Are you really ready for this change?

A few days ago, after deciding on a short holiday before we lose the kids to boarding school for another 3 months, we were at the airport to catch our flight. A young man approached us the usual way; do we have tickets already? We said yes, but like a leech, he wouldn’t let go of us. Despite the fact that either myself, my wife or the two grown-ups amongst my kids can manoeuvre our bags on the scale, and despite the fact that we were capable of getting our boarding passes by ourselves, this guy insisted on wanting to do everything for us.

Later, as one kid was watching the bags, and the two others were waiting on the line for us to get to our turn, this guy comes again! This time, he wants to help us get our boarding pass without us staying on the long queue. At first I was tempted, then I quickly reasoned, why should I want to jump this queue? Even if I was the last on the queue, since I had arrived early enough before boarding was to close, I will still get on the flight. So I told him politely that we will rather wait our turn. He looked at me with this incredulous look, shook his head, and actually snapped his heels as he walked away! I am sure he thought this man is so miserly that he will allow his family to suffer because he doesn’t want to give out a pittance of maybe 500naira.

But for me, it wasn’t about his solicitations, or about the money I would have given him. The deeper reality as I thought about this event later on is that for no reason at all, a lot of us would have agreed to jump that queue and move to the next point of waiting! At that realization, something flashed through my mind. This country is asking for change; in fact, we are raving for change! We denounce everything about this country as bad or decaying, and rightly so perhaps. We celebrated the coming of Buhari as the man who will start the change. We expectantly wait for Nigeria to just become a changed country overnight; a country where things work; where corruption is ended; and where governance meets followership on a mission for restoration. But the question is, are we really ready for this change?

For so long in Nigeria, people have been doing the wrong things. A lot of people know it is wrong, but as no one punishes wrong doing, they reasoned they can also play along. However, quite a number of people don’t even know it is wrong. They assume that if it works for them, and gives them what they want- a means of livelihood, then it can’t be wrong.

It’s not really just that people are doing the wrong things alone, but our society has become permissive of the wrong ways of life. People routinely drive against the traffic and expect you, the man with the right of way, to clear off! People make the wrong turns at road junctions, and the police man passes them on. That is not even as annoying as when people form an illegal lane, and when you get to the traffic warden, he calmly passes them into your lane and asks you to stop for them. It makes me feel like choking someone.

What else? We sit at the owner’s corner of our luxurious cars, and in a traffic jam, it is okay if the driver rides on the kerbs, or faces oncoming traffic! We rub a salve over our conscience by saying, “well, I am not the one driving! If I was, I would never do that!”

Nigeria is a society upside down. The wrong things are now seen as the right thing. Exceptions are now seem as the norm, and the norm as exceptions. For example, you go to the filling stations, and they don’t have fuel. Right in front of the station, there are young men and women who have set up shop selling the same fuel the station refuses to sell. Where did they get it from? We can all easily answer that question.

Or you go to the bank. The bank does not have foreign currency. They ask you to buy from the Mallam and come to deposit in your dorm account, and we call this normal! Why should I not be able to buy my forex from the bank? Why do I have to make someone rich for doing nothing? That is not even enough. You want crisp naira notes, you won’t find it in the bank also. They don’t have, they tell you. Go outside and the young man there will give you 1000 naira in crisp 100 naira notes when you give him 1,500naira of your old notes. The only people who get crisp notes out of the bank are those who are friends with the bank manager or those who can smile rightly or flirt with the girl on the counter!

Still talking about wrong things being seen as right! It is normal to not expect electricity from NEPA. No wonder excitement creeps in when they remember to give your neighbourhood light. Husband and wife, hitherto beefing each other suddenly become friends when NEPA shows up. So NEPA is the exception, and generators are the norm. We have generators for different time of the day; one for the morning, one for the afternoon, one for evening, one for sleeping! The noise pollution is seen as normal, not an exception. And the partial deafness of our mai guards and even us landlords and our families from the noise of the generators is a part of life in Nigeria. We are used to it.

Waiting in a swelteringly hot airport is a norm. Waiting hours for your bags after a long flight is a norm. Waiting in traffic is a norm. Libraries that are without books is a norm. Schools that are shut for longer than they are open is a norm. The whole country is on strike, and the government carries on as if nothing is wrong. That too is a norm!

Let me stop, too many things are wrong with our society, but now change has arrived as we like to say. I therefore want to repeat the question, are we ready for this change? Are we ready for the consequences of this change? Are we ready to give up the lifestyle we have built on wealth that we cannot defend when this change begins to take effect? Are we ready to allow the change to cut the source of our ‘undeclarable’ source of wealth?

For a lot of Nigerians, I fear they didn’t think change will get to this point? However, the change should not be such that it will allow us to continue business as usual. It is not just about just fixing NEPA, or roads, or just creating jobs. Fixing these things means dealing with the source of the problems in these areas. As you know, there are principalities who ensure the continuity of their egregious lifestyles from the proceeds of the ill-gotten wealth they have amassed by strangulating these aforementioned areas of our national infrastructure and common wealth. For change to happen, these guys have to be cut off from the source of their ill-gotten wealth. Would such people be welcoming of this change then?

It is common knowledge that 90% or more of Nigerians live beyond their legal means. How do they make up the rest? I posit that they do this through corrupt practices. It doesn’t matter where they work, whether government workers or private sector people; whether churches or mosques, Nigerians take advantage of the system that pays their bills. The average Nigerian believes that he is entitled to steal from the place that pays his salary. We see it as normal. We call it fringe benefits. We see it as being sharp or smart. Instead of plugging it, we exploit every loophole because we see it as a way by which God has answered our prayers.

I have a South African friend. One day as we were having dinner in Abuja where we had gone for some meetings, he looked around at the posh mall we were at; he looked at all the posh people who are gliding past us as we ate; at their expensive cars parked in the car park, and he asked me, “Folarin, am I missing something or what, but everyone appears so rich. Where do all these Nigerians get their money from. Are they so well paid or what?” I smiled because I could understand his dilemma.

A civil servant on a salary of 200k per month has a housing estate or maybe a block of flats. He flies out on holiday twice a year with his family of 5; he has two cars (one for work and one for church or mosque); has two kids in boarding school with yearly fee of about 1.5million naira each, and so on. You would want to ask yourself, where is the extras coming from? He goes to church or wherever he worships, and declares a testimony about God’s favour. I ask myself (inwards of course), how has God favoured you? What exactly did He give you? A salary raise, or what? I don’t know how many Nigerians can say exactly what they do to get the money they are spending. So if we are asking for a change, let’s remember that this change may affect this source of extra and undeclared income. Would we still want that change?

I can’t chronicle all the things that this change will affect. But let me say that a lot of people have built tabernacles and are making good income from situations that should not be there in the first place, and which will not be there when change has taken root. What will happen to their income then? Like those boys selling fuel on the side street or like those companies selling generators by trailer loads, or like those bureau de changes; you can go on naming a few more.

I don’t want to hit on civil servants alone. I am also a businessman ( I am many things really), and when I saw the things that people who call themselves professionals; people who work for big multinationals; people who we look up to as epitome of integrity, when I saw what they do in their work life, I actually gave up on this country, at least until now.

I am talking about managers who inflate contract sums; who pad the contract value and asks the contractor to deliver the top-up to their private accounts; who even go as far as awarding contracts to their own or their cronies company; procurement managers who frustrates legitimate businessman out of what they should get because he was not ready to sort them! I am not suggesting this, I am saying it as a fact. When you refuse to deal, they get you out of business with their companies. These are managers, senior managers, GMs, MDs and office holders of all kinds of name. They have more money in their account that the entire salary they should earn in a lifetime.

I am not bitter at these people in anyway. It is just a pity that we have come to this pitiful low as a people. We look at ourselves in the mirror in the morning, and immediately we walk away from that mirror, we forget who we are. We pick up newspapers and vilify the politicians. We sit at lunch meetings with other colleagues and bemoan what is happening in our country. We travel out and sit with other Nigerians in diaspora and agree after a long evening drinking wine and lobsters that this country, Nigeria, has no hope. We forget, very incredulously, that we are also a part of the problem of the country.

Now at last, maybe hope has arrived. Maybe change, real change, has come. I want to remind you all to check yourself and prepare for this change, because we now have received what we wished for. If this change is of God, it will sweep many away. It will expose many. The bible says, “Judgement will start from the house of God”. Interprete that! We know who the thieves are so we will not be very surprised when they are hounded into jail. What will be surprising to us is when they mention your name as a partaker in the eating of the bread of deceit. When they name and shame you as a wrongdoer and a usurper of the office from where you are already drawing pay. I don’t want you to be shamed, because if you are reading this, you are my friend, or my friend’s friend or someone who has some connections to me. So please, check yourself and ask yourself, “Am I ready for this change?” If you are not, please set your house in order…be ready, for the change may have finally come.

I, Folarin Banigbe, am ready for this change. Are you?