LAGOS, Nigeria — Arriving late to meetings. Buying imported fabrics. Drinking and driving. Cheating in school. Stealing crude oil.
If Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has his way, these behaviors will be a thing of the past among the more than 180 million people that make up Africa’s most populous country. In September, his administration launched “Change Begins With Me,” a “re-orientation” campaign with the simple but ambitious goal of getting the Nigerian public to change their behavior in the streets, the office and at home.
“The long-cherished and time honored, time-tested virtues of honesty, integrity, hard work, punctuality, good neighborliness, abhorrence of corruption and patriotism, have given way in the main to dishonesty, indolence, unbridled corruption and widespread impunity,” Buhari said in a speech inaugurating the campaign. “Our citizens must realize that the change they want to see begins with them, and that personal and social reforms are not a theoretical exercise.”
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Nigerians knew they were getting a president who wanted to crack down on Nigeria’s long-running corruption problem when they elected Buhari last year, but his insistence that Nigerians themselves are part of the problem has split his supporters.
In a country with a stubbornly high poverty rate and a political class best known for looting public funds, the government’s appeals for good behavior came off as tone deaf to some. So, too, have plans announced in August to bring back a good behavior enforcement brigade that first appeared during Buhari’s time as a military ruler. And, in an ironic twist, part of the very speech announcing the “Change Begins With Me” campaign was plagiarized from an address delivered by U.S. President Barack Obama — a mistake Buhari blamed on an “overzealous” aide.
It also didn’t help that the program’s debut roughly coincided with Nigeria’s entry into a recession.
The oil-dependent economy has been crippled in recent months by the one-two punch of falling global crude prices and a series of attacks on oil infrastructure. The plunging value of the naira currency and climbing inflation is a far cry from the jobs, prosperity and economic transformation Buhari promised when running for office last year, and the cause of much of the cynicism over the “Change Begins With Me” campaign.
“It lacks a certain moral authority from the public’s view,” says Tunji Lardner, executive director of the Lagos-based West African NGO Network. “Nigerians don’t believe that this particular administration has the moral authority to change.”
The campaign targets behaviors common in Nigeria’s public that are — in ways big and small — dishonest, sloppy or dangerous. Yet it does not specifically address the country’s politicians — who are widely regarded as corrupt. And while some of the behavior, like pipeline sabotage, is illegal, other forms of conduct are simply examples of “unruly” behavior that Buhari has personally decried.
One television ad screened during the event’s launch shows a man rejecting an offer to help rig an illegal electricity hook-up. Another ad showed an actor dressed as a militant from the petroleum-producing Niger Delta region swearing to never again steal oil or blow up pipelines. A third depicts two colleagues trying to cross an expressway. One wants to sprint across the busy road, but his co-worker stops him.
“Instead I will use the bridge,” the earnest colleague says, gesturing to a nearby footbridge. “Because change begins with me.”
With about two-thirds of the population living in poverty and the country lacking decent roads and round-the-clock electricity, many in the country believe they have no choice but to cut corners to survive.
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“You can’t be telling me to change my behaviors when my hierarchies of needs are not met,” says Tolulope Sangosanya, founder of LOTS Charity Foundation, which works with children in Lagos’s impoverished Ajegunle neighborhood.
She says Nigeria’s minimum wage — the equivalent of about $59 per month — is so low that even people who live in Ajegunle, which is built on a trash-lined creek bed, would struggle on it.
“When you do the math, it’s almost impossible to live without corruption in Nigeria,” Sangosanya says.
The idea that Nigeria’s public has lost its moral bearings is a product of an oil boom in the 1970s, which scholars blame for ushering in a culture of thievery that plagues the country’s politicians to this day.
“There’s this sense that the pursuit of wealth has kind of eroded discipline generally. And so, from time to time, there’ve been calls to get back to moral rectitude,” says Okechukwu Obinna Ibeanu, a professor of political science at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
One of the earliest proponents of righting Nigeria’s moral compass was Buhari himself. During his days as a military ruler from 1983 to 1985, he launched an anti-corruption crackdown that had soldiers ensuring orderly lines at bus stops and punishing civil servants who showed up late to work.
Buhari’s government recently announced he would bring back the campaign, though this time with volunteers instead of soldiers. The initiative will provide “enhanced civil intelligence gathering toward an orderly and secure society,” according to a government press release.
Some in Lagos support “Change Begins With Me,” arguing that the public has a role to play in righting the country’s course.
“We Nigerians, we need to stand and help ourselves,” says taxi driver Taiwo Joseph. “That’s the way to change.”
Others, like Blessing Akpan, an unemployed oil worker, doubt that a “re-orientation” campaign will be powerful enough to sway deeply ingrained behaviors. She rattled off complaints of petty traders shortchanging her and taxi drivers inflating their prices as evidence of the corruption within society.
Her harshest words, however, were reserved for the country’s public officeholders. “They make sure they leave there with trillions of naira while the masses are suffering,” she says.
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Nigeria’s President Launches a Controversial Morality Campaign originally appeared on usnews.com
