I better pass my neighbour is a parlance derived from the nickname of perhaps the smallest generator to be found in the corridors of many Nigerians, homes, business premises and so on. It is best described as a profound innovation of the makers to bring closer to the poor Nigerian masses an affordable generator to help power their electrical appliances occasioned by the incessant power outages. These outages have become a part of the Nigerian life caused of course by the years of locust of corruption inherent in the leadership structure of the most populous black nation in the world. A nation that boasts seeming unending wells of oil and gas that have become more of a curse than blessing to the Nigerian masses. The non-availability of the oil as a blessing is in no small measure a result of this syndrome; “I better pass my neighbour”, which literally means, I am better than my neighbour.
So unfortunate is this syndrome within our body polity that it has permeated through the fabric of our national existence, every rung of the socio-political-economic strata is echoed with the syndrome of trying to outdo one another within the confines of what is available for everyone.
On the political front, it is a known fact that none of those trying to demonise the other is innocent of this syndrome; they have only perfected the art of making more noise than the other. The states and local governments aided by the docility and impunity of the Federal Government, have all concluded in their mind to engage in Olympian competition of outdoing one another in the areas of corruption, nepotism and all the societal vices which they have unfortunately turned into values. The younger generation has been bitten by the syndrome such that there is a possibility of a worse coming generation than the current one since the older generation keeps showing the stuff is made of to the younger ones. It is difficult to detach the young persons of Nigeria from the cankerworm of the present leadership in our nation.
On campuses, students have veered from academic pursuits to a steep race of attaining the million dollar target through various and shameful nefarious activities including fraud and in some developing cases, rituals. The moral burden has been lifted off the shoulders of the younger generation with the glaring and imperious impunity of the dying generation of leaders who have held the nation by the jugular since independence. While these have not shown any hope of dying yet, they have begun to inject their scions into the system and like they say in our local parlance, the offspring of the tiger can only resemble the tiger no more, no less.
The “I better pass my neighbour” syndrome is responsible for the maddening acquisition of property which are glittering to the eyes and make their world a beautiful vanity, where they have money they cannot spend at home and in showing they are better than their neighbours, have to be flown abroad if at the mere threat of a rubber bullet or teargas? The same syndrome responsible for a civil servant to acquire so much that upon his death before retirement even the family members are not aware of what he owned; the same syndrome that pushes a traffic police officer to demand bribe in dollars or the one that makes an otherwise respected member of the legislature to be caught on camera demanding bribes in a foreign currency. The same syndrome that makes a man seek for office and will rather die than allow some other person take the seat popularly known around here as second term agenda.
It is a syndrome that keeps a man as the godfather of a people and milk them dry while his family members remain members of the politburo.
The “I better pass may neighbour” syndrome is responsible for the lack of vision in our land, such that those who have been patients in hospitals abroad and perhaps rose from the dead in foreign land cannot or have not deemed it fit to help set up the kind of facility that assisted in the Lazarus miracle; it is a syndrome that allows a system budget the sum of N77bn for the running of the governor’s office while the health and education sectors get as little as N22bn. It is the syndrome that is gradually killing our education system in order to promote the sector in neighbouring Ghana to the tune of $500bn per annum. That of course presupposes that the amount will be higher in the Western world because even the syndrome gets levels.
The irony is that to get rid of the “I better pass my neighbour” generator, there is the need to have stable electricity in the country. The same goes for the syndrome, but the syndrome has become the greatest enemy of itself since it is the same thing that has kept the nation under the killer’s knife of the subsidy cabal, whose modus operandi is legendary and bigger than a place in the Guinness Book of Records.
Indeed, it is a beautiful world where all is vanity.