The Havoc Of Simple-Mindedness

By Comrade Akido Agenro

Whereas policy makers, public commentators, opinion leaders and social crusaders from both within and outside the shores of this country have on a number of occasions lamented the low level of patriotic fervour, civil responsibility and ethical orientation among the population a vital issue and one with a more devastating consequences on the Nigerian society for that matter has either been deliberately ignored or overlooked. When the harmful effect of this negative attribute on the society is considered and compared with the evil from the aforementioned traits one discovers that the society has been concentrating its energy and resources on curing ringworm while allowing a life threatening malignant cancer to fester.

The level of simple-mindedness prevailing in Nigeria is such that should be of concern to all men and women of good conscience. The gale of violence sweeping across the length and breadth of the land can easily be traced to this social malady. This horrible state of affairs is an indictment on institutions and all agencies that have a stake in the nurturing of a responsible Nigerian citizen.

Simple-mindedness is an attitude or a state of mind whereby the individual accepts all the information at his disposal on the face value having not cultivated a critical mindset to subject all opinions and ideas to a logical evaluation and thorough scrutiny to divest the available information of embellishments, sentiment and deceit. The Microsoft Encarta Dictionary defines simple-mindedness as ‘[1] Lacking due thought: showing a lack of intelligence thinking or proper consideration, [2] unsophisticated: lacking guile or complexity’.

Care should be exercised not to confuse the term simple-minded with simple-hearted as the latter denotes honest, open and lacking deceit or deviousness. It goes without saying that deviousness and deceit are common features in the Nigerian society. It is also worthy of note that simple-mindedness along with shallow-mindedness, small-mindedness, weak-mindedness and mindlessness are mutually reinforcing concepts. Thus, anywhere one finds the manifestation of any of these negative attributes the others abound there also contributing to its entrenchment.

The Good Book in several chapters and numerous verses condemns very strongly the disposition of simple-mindedness. ‘For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them’ it admonishes in Proverb 1: 32-33 [NIV]; then hastens to take another swipe at simpletons, ‘A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps’ [Proverb 14:15 NIV]

In all climes various reports, news and other forms of communications are circulated on the public space- rumours, hearsay, sensationalism, gossip, trickery, half-truth even outright falsehood but it’s the unwary citizen who in their simplistic, naive and unsophisticated state of mind that swallow such tales hook line and sinker and worse still go around to peddle same homburg among their fellow simpletons.

Faith-based organizations are the major culprit in breeding people with the herd instinct, the legion of men and women whose attitude of one-way traffic reasoning as satirized by the afro beat king Fela in his 1976 bestseller, Zombie, reduced many youths in different parts of the world to tools in the hands of selfish politicians, tribal warlords, ethnic chauvinists and religious bigots. These pawns in the chessboard of power brokers bat no eyelid when they pull the sword to wreak havoc on the community.

Religious ideologies are dogmatic teachings that brook no iota of dissent while the Alfa and ‘Man of God’ entertains no question from adherents. Religious leaders take advantage of this dictatorial position to manipulate the people. The diabolical work of enemies, witchcraft, evil arrow, marine spirit, abiku and ogbanje are regular refrains in sermons, counselling and evangelism.

Take the case of the South African clergyman, Pastor Daniel Lesego of the Rabboni Centre who is fond of taking his congregants for a ride. At any point if they are not compelled to eat grass like goat, being trampled on like disused clothes then they will be engaged in one tomfoolery or the other.  Recently he served them petrol to drink in the false belief that it had been miraculously turned into pineapple juice.

It is undeniable that young people who have been brainwashed lose the mental capacity to reason and are thus rendered vulnerable to the exploitation of wolves in sheep’s clothing. The young men so hypnotized form the foot soldiers waging an unending war of terrorism, insurgency, tribal conflicts and countless other bloodletting crises threatening to rip various nations apart. Nigeria has had more than a fair share of this global plague not to be bothered by this phenomenon.   

Simple-minded people are easily fooled and for this reason frequently fall prey to the antics of the politician. At critical moments of elections the simple one trades his precious vote for a plate of porridge without qualms since he is ever so contented with the handout that trickles to him before an election which he values above the weighty issue of electing a candidate with a compassion for the common people and a burning desire for service to the community. In this instance, a capacity to faithfully preside over the commonwealth which ought to be the overriding consideration for voting an aspirant to public office is superseded by the greed for pre-election freebies, an anomaly now referred to in Nigeria as ‘stomach infrastructure’.

When politicians get involved in heated arguments during which they fire verbal and literal salvoes at each other, even condescending to the level of emphasizing ethnic and religious cleavages to attract sympathy when they have run out of tricks in their chicanery to outwit each other, they get desperate and the political contest gets messier. At this stage many among them are inclined to believe that exposing the weaknesses of their opponent is not potent enough to drag them down, it then behoves on a shrewd electorate to examine the issues at stake critically, carefully and dispassionately in order to take a safe position as to avoid getting caught in the crossfire that will ultimately result from the tension.

Unfortunately, the weak-minded make themselves canon fodders for their overambitious masters when the chips are down.

It hurts me so much whenever I find myself in a public forum and in the midst of simple-minded individuals who listen with rapt attention to the telltale that is reeled out by an enthusiastic storyteller encouraged by his naive audience. In my agony seeing the obvious falsehood being unashamedly peddled I’ve had to ask relevant questions that leave the talebearer fidgeting in an effort to rationalize the illogical assumption contained in his narrative. My agony is further exacerbated when graduates fall victims to barefaced deception, for as noted by M. Kirk, “The hallmark of a university trained mind is intelligence and unprejudiced skepticism”.

One serial in the melodrama of fooling the people played out recently in the aftermath of the collapse on 12 September of the Synagogue Church Of All Nations [SCOAN]’s guest house undergoing reconstruction in a Lagos suburb which resulted in the unfortunate death of at least 115 pilgrims. In his first official reaction on the tragic incident, the founder of the church, Prophet T.B. Joshua was to further shock a grieved world when he ascribed the collapse to the evil machination of the insurgent group operating in the North-East part of Nigeria, Boko Haram. This position was to change the following day when the guest house collapse was again attributed to the hovering of a military airplane, a Hercules -130 over the building. Pray, was this the only structure under construction in the neighbourhood at the time the ‘military aircraft’ flew across the area?

In all of the theories hurriedly formulated to explain away the possible cause of that disaster, the fact that the structural integrity of the building was unduly compromised by the alteration of the original plan of the guest house from the initial two-storey structure to six was not considered an issue worthy of mention. The intention as always was to hoodwink the people by devising a strategy to shield the truth from the prying eyes of a curious public. The less discernible gets fooled.

There was also this rumour that made the rounds in South-South Nigeria spun by detractors of the governor of Delta State shortly after the 2011 election. According to the opposition spin doctors, Governor  Emmanuel Uduaghan was caught in London with Ghana-must-go bags packed with millions of dollars but escaped arrest and prosecution by cleverly explaining that the cargo of cash was meant for the purchase of high calibre buses and that it was by sheer accident of fate arising from this incident that the oil-producing state acquired those vehicles that now make for improved intra-city transportation in the state and by no means a deliberate programme to alleviate the transport difficulty faced by the masses.

It was rather unfortunate that nobody among the desperadoes who glibly spearheaded the spread of this malicious rumour nor anyone among the multitude that gleefully bought it would remember that an undeclared amount found on a traveller above the stipulated basic travel allowance [BTA] is an offence punishable by law and that huge cash found on an individual amounts to money laundering which attracts severe penalty in international law.

For those dyed-in-the-wool rumour mongers who have held tenaciously to this obvious speculation since the past three years in their usual obstinate if-not-absolutely-true-it-must-have-an-element-of-truth disposition the national embarrassment that Nigeria has suffered over the $9.3m [N1.5bn] seized from two Nigerians and an Israeli on 5 September at Lanseria Airport, Johannesburg which the trio claimed was meant for the purchase of arms for security agencies in Nigeria has exposed their folly.

Anyone with an elementary knowledge of transactions in international trade understands that its method of payment is more complex than what obtains at Jankara Market in Lagos where cash and commodity change hands at the point of sale as it requires foreign exchange remittances hence the involvement of commercial and the apex banks in its process.         

Most of the information emanating from the desk of Nigerian politicians is sheer propaganda; biased opinions that are aimed at gaining the sympathy of the public. Politicians, true to the term are insincere people. Ever so acrimonious; treasury, manoeuvring and vendetta are their stock in trade.   Unstable as the weather, sheepish and myopic the simple-minded are pushed hither and thither, here and there like an empty shaft that is blown by the wind.

The simple are often confused and get fooled by the myriad of ideology, philosophy, propaganda and misinformation circulated in the media. When the terrorism and insurgency challenges are factored into the propaganda conundrum the effect of indoctrination on the society is better imagined than experienced. It takes the development of a mind-set with a capacity to thoroughly evaluate issues and sieve every view on the screen of truth for the individual to withstand the torrent of information directed at his person in this age of information and communication technology [ICT].

Only nations that have managed to tame the monster of simple-mindedness through a policy of a relentless pursuit of the institutionalization of independent-mind in the polity have enjoyed relative peace. To mitigate the high incidents of violence arising from the rebellious attitude prevalent in Nigeria in addition to evolving a robust, thoroughbred and wholesome democratic experiment the inculcation of independent-mindedness in the populace is imperative.

This policy should be vigorously pursued both at the home front and at all levels of education in Nigeria. Above all, the school curriculum should be tailored not just to the material wellbeing of the person but to raise thinking, self-confident and highly inquisitive citizens.