By Darasimi Oshodi
In my last post, I started giving reasons why I think Nigeria is a case study in absurdity. The first reason I gave was the way our politicians change parties without caution. They even seem to get a kick out of their actions. I cited the examples of Nuhu Ribadu, Atiku Abubakar, Femi Fani-Kayode, Rotimi Amaechi and many others. I mentioned the governor of Ondo State, Olusegun Mimiko and likened him to Nicolas Anelka due to the way he has been hopping from one party to another. And to justify this name I gave him, the governor last week decamped again. He has returned to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In a related development, former governor of Plateau State, Joshua Dariye has revealed he is also returning to PDP. With the rate at which defections are taking place now in Nigeria, it seems the political transfer window is now open and the political clubs with the biggest offers are likely to sign on new players for the 2015 political season. Didn’t our president go for medicals in Germany recently? I am not insinuating that he wants to transfer to another political club but maybe his current club wants to be sure of his fitness in order to avoid a very costly mistake it made some seasons, sorry, years, ago when it fielded an obviously physically unfit person as its presidential candidate.
In this post I will be exemplifying another phenomenon which makes our country a case study in absurdity. A senior friend had suggested that instead of ‘absurdity’ in the title of the last post I should have used ‘wrong norm’. His argument was that I can only call a situation ‘absurd’ if I can provide counterfactual evidences. He posited that what we have in Nigeria is the acceptance of wrong norms. That is, we have come to acknowledge the wrong norms as right. So anyone who attempts to observe the right norms will be seen as the abnormal person. But I am sticking to ‘absurd’ in the title of this post because it’s a continuation of the last post. So my second reason for saying Nigeria is a case study in absurdity is because in Nigeria we celebrate questionable characters, corruption and criminality. I present below instances to substantiate my assertion. Continue reading “Stealing Is Not Corruption: Why Nigeria Is a Case Study in Absurdity (Part Two)”
