1

Not long ago, a news report showed Nigerian children writ­ing the West African Senior School Certificate Examina­tion, WASSCE late into the night with nothing but candles and torchlight. For many, it was just another story. For me, it was a mirror into Nigeria’s future, 20 to 30 years ahead. Because what enters into the minds of children shapes the society they grow into. And if darkness and struggle are normalised today, then hardship and mediocrity will be normalised tomorrow.

In most societies, that image alone, children studying by candlelight, would be enough to shake a nation, to trigger re­forms, to provoke outrage. But in Nigeria, it barely caused a ripple. Why? Because we have developed what I call a cultural taste for poverty.

You wonder why senators and gover­nors appear hardened, behaving like tin gods, forgetting the mandate of their posi­tions and lacking empathy for the poor? It is because they too were raised in an envi­ronment where suffering was normalised. “If it was normal for me to hold position, then why shouldn’t it be normal for you to suffer? God will do your own.” That is the silent philosophy guiding much of our leadership and even our everyday lives.

Look around and you would see it ev­erywhere. A power outage lasting days is met with resignation. And when electrici­ty is suddenly restored, people shout, “Up NEPA!” as though electricity supply for a few hours is a gift, not a right. When supply stays on for 10 hours straight, we marvel, “They are really trying!” Trying to supply us with darkness? This is how low the bar has been set.

The same applies to governance. A sen­ator facilitates a project, funded not by his sweat but by taxpayers’ money and suddenly his name is plastered across the project as if it were a personal favour. We cheer, we clap and we thank him. Yet the truth is this, he has only carried out a duty for which he was elected. Nothing more.

This culture of lowered expectations has crept into every corner of our nation­al life. We celebrate the bare minimum. We glorify survival over prosperity. We see the worst of situations and call it normal. And so we remain stuck.

Nigerians have accepted incompetence as the order of the day. Leaders fail woe­fully at their duties, yet rather than hold them accountable, we explain away their failure, “What if he didn’t do it?”, “At least he is better than the last one.” It is this resignation that emboldens mediocrity. Any rogue can ride roughshod over us, loot resources, neglect the people and still find admirers who clap for him just for occupying office.

Bad leadership no longer shocks us; it has been normalised into the nation­al psyche. We endure obnoxious taxes, infrastructure decay and high price for fuel in an oil-rich nation. We buy trans­formers, energise it for distribution com­panies to charge us; we pay for services never rendered; we live in insecurity and yet the collective outrage is weak. Many have quietly accepted this cultural taste of poverty as a way of life. We no longer expect excellence; we no longer demand accountability and so we are governed by the worst among us.

But Nigeria cannot continue this way. We must rise above this culture of poverty and mediocrity. We must refuse to nor­malise suffering and incompetence. We must begin to demand more, not just from those who govern us, but from ourselves as citizens. A nation is built not by what it tolerates, but by what it refuses to accept. Until we cultivate a taste for excellence, empathy and prosperity, Nigeria will con­tinue to recycle the same failures. But the day we reset our values is the day Nigeria begins to rise.

• DaSilva, a media professional and publisher, writes via [email protected]