“I have just received a letter from the headmaster of a school in England,” he (the headmaster) said and held up a blue letter for all to see. “The content of this letter has filled me with shame.” He…spoke… about Ezekiel’s crime.
“Think of the bad name you have given this school,” he said, turning to Ezekiel and the five boys; they were all looking at the floor. “Think of the bad name you have given Nigeria, your motherland…Think how the school in England will always remember Nigeria as a country of liars and thieves because of these six scallywags here.”
Some of the pupils laughed because of the new word, scallywag.
‘Yes, they are scallywags,” said the headmaster, “and they have spoilt your name in England. Some of you will go to study in England when you grow up. What do you think will happen there? I will tell you. As soon as you open your mouth and say you come from Nigeria everybody will hold fast to his purse. Is that a good thing?” The whole school shouted ‘No, sir!”
‘That is what these nincompoops here have done to you.” There was laughter again at nincompoops, another stranger word.
Ezekiel’s “crime” in Chinua Achebe’s Chike and the River was that he wrote to three pen friends in England imploring them to send money, shoes and camera; he promised each a leopard’s skin in return. When one of his “friends” was conned, the rest of Ezekiel’s gang quickly obtained addresses of other pen friends in England and rushed off similar letters to them.
Though the headmaster punished Ezekiel and his gang for their chicanery, their infamy made them popular. They subsequently earned new names like “scallywag,” “nincompoop,” and even “scally-beggar.” In a plot twist, Ezekiel’s mother –who approved of her son’s enterprise- went to the headmaster’s house later that day to rain insults on him.
Reading this story as a child, I was moved by the moralisation.
As an adult, however, I am more cynical. For those who will like to dismiss this as “just a story,” let me say Achebe was a realist and the canvas of his fiction was imbued with prevailing social issues. If it were unthinkable that Nigerians in the mid-1960s were already engaged in what is now labelled “Yahoo Yahoo” or internet scam — for which Nigeria is now globally infamous — he would not have written it.
While the ubiquity of the internet has helped popularise this industry — such that most analyses blame it on the negative sides of the Internet age — the tale of Ezekiel and his gang posits that “Yahoo Yahoo” only adapted itself to a current technological advancement.
I was freshly drawn to Ezekiel’s escapade when last week, a US Republican Senator, Texan, Tea Party and Southern-Strategy heavyweight, Ted Cruz, uttered a sardonic comment about “Nigerian scammers.” A casual (and perhaps racist) joke meant to tar President Barack Obama’s erratic Obamacare website ended up impugning Nigeria.
Nigerians, typically, kicked against the slur.
The Nigerian ambassador to the US, Ade Adefuye, demanded an apology from Cruz; on MoveOn.org, some US-based Nigerians started a petition, while some other folks called Cruz’s office and made a similar demand. Cowed though unbowed, Cruz issued a half-hearted apology.
The Cruz insult made me return to Ezekiel’s tale which parallels contemporary Nigeria. Like most of Achebe’s fiction, this story foretold the present embarrassment Nigerians suffer over “Yahoo Yahoo” culture. The world is never shy to express such sentiments either in their popular culture or in interactions with Nigerians.
In response, we point out that the scammers are only a minority and do not represent us. We yell out loud even though in our hearts, we know the issue is not that the world fastens its purse when they hear “Nigeria” but that we wreak far much damage on our own selves.
That is why Ezekiel’s tale is striking, and should be explored as a parable and a paradigm.
When we were kids, we read books like Chike and the River that told us not to behave like Ezekiel. Children who do will come to a sticky end; they will never amount to anything; they will be the shame of their parents, etc. We therefore developed an anti-Ezekiel value system only to grow up and find that his likes have made it to the top echelons of leadership in Nigeria. Over the years, nincompoops and scallywags have become presidents, governors, ministers, lawmakers, professors, businessmen and CEOs of banking institutions, etc.
These elements have consistently ruined Nigeria, and worse, they no longer look down in shame –like Ezekiel and his gang — when they are being chastised. They stand tall — eyes dartingly daring others — and walk with their heads high. Whether your name is Stella or Farouk, if you are accused of corruption, you know better than endure the headmaster’s rant and cane.
The rot goes deeper. We see a situation where those who condemn Ezekiel’s mother in the story often fail to see how they recreate her in reality. When any nincompoop is accused of corruption in Nigeria, you can always trust that an ethnic militia will rise up to defend it. We live in a society where most people are so disconnected from the state that they resort to deriving a vicarious joy when a member of their tribe makes it to a public office. When their child steals a part of public wealth, they are elevated to hero(ines) of sorts. It gratifies the tribe’s corrupt minds because, psychologically, they might as well have been the ones who had done the stealing! To move against this corrupt official is to oppose the tribe who will take your moral intervention for meddlesomeness.
The cycle keeps getting perpetrated when the amount of political might and relevance your tribe has in the body politic is directly proportional to the number of your corrupt children that walk free.
That is why when another nincompoop or scallywag is identified in Nigeria, they quickly pull out the tiwa-n-tiwaethnic card and it almost always works. Yes, read it all in Chike and the River. No be today Nigeria begin spoil!