BY REV. FR. GERALD NWAFOR
What do we owe our society? It is a question everyone should answer differently. There are many rights, rules, obligations, and responsibilities we owe to one another. In the families, Umunna (clan), villages, towns, states, and country. From the microcosmic society to the mega, we have a duty towards one another.
When the duty is breached, we ask the question why? The solution is what would be the concern of the government to find a remedy and stop the repletion because ethics say that bad behavior should be discouraged and good behavior encouraged. Some social scientists would argue that discouragement is not enough for bad behavior; hence, they suggest punishment. And good behavior should not only be encouraged but also rewarded.Anyway, that is not the topic of today because we want to discuss our fiduciary duty to society and the expectations we have from the social contract and the contractors. I saw in the new Niger bridge (second Niger bridge) where hoodlums went and stole all the metals used to join the bridge together. I am not accusing anyone, but imagine if the bridge collapsed because of the vandalization.
Who knows who will be on the bridge on that day of reckoning? It may not be you, the perpetrators, but you have mothers, brothers, sisters, and fathers who are very dear to you; they may be on the bridge on the day of disaster. Therefore, you owe society a duty not to vandalize what was put for public use.
We all should be protecting it jealously as part of our social contract with the government.What would be the position of the people who got the dollar from the government and went to India to buy medicines for public use? You see, sometimes I tend to believe it when people say that it is the village people that caused the problem (Emelia ya eme?).
Those people who got the dollar from the government to import cement and medicine would come back and sell at the same price as the people who bought the dollar from the black market. Not only that they would be selling at a high rate, but some of them would import low-quality and fake medicine. The only place where the traders won in the fight to stop fake materials from coming into the country was the electric cable. Everyone would tell the builder to use the Nigerian wire because they have seen what the made-in-China wire did to peoples’ houses in the late 1990s and early 2000s. When houses catch fire in the middle of the night, or an extension wire explodes when you put an electric iron on it.
It was a big concern in the 90s, and the government and society fought back, and today it is less of a problem. The issue here is the social contract we have with the traders that got a government subsidy on dollar exchange and went ahead to breach the contract by importing fake medicine and selling it at a very high price as if they bought it at the same rate compared to the black-market buyer.
Where is their sense of decency and love? The story of a medicine importer whose brother took his malaria medicine and died comes to mind. I am a witness. I grew up in Nweje land and we had a lot of head bridge traders living in Dumomodi.The government. This book cannot contain this part of the story if we are to question the government on the social contract issues in Nigeria. From the president who promised us a safe landing from the previous administration headed by Buhari to this present administration headed by Tinubu. One thing I have come to discover about the Nigerian government and its people is the behavior of the people when the campaign is going on compared to what happens after the campaign. Whatever the government said that they would do during the campaign, that is the one they will not do when they get into power.
Buhari said that his government was coming solely to fight corruption in Nigeria. They succeeded in being the most corrupt government in the history of Nigeria. The people of Nigeria did not care much about the failures of Buhari but proceeded to put the same party into power through one yeye professor called Mahmood Yakubu.
They may argue that they did not vote for APC (All Progressive Congress), which I understand, but Yakubu himself is a Nigerian who saw the missteps and landmines of the Buhari administration yet went ahead to rig the election for APC. Anyway, that is not the topic of today. Tinubu said that he would alleviate the suffering of the people and that he would rebuild the economy.
Should I regurgitate what I have said before that whatever they promised is the one they will not do? The Nigerian economy has crashed under Tinubu, and the pain on the masses is six times what it was during the Buhari administration. Of all the promised social contracts by Tinubu, none has been kept.Finally, we owe our parents respect in this social contract. Our parents should try to send us to school even if it means not wearing Brazilian hairstyle, they should do it for the kids because it is part of the social contract.
The kids should not go to school and join cultism because it would be a breach of the social contract they signed with the parents and teachers. The teachers should be in school always to teach and not one leg at the shop she opened and one leg in the main market Onitsha, leaving the kids to wallow in ignorance in the classroom.
The government has a duty to fetch out those teachers who are not doing their job because of conflict of interest. Parents, remember to ask the kids to bring their school homework for you to see; even if you do not understand what they are writing, the fact that you want to see it can make a great change. Above all, please keep your social contract where you find yourself.
