Although government is blamed for virtually everything that goes wrong with Nigeria, we must differentiate between government and governance.  

Government is a collection of institutions to be operated by functionaries of state. It is quite possible to have such institutions, and it is quite possible to have persons elected or appointed to operate institutions of government, while operations of government, which is what governance is, is left unattended to.

The role of government is to secure the land and the people who live on it so that the task of development can be undertaken by the people with little or no hindrance. But experience shows that there may be government without governance.  

There is government where there are institutions of state, and where those institutions are manned by functionaries of state.

But there is no governance where government does not function as it ought to. Government fails to function where and when its officers are either unable or unwilling to assume responsibilities that pertain to functions assigned to them.

Sometimes, they are both unable and unwilling. Inability to function as one ought to function is administrative incompetence. Unwillingness to function is a matter of moral incompetence.  

Government functionaries do not fall from the sky. They come from among us. We attended the same schools, we live in the same neighbourhood, we go to the same markets, and we frequent the same places of worship.

If our society is morally depraved, those who go into government will be, for the most part, morally depraved persons.

Absence of ethical competence incapacitates government functionaries. Its symptom is the much vexed issue of corruption. It has been with Nigeria for decades.

There is a prolonged absence of morality in the way Nigeria has been governed from the First Republic until this moment as we speak, passing through civilian rule and military rule.

Nigeria is bedeviled by an epidemic of moral depravity. In an ambience of widespread ethical incompetence, disregard for the imperative of morally just conduct undermines the authority of state, and, precisely because of the primary function of state as facilitator of an enabling environment for development, erodes the capacity of a people to work for the development of their land.

Nigerians are not unintelligent. But tolerance of absence of ethical competence has made Nigeria into a land bereft of leadership. Yes, there are persons who parade themselves as leaders.

However, disregard for morality in their conduct of affairs of government has made them leaders in lawlessness. Leaders in lawlessness can neither make nor enforce good laws.

Their lifestyle contradicts what good leadership is all about. They cannot command respect. They cannot expect their compatriots to trust them.

There has to be an agreement that certain ways of doing things are right or wrong. That ours is a country richly endowed but inhabited by millions of impoverished men, women and children shows that something is wrong, morally wrong, with the way those to whom the wealth of the land has been entrusted over the years.

One question we must ask ourselves is: why is it that those to whom the wealth of the land have been entrusted are living in affluence while the people on whose land the wealth is found are living in abject poverty? It would be insincere of us not to raise this question.

It would be unforgivably insincere to pretend not to know the answer. We must have the courage to tell the truth.

We have separated politics and morality. For many of us, what matters is the end. Morality of the means does not matter. So we are ready to use foul means and subterfuge to get into office, and we seek to get into office not to serve but to enjoy the perks of office to the disadvantage of the larger population.

This was what the youths of Kenya revolted against in June 2024. Before them, the young Nigerians who gathered at the Lekki Toll Gate—Nigeria’s Tiananmen Square—in October 2020. Filled with revulsion, they called for accountability and for an end to state brutality.

Politics is how we regulate our common life for the sake of the common good, not for the benefit of a privileged few. There is danger in believing and acting as if morality and politics were strange bedfellows.

That would be a recipe for poverty and instability. Education is about how we form those who will assume the reins of state in the not too distant future. In this regard, education is a function of politics, that is, of intelligently regulating our common life. If morality must be in politics, it must begin by being in education.

Education must teach us not just how to put food on our table but, even more fundamentally, how to differentiate right from wrong, and how to act consequent to our differentiation.

When Father Denis Slattery founded St Finbarr’s College in 1956, his intention was to form a generation of Nigerians capable of assuming leadership position in a Nigeria on the way to independence from Britain.

He rightly emphasized education with morality. He was not alone in doing this. Educational institutions established and run by missionaries were acknowledged to be cradles of moral and intellectual formation.

The influence of St Augustine of Hippo, an African Bishop whose life spanned the fourth and fifth centuries of Christianity could be discerned in this approach. For St Augustine, the intent and content of education is primarily ethical. There is need for a reawakening in this regard.

Our country continues to bleed. And we need to do something about it. After grave errors of the past and of the present, error of disregard for the will of the people, of moral depravity, of misappropriation of public funds and abuse of office, the error of taking morality out of education, which includes the error of taking morality out of politics, Nigeria stands in urgent need of a new beginning.

That need for a new beginning is vividly captured in the words of the poem, “For My People”, by Margaret Walker (1915-1998), words used as anthem of the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC 77) hosted by Nigeria in 1977. She wrote:

Let a new earth rise. 

Let another world be born. 

Let a    bloody peace 

be written in the sky. 

Let a second generation full of courage issue forth;

let a people loving freedom come to growth. 

Let a beauty full of healing 

and a strength of final clenching 

be the pulsing in our spirits 

and our blood. 

Let the martial songs be written, 

let the dirges disappear. 

Let a race of men now rise and take control.

 

Author: Father Anthony Akinwale