BINDING VALUES, PROSPEROUS NATION
Sonnie Ekwowusi argues the need to live our cultural values
As we continue to seek different ways of forging a national cohesion, a true brotherhood and fraternity so that commutative justice and peace may reign in our country, I think it is necessary to remind ourselves that political ties do not exist in vacuum, rather it is a fruit of years of shared communally-binding values and lived experiences. Somehow we have all become active participants in the blame-game. We trace everything that happens to us under the sun to the evil machination of someone or an institution. We blame the constitution for our woes. We blame the government. We blame corruption. We blame the judiciary. We blame the day we were born. We blame our neigbours. In fact our lives could be defined as lives characterised by litany of complaints and blames on why Nigeria is not working.
But what ultimately strengthens a nation and thus paves way for the much-vaunted prosperity is a cultural life made up of those little communally-binding ideals which informs and forms the superstructure of the character of an individual. Take yourself as an example. Most of the things which you do or refrain from doing are not necessarily the outcome of imposed rules or things that the government or the constitution or the law is forcing you to do or to refrain from doing. Your personal worth; your life’s goals and aspirations are largely informed by your interior values or those lofty community values which you had imbibed earlier in life. Although government deserves all the hard knocks for failing in its many duties, you do not need the government to fulfil your social, cultural, family and religious obligations. Democracy has not divested us of our duties and obligations as members of the society. You do not need the state to enact a law compelling you to cater for your children and members of your family. When you see a dying neigbour in desperate need of assistance your first impulse will not be to complain to the government: your first spontaneous reaction would be to look for urgent means of restoring the health of the dying person. In many Nigerian cultures, one person alone does not raise a child. The task of raising a child is that of every member of the community. Therefore we cannot forget who we are as a people.
Last week at the closing plenary of the Acton University Conference which took place at the prestigious De Vos Palace Convention Center, Grant Rapids, Michigan, United States, the plenary speaker did not fail to make this point. He stated that there is a limit to what can be achieved with empty political creeds or abstract thoughts or abstract constitution or abstract political party or political structure. Paraphrasing the French political scientist and historian Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859),
IT IS UNFORTUNATE THAT WE NOW HAVE IN NIGERIA A NEW POLITICAL FOLLOWERSHIP THAT CONDONES IMPROPRIETY OR KEEPS QUIET IN THE FACE OF EVIL
he stated that a country cannot escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed. Simply put, if we want to strengthen the political tie, we must first of all strengthen the moral tie because the latter is what gives rise to the former.
In his essay with the title, “Rationalism in Politics,” Michael Oakesshott, stresses that the first thing is not politics: the first thing is the cultural life, the lived experience made up of little values which forms the character of an individual and sustains the society. Quoting Oakesshott in her essay with the title, “A disposition of Delight,” Elizabeth Covey, assistant professor of political science in the Honors College at Baylor University, writes that when the religious and social tradition of the society withers, we are left “with nothing but a dry and gritty residue. Thus we have the spectacle of a set of sanctimonious, rationalist politicians, preaching an ideology of unselfishness and social service to a population in which they and their predecessors have done their best to destroy the only living root of moral behaviour”.
Therefore democracy is not synonymous with instant economic and political prosperity. In fact, countries that have reaped enormous dividend from democracy had worked out their democracy. An abstract democracy not sustained by the fundamental social tradition of the society is a recipe for disaster. It is unfortunate that we now have in Nigeria a new political followership that condones impropriety or keeps quiet in the face of evil. For example, if a political office holder from your village did not steal government money to erect a big house in the village all the villagers will taut him and laugh at him as a failure in politics. Certainly, a democracy that creates loopholes for flourishing corruption, fraud, kleptomania and graft cannot lead to human flourishing. A democracy bereft of communally-binding values and moral ties can kill in the same way a tyrannical military rule kills. According to Peter Kreeft, “if we think we are automatically free from the danger of ignorant prejudice and tyranny simply because we are a democracy, we should reflect on the fact that it was a democracy that killed Socrates....”
Although our political destiny can be said to be in our hands but I believe that we still have to work hard to work it out. And one of the ways of achieving that is to create a fine blend or a happy convergence between those communally-binding values which sustain society and public life. We cannot say that we want to make progress and at the same time exclude from our policy those cherished values that lead to human flourishing.