"The Trouble With Us"

 I went book shopping this weekend, looking to find a specific something I need; I ended up as always looking in other directions! Among the books I came away with is Chinua Achebe’s “The Trouble with Nigeria”. 

It’s a little book of some 63 pages which I read in 2 hours once I got home. The book was published in 1983 and though it speaks of Nigeria at that time and before, I felt I was reading about my own country. As I read I kept thinking the book should have been titled “The trouble with Us”.

The book is an admonition and a call to action. It’s about all the things “wrong” with our society. There’s a reminder to the middle classes and so-called educated about their complicity in nation-wrecking and responsibility for nation salvaging. It’s also a reminder that there’s still hope and points to lessons yet to be learned. Achebe puts the blame “simply and squarely” on the failure of leadership and while I agree that there’s much to say about leadership and its failures, I cannot help a strong feeling that we all share in that blame.

It would be nice to know what Achebe thinks today, about the things he speaks about in the chapters of his book - Corruption, Tribalism, Indiscipline, False image of Ourselves, Leadership, Social Injustice and the Cult of Mediocrity ... - and their toll on Nigeria (by 1983). 

I am even more interested to know about our own assessment of whether our lessons have been learned and whether indeed we even identify with Achebe’s picture of Nigeria almost 30 years back!

But while I wait, I thought I would point the book to anyone who would like to read it, especially everyone. Alternatively read a review and still read the book anyway!

Let me whet the appetite with some bits from the book;

“... national habits are a different matter; we resign ourselves to them at our peril” –page 2

“why do the good among us seem so helpless while the worst are full of vile energy?” - page 2

“... I believe that although our condition is critical, and getting worse by the day, we still do have a majority, albeit dormant, of self-controlled citizens” – page 28

“as we were driving through Ankwa we heard a siren and performed the appropriate motions of mild panic and pulled up. Three police vehicles- a jeep, a car and a lorry sped by in the opposite direction. From the side of the lorry a policeman was pissing on to the road and the halted traffic.” – page 35 

‘one of the penalties of exalted power is loneliness. Harnessed to the trappings of protocol and blockaded by a buffer of grinning courtiers and sycophants, even a good and intelligent leader will gradually begin to forget what the real world looks like” – page 37

“we have been “blessed” with a succession of leaders who are said to possess impeccable personal integrity but unfortunately are surrounded by sharks and crooks. ...it has always seemed to me that the test of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised” – page 42

“..you have told us that you want our votes so that you can serve us. If we get killed while you are getting the vote, who then will you serve?” – page 51

“in the specific matter of elections we have deprived ourselves of our potential power over politicians by falling prey to ethnicity and other divisive bogeys they conjure up and harness to their band-wagon”- page 52

“while the electorate is thus emasculated by such instigated divisions, the politician will link up even with his tribal enemy once they get to the legislature ...... Witness the marvelous cooperation with which our National Assembly took over accommodation provided for civil servants on Victoria Island; how quickly they pass bills to increase their emoluments, ...”- page 52

Ring any bells?