A culture of violence

The Syrian War has been going on for 11 years and last year, 3,746 people were killed in it. Nigeria has not officially declared itself as being at war but its death toll from insecurity in 2021 was at least 10,366 meaning that an average of 28 Nigerians were killed each day of last year by deliberate malicious intent. This is not front-page news. Some days ago, more than 200 people were brutally killed in Zamfara, we’ve shrugged, and moved on. We are now inured to violence and accept it as a routine part of our lives. Violence is Nigeria’s culture.

Let’s talk about culture briefly today, this was the subject of my column in today’s BusinessDay NG.

Culture is the sum of the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society to fulfil a range of purposes. Remember the story of the monkeys? Let me summarise it here: monkeys got an ice bath each time they went for the banana, so they got the message that bananas mean incredible cold, and they conformed. Eventually, they started beating up any monkey that went for the bananas because they didn’t want the painful cold. This went on even after all the original monkeys were gone. The norm in that environment had become that bananas were bad. The beatings had become the guardrails towards maintaining that norm. Hence a culture had been established, and that is what this piece is all about.

Over the years, Nigeria’s political class has by its actions and inactions created a culture that has made brute force the choice medium of communication and a legitimate currency. A growing number of Nigerians have learned to speak and trade in that language. The use of violence to solve problems in a society where the end is seen to justify the means has taken us to a point where our hearts are so calloused that 200 people being slaughtered in one location a few weeks ago wasn’t emotionally resonant enough to hold a prime position in the news cycle for a full day.

How a culture of violence is manifested varies.

Nigerians have been programmed to believe that aggression, and a capacity for violence, is the way forward. You can even see it rear its head in the place of conversation because Nigerians have increasingly lost the will and capacity to civilly convince others, and instead opt to speak aggressively and assault people mentally to make their case. The rigour placed on you by civil conversation forcing you to fully understand what you are trying to sell before you can convince others is largely absent here, so it is the loudest or most aggressive voice that tends to prevail, no matter how silly the persons point.

We can’t answer questions properly or even ask them skilfully, and when this inability is paired with power, you have instances where a President closes land borders for three years because the patience and emotional discipline needed to properly explore an idea and consider its likely outcomes and possible alternatives are absent due to a lifelong reliance on violence as a means of progress.

We must accept the link between cause and effect. When young people see the likes of Turji, Tompolo or MC Oluomo gaining fame and fortune and the attention of our elite, it is only natural that some of them would want to walk these paths.

If we want a trait to get more popular, we have to reward it and punish the antithetical.

Over the past few years, Nigeria has increasingly rewarded violence and punished proper behaviour. People are taking notes. Young people will always copy what works in their environment. When we treat terrorists and thugs with empathy (which suggests shared values) but have peaceful protesters gunned down, it sends a message.