The culture of bequeathing National Honors and or
Awards to deserving individuals who have contributed in one way or the other
towards uplifting the circumstances of any country is a practice that dates
back thousands of years.
The practice serves
two primary functions, firstly to appreciate such individuals for their
dedication, industry, service or whatsoever contributions they might have made
to the society’s development; secondly, and equally important, to serve as
motivation to others to strive to the extreme of their abilities, to be equally
recognized and honored by the larger society.
Under ideal
circumstances, the screening and selection processes of individuals who get
nominated to receive national awards coupled with the accomplishments,
integrity and contributions to societal advancement of selected awardees serve
to enhance the stature of National Awards. The national Awards ceremony itself
acquires a larger-than-life image as it is often a determining factor to gauge
the direction towards which a society wants its youth (and invariably, its
future) to be attuned.
Here in Nigeria, the
annual ritual has come again and a date has been set when the Nigerian State
has earmarked to dish out national honors to persons deemed to have contributed
to Nigeria’s development. An event will be organized in a venue decked out with
spectacular decorations at costs best left unstated (for a certainty, new
millionaires have been created, and invariably prospective national honor awardees/honorees,
from contracts awarded in relation to the events).
The awardees/honorees
themselves will storm the venue, attired in a cacophony of colors and bedecked
in all manner of jewelry and some adorned with the plumes from species of
endangered birds. Platoons of operatives of security agencies will serve to
cordon off the venue of the ‘national awards’ from the very Nigerians who ought
to be ‘celebrating’ persons who have so contributed to our nation’s
development. All manners of praise singers, hanger on and alms seekers will
form an outer ring of perfidy around the venue of the national awards ceremony.
Though the criteria
for dishing out national awards seem known only to a select few Nigeria (it is
highly doubtful if any such objective criteria exists), from the list of
awardees in the past few years, it is discernible that attainment of certain
political offices and positions in the civil service, automatically guarantees
a national honor. The Offices so entitled to automatic national honors include:
President of the Federal Republic and his Vice, State Governors and their
deputies, Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Chief
Justice of the Federation and Justices of the Supreme Court, President of the
Court of Appeal, Chairman of the ruling political party, Secretary to the
Government of the Federation, Service Chiefs and heads of para-military and
security agencies, Permanent Secretaries of Federal Ministries, and a couple of
other choice positions. Becoming a Chief Executives Officer or Board Chairman
of firms which are able to secure juicy contracts with government also
guarantees one a national honor. It is however instructive to note that the
national honors are dished out irrespective of how some of these characters
attained the various offices which ‘guarantees’ them a national honor.
We are thus faced
with the unsavory situation where for instance, persons who shot their ways to
becoming Heads of States, via coup d’état, or violently rigged the electoral
process to become President of the Federation or Senate President or any other
such political offices get these awards. Also given awards under our blanket
system of honoring offices attained, as opposed to actual contribution made to
national development, are persons who preside over security outfits that have
attained global notoriety for extra-judicial killings and extorting the very
citizens they are set up to protect, Senior civil servants who despite their
modest salaries and emoluments are able to live the lifestyles of drug barons
by corruptly enriching themselves from public coffers and executives of
contracting firms whose main modus operandi and sole secret of success is bribe
giving and blackmail. The Nigerian system chooses to close its eyes to the fact
that if the coup plotter, election rigger, incompetent security chief, corrupt
civil servant and mafia-like business mogul had been adequately prosecuted for
their heinous crimes, such characters ought rightly be serving lengthy prison
sentences or probably awaiting execution and certainly not fouling our national
ethic with their incongruous presence.
Without any
inhibitions whatsoever, officials of the Nigerian State publish to the
international community, the list of personalities slated for national awards
each year. The calamity of our situation is that when the list of candidates
for the award of Nigerian national awards is juxtaposed with watch-lists of
Nigerians at the disposal of international security organizations, such as the
INTERPOL, Federal Bureau of Investigation (United States of America), the M16
(United Kingdom, Mossad (Israel) and other such bodies spread across the globe,
for such crimes as Money Laundering and associated racketeering activities,
there is a near perfect match. The prime immediate consequence of the
publication of the list of persons to receive Nigerian national awards is the
extra scrutiny and more thorough search of hapless Nigerians travelling through
international border posts in Europe and the Americas – the logic, if your
country honors and awards persons we have on our list as money-launders, drug
traffickers and members of various international organized crime syndicates,
‘ordinary’ Nigerians need more thorough checks!.
Greater damage is
impacted on our national psyche and sensibilities by the award of national
honors to persons who least deserve such. The worst hit by these unfortunate
misplacement of honors are our youths – the most impressionable segment of our
population. As our various media houses (print and electronic) celebrate the
award of national honors to these persons of unwholesome characters, our
children and youth look on in perplexed amazement and bewilderment as they
observe the celebration of vice and criminality. At the various places of worship
and in their schools, these impressionable youths are taught that stealing and
corruption are vices that should be avoided and yet they are graphically
confronted with a nation celebrating the people who have stolen the most and
benefitted the most from corruption.
In Nigeria, we seem
to have perfected a penchant to transform virtue to vice, positive practices to
negative nuisance, and the credible into the incredulous.
Apparently aware of
the dilemma of its double-speak, the Federal Government has of recent embarked
on rather desperate efforts to attract credibility to its national awards
festivities and thus erase the fact that as it stands presently, the awards
ceremonies engender and promote criminality and corrupt practices. The Nigerian
State went out of its way to seek to ‘bestow’ ‘national awards’ on persons of
renowned accomplishments and integrity to dilute the stench emanating from the
bulk of the awardees. Unfortunately for our rulers, their overtures to bestow
‘honor awards’ on such personalities as the now late Chinua Achebe, former U.S.
Presidents Clinton and others were rebuffed.
Whilst going through
the list of recipients of national awards for the year 2011 as published by a
national newspaper, a youth who had been glancing over my shoulders to read the
tabloid exclaimed: ‘Sir, that man on that list was nearly lynched in our
community for diverting resources meant for the community to his personal use,
I believe C.F.R. under which his name appears must mean Criminal of the Federal
Republic”. His friend who had been standing idly by chipped in:” Then going by
the class of its recipients, G.C.O.N. must mean Grand Criminal of the Order of
the Niger” I could not help but inquire as to what the supposedly highest
national honor in Nigeria meant, the G.C.F.R! The youths replied in unison,
“Ahhhhhhhhh, he is the ababa nna of them all - “Grand Criminal of the Federal
Republic”.
@#*
Picture: Nigeria's
President Goodluck Jonathan decorates 'businessman' and acclaimed 'richest man
in Africa', Aliko Dangote with the 'GCON'
No comments:
Post a Comment