BETWEEN SLAVERY AND CORRUPTION
I watched Makibefo, “a startling Madagascan version of Shakespeare’s
Macbeth story, shot in beautifully composed black – and – white images” on Dstv
and I suddenly realized close to three decades after I first read Shakespeare’s
Macbeth that the story of Macbeth as related by Shakespeare could easily be an
African Story.
I say this because there is nothing the black man has or does now that
was not the story of the white man in Macbeth and other great works of
Shakespeare. Talk of intrigues, slavery, witchcraft, envy, murder, tragedy,
horror and the storied power of women and the famed weakness of men, a
phenomenon that the world is still struggling to grapple with and you will find
all of it slavishly depicted in Macbeth and many other of the great man’s
classics. By the way, the English man William Shakespeare is the best known
writer in all of English literature.
The sharp and beautiful black and white images got me thinking. My
random thoughts conjured up many images of the black man and amongst them the
vivid ‘black – and – white images’ of the poorly clad slave in some white
plantation in distant lands many hundred years ago. This particular image
refused to go away as I continued to contemplate the life, times, triumphs and
tragedy of the black man. The greatest sin and tragedy of the Black man is the
sin of slavery and an offshoot today of that great sin is corruption. Slavery
destroyed the black man and corruption which I have likened to second slavery
will do the same if not worse.
I find it unfathomable and there are really no excuses that a man will
sell his brother for mirrors, gunpowder, walking sticks and a thousand useless
accessories he did not need and yet turn around and blame the buyer for buying
the things he offered for sale.
Afrocentric historians say it was the white man who offered to buy
human chattels and the black man merely obliged him, but even at that, slavery
is inexcusable and the black man continues to live in denial and in another
century the black man will continue to live in denial of what great damage
Slavery and now unfortunately corruption did to the black man. I have no doubt
though that if the transatlantic slave trade did not happen, the “black nation”
(term used loosely here) would have been a great nation as we speak.
Now there is no black nation properly so called. But whatever the
afrocentrics will have us believe, Slavery blackened the heart of black Africa
as it stained the conscience of America. The big question then is why will
America recognize this great blight in their collective conscience and history
whilst the black man continues to insist that he was hard done by by European
and American slave entrepreneurs?
One of my favourite Courts in Nigeria is the Badagry division of the
Lagos High Court and each time I go to that court is an opportunity for me to
relieve the past of the Black man because I will always as a matter of
conscience visit one of the derelict monuments of our shameful and ignominious
distant past which unfortunately corruption will not let us forget.
Do we even realize that corruption destroys every black man and all of
us as slavery did? And herein lies the nexus between Slavery and Corruption.
Slavery did the black man incalculable damage. Corruption will do far worse and
it is serious because I now understand that corruption is not only a systemic
phenomenon in the life of the average black man and especially in the biggest
black country on earth, Nigeria, but more unnerving is that it is a cultural
problem as we will see.
A great part of the culture of the black man is poverty and as many of
today’s black people believe that it is an injunctive biblical tenet that the
poor will always be among them then the culture of corruption continues. Come
to think of it, who will lift the majority of the black poor out of poverty if
they do not do it themselves for it is injunctive that whatever they do, they
will remain in their state of poverty if you believe the tyrannical
interpretation of scripture the unscrupulous propagates.
If they refuse this injunction and find the asymmetrical opposite (the
dialectically opposed) in a world they are told is the outside world, a world
they are taught is antithetic to the one they understand yet they find in that
other world the thing they always sought. They conquered poverty. A big deal!!
What if they juxtapose that world with what they have always known? The first
condition of humanity is after all survival as many have come to accept.
We often accept that corruption is an off shoot of poverty, whether
material or of the mind. But do not be so sure. There are a million poor people
who will never contemplate corruption. There are a million more whose
redemption is only corruption only if they had the opportunity. Corruption in
high places is sure insane but even though I will not condone it, I can
understand corruption in low places. Corruption by and amongst the poor and
deprived in Nigeria might not be a given but it is highly probable. Come to
think of it, notwithstanding poverty, a man must survive somehow!!
But can you fathom corruption in high places!! In the former, poverty
is a factor but in the latter poverty has no place but then we ought to realize
that something fuels this level of corruption and we ought to find what it is.
That being the case, you can then look but I urge you not to look amiss because
if you looked in the right place you will realize that what fuels corruption in
Nigeria, whether in low or high places is largely a cultural thing.
Many have found my train of thought disturbing but intriguing, some think
it is imaginative, some others yet believe it is a non thought, no idea is
original I have been told by many. Many think it is a radical and new thought
process on the ubiquitous problem of corruption in Nigeria. Whatever anyone
thinks, I can assure you that I understand it all. However I will not make up
your mind for you. But know today that there is no one I have met or who heard
my thesis on this point who denied that Culture is a way of life.
Culture very well is the way of life of a people and they are
accustomed to behave in particular set norms by convention, long usage,
tradition and the law. At this juncture it is imperative for us to understand
that morality is not culture and culture is not morality. A culture may be
refined or crude. It may be cultured or uncultured; yes culture can be either
of the two, culture may or may not edify, it may be fair and unfair, culture
according to anthropologists may be barbaric and primitive, advanced and
edifying, culture can be a whole lot more and it can be many things at one and
the same time and in the same place.
If culture is all this, who can now then deny that corruption in the
black man is a cultural problem? I will
expatiate this with the life of the white man. No one forces the white man to
do what he is not equipped for. In the life of the white man there is nothing
like a binding tradition. This is not to say that the white man has no
tradition but generally no one compels the white man to follow any tradition
which does not allow him the freedom of choice. But the black man must do what
his fathers did before him, the black man must do what his kinsmen do, the
black man must do what his brother does, the black man must not allow those of
his household and his neighbors’ to better him in anything!! Haba my people
will sooner kill and destroy the black man and yet they will wonder why their
black lawyer son is not like the white man’s lawyer son!!
It is a cultural problem because the white lawyer does not have to bury
his parents whether first, second and in many cases third burial, the white man
does not have to celebrate his age grade ascension, the white man does not have
to celebrate his child’s christening, the white man does not have to worry
about the sex of his children or even having children at all, the white man
does not have to worry about a million mundane things that holds down the black
man, fuel corruption and destroy him in this part of the world.
People wonder why the black man is poor. The black man is poor because
he carries too many extra baggages. The black man is poor because his culture
destroys him, the black man is poor because his culture does not demand
commitment to excellence, the black man is poor because he is a slave to
culture, the black man is poor because he will refuse to reform or out rightly
change his culture of waste. There is much to be admired in the culture of the
black man but then there is too much of his culture that destroys him.
The black man finally is not convinced that corruption does not pay. A
prime example of the black man, his leader and his country is Nigeria.
Corruption continues to thrive here because it is a cultural problem.
Corruption continues unabated here because Nigerian’s and their leaders
actually see and believe that corruption pays and they cannot see how
institutionalized corruption will ever end in their country and besides any one
whose fathers sold his brothers four hundred years ago without qualms cannot
and will never believe in the better angels of their nature as that Great American,
Abraham Lincoln advocated.
The bottom line, Nigerians and their leaders still do not believe that
corruption does not pay. Until they do so, this country will remain in the
perpetual throes of all the evils that will destroy it.
Stephen O. Obajaja Esq. is a Partner at the Lagos
Law Firm of Fountain Court Partners.
STEPHEN O. OBAJAJA
Fountain Court Partners
Block 36B, LSPDC Estate
Ogudu Road
Ojota – Lagos.
08052066172.
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