I have to give it to my attractive visitor of the night: she showed me that I was still shockable. In Nigeria it is all too easy to become jaded and cynical—the moral and physical environment is so extreme.
You may jeer at these looters of the public treasury from a safe distance, call them names behind their back, possibly even envy them their wealth while despising them for the way they acquired it. But to stand nose to nose with one of these criminals while they boldly and unrepentantly confess their crime is quite another thing.
I went to the kitchen and brought two bottles of room temperature water. “One for you and one for me.”
“I don’t like water,” she said, “especially when it isn’t refrigerated. I am accustomed to more exotic drinks.”
“Too bad for you. Your wretched clansmen would give anything for a bottle of clean water everytime they are thirsty.”
“Mr. O.J., you’re not very nice.”
“I’m not obliged to be nice to a confessed thief.”
“I . . . I don’t believe my ears . . . surely you’re not trying to insult me.”
“You’re too low for insult!” I got up, took pen and paper (my trademark newsprint offcuts) and tossed them at her. “Now, write down ten things you think you ought to do with your stolen money.”
You could see on her countenance the battle raging in her soul. Finally she opted for civility. She came on this pilgrimage of her own volition.
“In the public interest?”
“In the public interest, of course. Your personal and private interests can be taken for granted. You will naturally take care of those. Your moral blindness is with regard to the public interest—your responsibilities as a member of a polity, however defined. That’s what all you public thieves lack—a sense of civic responsibility and civic pride. That’s why the white people laugh at us all the time.”
“And now the yellow people have begun laughing at us too.”
“Oh-ho, so you noticed? When you steal all that public money and hand over to them to keep for you, after they finish laughing and calling you all sorts of racist names they seriously wonder what makes you act like animals, like beasts of no nation. Everyone in those other places—even the thieves!—look out for the welfare of their nation. You Nigerian thieves are the only exception in all humanity.”
I was good and angry. And good for her she’d given up trying to sound clever and plucky. She took the pen and paper. She would scribble a bit, then hold the pen in her teeth for a long time like a school girl at an exam she didn’t study for; then she’d scribble some more.
“Let me see your list.”
“What I’ve written doesn’t make sense . . . . I don’t know what to do.”
“This is the value of history. A man named Yakubu Gowon had your same problem: too much money and didn’t know what to do with it.”
“Yes! Yes!” she screamed in great excitement. “And then he found exactly what to do! He built Great Lagos and all that’s in it! He built Kainji Dam, Aladja Steel, Ajaokuta Steel, the superhighways, the bridges at Makurdi, Jebba, Lokoja, Itu, Onitsha! But . . . but Gowon did it all. Now there’s nothing left to do . . . .”
“Most of those establishments are broken down,” I said. Decrepit. Moribund. Thirty years of neglect and non-maintenance. In any case, you think too big. When you think too big you get dizzy and discouraged by the magnitude of your dreams. And then you end up doing nothing. . . . Learn to think small. Think of your village, your local government, your state. Those are manageable units. You can accomplish a lot in those small spaces if you set your mind to it.”
“Like what? . . . Like . . .”
“Yes, say it, don’t be afraid . . .”
“Like . . . I could pave a hundred kilometers of roadway in my LGA.”
“Yes, go on. . . .”
“I could build a gas turbine electric generating plant to service my village and twenty neighboring villages, and train and employ 200 engineers, technicians and laborers.
“Yes . . . go on . . .”
“I could sink twenty boreholes to provide drinking water, filtered and treated and stored in underground and overhead tanks and piped throughout the nine villages and beyond.”
“There is nothing you cannot do!”
“I could build and equip ten hospitals and ten schools and maintain them for ten years.”
“Get to work! And what you cannot do by yourself, you will team up with your fellow looters—you know yourselves. You could rouse their patriotic and racial pride and make them men again.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“The people will crown you a Captain of Industry.”
“Thank you so much, sir.”
“All praise is due to the Almighty. Let only the errors be ours . . . .”
