Thread by @Chxta

“We have seen your type before, and they all fizzled out. Let’s see how long you will last.”

That's what someone told @DavidHundeyin as recounted in his @BusinessDayNg column today: bit.ly/3JZzB0N

That thing cut my soul because it is true...

For all the flak that the Nigerian media gets, people tend to forget one crucial fact: they are products of their environment, working within that same environment.

Only a very few people in this life have the fortitude of Job.

The overwhelming majority of humanity, including me these days, would make the required compromise to just keep things moving.

One problem we have in #Nigeria is that we never interrogate these things. We must ask, "why"?

I don't have the answers, but I have guesses: the system in a country like ours has been designed to keep most of us locked into the basic portion of Maslow's hierarchy.

Of the much vaunted 200 million Nigerians, e no reach 10k wey don escape basic needs, even in the elite!

Let me tell 2 stories: a few years ago, a friend's father had a stroke. Retired old man, so all of us around the circle had to begin to pitch in. The drugs and care were brutally expensive, but you just have to keep bringing when your enyi asks that you bring.

No choice really.

Think of it this way: u and this person have been thru shit together, and you will be thru shit in future. Since you met this person, the person has always been there for you, now the person's father needs care. You HAVE to contribute regardless of what it's doing to your pocket.

At a point on a hospital visit, I had uncharitable thoughts towards the old man as I was literally seeing myself and my kids being dragged into poverty, but I knew that I had to keep helping because his child is a huge part of my support system, and this is where #Nigeria fails.

Just after I had been forced to take a second month's salary advance from @sbmintelligence, and then a loan from @Texazzpete, someone approached me with one unethical runs (I have to stress that it wasn't criminal), so I closed my eyes, facilitated the deal, and got paid.

The money that I was so ashamed to take helped pay for my guy's father's treatment, and get this: he has not fully recovered till today, five years after.

Let me tell the second story...

In 2021 a friend was kidnapped. In his house, in Abuja. His distraught wife played a recording of the call for us which made its way around our small WhatsApp group.

I still remember his screams as they tortured him in order to make his wife compliant to their ₦50m demand.

Of course after that greatest hits, even the most callous of us did not have the heart to tell the babe to continue pricing her husband, our guy.

No, we began to rally around, empty accounts, blackmail all blackmailables, to raise the money. Eventually, he was released.

Now, consider if he was a journo (as an example) and the price of his release was to kill a story he was working on.

How many people in Buhari's #Nigeria won't pay such a price willingly? Is there an upside to not paying?

Do you think ransom money is the only price of kidnap?

Back to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and these 2 stories fall within our basic needs. The majority of the things that fuel corruption in #Nigeria fall within those basics.

Almost all Nigerians (except govt appointees) are one major health emergency (or kidnap) from poverty.

I must make an exception for those who don't have a conscience, but how many of us don't?

Can you tell your wife that you don't have money if her father is admitted to the hospital?

Can you tell your husband that you don't have money if his mother is kidnapped?

This is where #Nigeria's state failure becomes a vicious cycle that continues to entrap us.

There will always be those people who won't compromise, remember @nicholasibekwe refusing TB Joshua's inducements while his colleagues all got in on the action? bit.ly/3C9fyLF

Let me end this thread by stressing, since you people deliberately like to misunderstand nuance, I am not justifying bad behaviour.

In the Bell Curve of life, the vast majority of people, Nigerians included, are in the middle. We just want to be left alone.

So as that intrepid person eloquently told David, "we have seen your type, you will fizzle out."

The question is HOW do we build a society that shifts the middle of the Bell Curve so that fewer moral people fizzle out?

To me, the answer is (again) in what we truly reward.