spouses who make decisions daily that affect the lives of their partners. Most significantly of all, they are voters who are expected to make political choices.
This leaves the burden of reasoning out our nation’s predicament to the educated elite. The ones who can comprehend policy. The ones who can discern injustice. The ones who are not supposed to be easily bamboozled with empty rhetoric and pseudo-intelligent posturing. The ones that “know wetin dey”.
Having identified this demographic that is responsible for carrying our “national head” in times when serious brainstorming and intellectual conversation is needed, how have we fared as a nation? Have we not perennially proven to be like the proverbial witch doctor who left leprosy to fester while paying attention to ring worm?
Do we ask the right questions? Do we make the right demands of our leaders? When we complain that things are done wrong in the country, have we researched how it should be done right? And when it is done right but it offends our little sentiments, do we not kick and scream and demonize the ones trying to set things right? So far in Nigeria, it appears we have at every crucial point failed to have the right conversation.
Perhaps the most obvious aspect of this matter is the type of considerations that typically go into an average Nigerian elite’s choice of which political figure to support. It is a crying shame that the drivers of our choice of leaders in 2026 continues to be ethnicity and religion. Again, there is no shame in it if you belong to the class of the educationally disenfranchised. Expecting more from that section of society is foolhardy.
These are people who cannot research the resume of a potential candidate nor critically analyze his position on issues. But Nigeria is a place where you find lawyers, engineers and professors extolling the virtues of a dubious political figure while openly admitting that they are doing so because he belongs to their clan and creed. The disastrous aspect of this phenomenon is that the mis-rulers of Nigeria are firmly united across clan and creed.
The other day I was reading through a list. A certain former National Security Adviser was accused of misappropriating a couple of billions of dollars of government funds while in office. A brilliant journalist made a list of all the people that the said former NSA allegedly shared the loot with. As I read through that list, I had a little epiphany. It was a perfect list of a united Nigeria.
Even the amount of money shared around appeared to reflect unity and fairness across Nigeria’s ethnic groups and religions! While we the people focus on our little ethno-religious sentiments, several important conversations are not being had. Nigerians have never cared if their favourite political figure is a good father and husband. We loathe any probe into the educational or work history of our favourite candidate.
He could be living with enormous conflicts of interest and we will not even bring them up. What was their position during our most controversial national dilemmas? Such important things matter little to us. We make these mistakes again and again then we come back to complain that things are not right with the nation. The fact that a person speaks your language or prays to your god has never guaranteed anything when you put them in power.
A flip side of this matter is the way we blame other tribes and creeds for our woes. I remember engaging with one man who has a special skill for speaking in long, beautiful English sentences made up of big words. “The North is our gargantuan predicament in this country”, he exclaimed. No need to explain that he is not from the Northern part of the country. I then calmly asked him a few questions.
Has anyone from the north ever ruled your State? How come your State has dozens of public schools that have no windows nor doors? How functional is your Local Government? You do know that your local government is run by your cousins and uncles, right? Is the ‘North’ the reason there isn’t a single ambulance any member of the public can call in your State?
For this man and people like him, all the conversations that need to be had as to how and why these problems persist in his State are buried under that rhetoric of the “North” being the problem. And to the undiscerning, his oratorical skills are such that you will be swept away into that same world. After all, he is highly educated.We are in many ways a nation blinded by ethnic and religious sentiment. It shuts down reasoning. It stifles ideas. It screws on our “national head” wrong and it is responsible for a good part of our national migraine.
When a typical Nigerian is thinking about an issue like security, his number one thought is the tribe of people perpetrating the raids and kidnappings. We have also been erroneously taught to think of army operations to tackle the safety of our streets. That is not the job of the army by any means. The ethnic extraction of the perps is also of zero import. The most important conversation that has been missing on this matter is Police reform.
There are countries here in West Africa where a full hundred percent of kidnappings for ransom are foiled. Who does that job in those countries? It is their Police. These are countries with ragtag armies that do not measure up to a single battalion in Nigeria. But they have evolved effective policing that has made crimes like robbery and kidnapping unattractive. Does anyone remember the last time any Nigerian leader made a serious move to reform and upgrade our Police force?
Can we recall any elite body approaching the National Assembly with solutions for Police reform in recent times? Not only is it not being discussed, we have stopped expecting it to happen. We witness the sorry condition of policing in Nigeria daily and we are not even talking about it. Yet we groan hard and long about insecurity every day and everywhere.The Nigerian elite owes the nation deeper thought and better rhetoric.
We owe our leaders correct guidance and correct demands. We owe the educationally disenfranchised supervision and guidance. I have been watching polling station drama regularly since 1999. Go to your polling station on election day. All the elite sit at home watching TV and arguing on WhatsApp. Their intelligent input is totally absent at the polling station.
The most enthusiastic voters are also the least informed. There is no path to positive change in the country if the very people that cannot be induced with ten thousand naira have thrown up their hands and surrendered to those who can. Spurious, staccato ideas fill our policies. But they don’t meet any strong challenge from the populace. Abominable, careless statements are made by our leaders on a daily basis. We sit by and watch and make no strong demands. Our mindset is too accommodating.
Too bereft of the application of logic and critical reasoning. We believe God will make things right one day. I’m a firm believer in God but I look around and I see no country that God ever came down to develop. Only ones that chose to screw on their national heads straight.
Dr. Jide Afolayan writes from Ado-Ekiti in Ekiti State, Nigeria
