BROKEN MORAL COMPASSES OF NIGERIAN LEADERS

Moral uprightness was imprinted in the DNA of many of us born before and during the 70s. It was the responsibility of everyone in the community to raise a morally upright child, a misbehaviour is sometimes addressed with a slap, knock or flogging from an elder on your street, which immediately can reformat your brain setting. Parents hardly asked what offence one committed as everyone wanted what was good for their child.  But today is a radical departure from then, as mothers even go to school to fight teachers who chastise their misbehaving wards.  This attribute is common amongst the wards of our so-called leaders who cannot correct their wards and would not allow anyone to correct them. We seem to have lost our moral compass as a nation.   

Moral compass is an internalized set of values and objectives that guide a person with regard to ethical behaviour and decision-making. It directs a person's ability to judge what is right and wrong and act accordingly.  From the above, it presupposes that either Nigerian leaders’ moral compasses are broken or their systems were not configured with it in the first place.

These so-called Nigerian leaders are a complex bunch who defy anything logical and they espouse what conventional reasoning can never comprehend. They antagonise sensibility as they sacrifice the future growth of the nation for an embrace of immediate primordial gains at the detriment of the whole populace. All these acts show a lack of moral intelligence or a broken moral compass. 

Their actions are bereft of compassion, which is one of the main attributes any good leader must possess.  They lack ethical considerations in their debates and their desires are guided by wanton greed.  How else would one explain the obscene allowances members of the National House of Assembly (NHA) and state House of Assemblies take home or is it the narcissistic allocation of state resources to retiring governors (most of who have turned NHA into a retirement home).  All these are in an environment where workers, most especially teachers are not paid their pittances.  It seems that there is a grand conspiracy to keep the populace in perpetual penury.  I weep for my country.

The members of the NHA – Senate and House of Representatives are usually addressed as ‘distinguished’ and ‘honourable’ but there is nothing distinguished about the senators nor can their living be described as honourable, which is like an aberration to their psyche as they have nothing in common with honour.  Anyways, there is definitely no honour amongst thieves.