By Emeka Alex Duru
(08054103327, nwaukpala@yahoo.com)
The moment the story of Mmesoma Ejikeme, the 19-year-old student who admitted inflating her Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) score from 249 to 362 broke, something pointed to the dangers of the matter drawing out ethnic warlords for intense muscle-flexing. It eventually did, especially between commentators from the Yoruba South West and their Igbo South East counterparts. It rekindled latent rivalries and in the process, the meat of the story was lost and the inherent lessons, buried in unnecessary recriminations.
The facts of Mmesoma’s misdeeds have been established, going by her admission of guilt and therefore do not need recap. The challenges the action poses, are however, what should bother us, more. One thing is clear; the forgery incident, remains condemnable by any fair-minded person. It is one occurrence that has again, thrown up the country to international attention for the wrong reason.
Coming from a youth, one of the touted leaders of tomorrow, gives more cause for concern. This is an aspect of the story that should worry us more. But that was not it. Rather, the incident regurgitated bottled up hostilities between the intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals from the East and West. The objects of the disputation were Professor Ishaq Oloyede, Registrar/Chief executive Officer, of JAMB, a Yoruba and Mmesoma, an Igbo. That was all that ethnic bigots needed to enter the fray and divert the tone and substance of the debate to the traditional “us and them” encounter.
For no reasons other than to cause disaffection between the hard-working Igbo and their peace-loving Yoruba hosts, the phantom assertion of the Lagos being ‘no man’s land’, was exhumed and fired upon. What saved the day was Mmesoma, eventually owing up to her mistakes. That, considerably lessened the rising tension. But the lessons of the incident were lost.
The Mmesoma affair is not a strange development here. It is rather a reflection of the system and the extent the society has depreciated. I grew up under a grandmother, who on noticing any strange behaviour in any of us, would go to any length to establish what must have come over the person. Then, there was culture; there were values; there were role models. You dared not return to the house with an item not belonging to you.
Outside the house, as a Catholic of the village order, the teaching was that any sin, no matter how infinitesimal, had corresponding punishment. Lying over such a simple matter as claiming to be early in church while you knew you were late, we were told, was enough to land one in Purgatory – a place traditional Catholics believed was created for those with minor sins to stay for atonement of their failings before entering paradise. Atonement of sins in purgatory was not light or funny. There was an instance of a particular big iroko tree, near the village church that we were taught that one in Purgatory would be handed a razor blade to cut down, no matter the number of years it took him, as condition for entering the paradise. Of course, the thought of hell fire was out of it and better not imagined. Such examples were quite frightening but went a long way in modelling our thoughts and actions.
But those days seem to have gone. It is now a matter of getting it at all cost. To lift the title of Major Debo Bashorun’s insightful book on the workings of the erstwhile General Ibrahim Babangida’s administration, what we now have is a system that advertises ‘honour for sale’. We were here in the lead-up to the February 25 presidential election, when a standard bearer of a major political party sniggered that power is not served in the kitchen but to be grabbed and run away with. Many initially did not give much meaning to the nauseating remarks till the election day and subsequent actions that confirmed that the poll had been manipulated. Beneficiaries of the rigged election and their enhancers, are currently prancing about, flaunting their tainted mandate in audacious manner.
At our various leadership positions at state and federal levels, either in the executive, legislature and even judiciary, are leaders with forged or padded certificates and credentials. They make the laws, interpret the laws and execute the laws. The society knows and condones them. At family levels, they are celebrated as the whiz kids. The society reserves the highest titles for them. In the Church and Mosque, they occupy the front rows.
These are the people the younger ones like Mmesoma look up to and emulate. She must have acted on the philosophy of Niccolo Machiavelli, a 16th century Italian diplomat, that any man who tries to be good all time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. In local parlance, it is expressed in ‘if you can’t beat them join them’. But she failed it, no doubt. No society succeeds on that trajectory.
We may condemn Mmesoma till eternity but until we take a conscious look at the mirror and tell ourselves how ugly we are, we cannot begin to work towards remedying the situation. There is compelling need for ethical cleansing in Nigeria. Various leaders at the government houses at state and federal level, do not deserve the title of His/Her Excellency attached to their offices. Those in the parliament who claim to be Honourables (whatever that means in a presidential system), know that they are living in denial. They do not have honour. There is no how a leader who parades a forged certificate or any credential not belonging to him/her can in all honesty, stand up to preach moral rectitude to the youths.
Labour Party (LP) Presidential candidate, Peter Obi, was right that one cannot sincerely assume the title of His Excellency, on rigged mandate or tainted credentials. Until the characters masquerading under such shadows are named and shamed, the younger ones will continue to interpret fraud from the angle of smartness. Mmesoma is today the culprit, a fall girl of sort. There are others incubating more devious acts. We must identify and stop them in their tracks before the society loses it all.
*DURU Is the Editor, TheNiche Newspapers, Lagos