Have you ever asked yourself why our children do very badly in Mathematics? Please just talk to the average young man or woman going to school in these parts. Ask him which subject gives him or her the biggest headache and before the question is out of your mouth, the answer is thrown at you – ‘Mathematics!’ Most of them are scared stiff of the stuff.
Some believe that ‘Maths’ is magic and only the likes of Professor Peller, the master magician, can understand how ‘a plus b’ can be equal to c.
You might want to blame the kids. Don’t blame them. Their parents before them and maybe their grandparents grew up in an environment where everything is conjecture and the only thing that is true is what the juju man or witch doctor says. Regardless of how educated, travelled or exposed we are, we are still deep inside, villagers trapped in the fables of juju men and witch doctors – the ‘babalawos’ who intercede to the Gods on our behalf.
We might be very religious or even call ourselves ‘men of God’ but the prism through which we see God is still that of the juju man, witch doctor or ‘jazz’. Our new ‘men of god’ are our modern-day juju men. They wear designer suits, drive fancy cars, speak high-sounding English and ‘prophesy’ to us what we want to hear. Like juju men, they also speak in tongues.
Why are we so backward? In a world of mathematics, quantum physics, empiricism, driver-less cars, Artificial Intelligence, WhatsApp video calls, etc., we still consult cranky old men with chalk marks on their faces to toss around cowries in the air and tell us what the future holds. Oh, we still hire and pay prayer warriors to clear the path of our tomorrows. At a time, when much of the world employs science to forecast hurricanes and tornadoes a week ahead, or tell us precisely when it will rain in any village on earth, we still procure rain doctors to pretend to prevent the rain.
We fear to face the fact that much of our future is not dangling in the air like the cowries tossed by the witch doctor, but is dependent on what we do or fail to do. We do not want to deal with facts because that means taking responsibility. So, we embrace conjecture and blame the devil or even God for our endless disasters.
Our Babalawo problem is at the core of our many difficulties. Babalawo and Mathematics are direct opposites. Mathematics means facts. Mathematics means transparency, accountability, order, planning and the taking of responsibilities. In mathematics, two plus two will always be four. It can never be five or three and half.
If we were to take mathematics seriously, how do we explain much of our contradictions? For instance, how does a level 8 officer in the employ of the government explain to his son how he owns an estate which his salary and all his allowances put together cannot contemplate, even if he worked for one thousand years?
If the son of the level 8 officer were to ask his father: ‘Daddy, how did you make this much money and own so many houses?’ Do you think that the father would answer: ‘as a cashier in the government service, I stole the money placed under my care to provide service to the community’? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the answer would be something like: ‘It is God’s blessings.’ Which God blessed him to steal? The answer avoids the simple additions and multiplication that mathematics demands. By what do you multiply his ninety thousand naira a month salary to obtain the billions of naira that he has stashed away in underground septic tanks?
After all the ‘whahala’ over minimum wage, we resolved to pay a wage of Seventy thousand Naira a month. That is really about $40 a month, a little over $1, a day! Pray, how can our ‘democratic’ government explain paying a man in its employ, with a wife and four children, the incredible salary of seventy thousand naira a month and expect the man to pay for food, housing, transportation, NEPA, clothes, school fees, medicine and all the many expectations of the extended family and not be a thief? Seventy thousand Naira a month is really two thousand, three hundred Naira a day. Tell me: what kind of soup can anyone cook with two thousand, three hundred Naira and still buy garri for the soup?! Some brilliant politician will tell you: “the man will survive… he will find a way”. Tell me, what way? What kind of mathematical formula will the man apply to make two thousand, three hundred Naira a day take care of his family?
In a moment of profound economic inspiration, our President announced the ‘immediate’ removal of fuel ‘subsidy’. And the life of the average Nigerian citizen, which was bad before, goes into a tailspin! What our government seems to have done is to legitimize free-for-all stealing and banditry on a scale we never imagined. How does an honest man survive on two thousand, three hundred Naira a day in Nigeria?
Exactly how did Nigeria, with one of the world’s biggest reservoirs of crude oil and other hydrocarbons become one of the world’s biggest importers of petroleum products with subsidies and scams that defy logic? Please, how did we come to the brilliant conclusion that paying to transport our crude oil to Europe, paying to refine the crude oil in Europe and then paying to bring the refined product to Nigeria is mathematically sound? Who killed our refineries and what price have they paid for the madness?
Let’s face it: we hide behind the name of God to do so much that is evil. Our politician who in four short years becomes richer than the state he promised to develop, at the end of the day goes to church for thanksgiving. What is he thanking God for? In his mind, by doing thanksgiving, he is bribing God to look the other way as he wallows in his thievery.
We have created a god in our image who is illiterate and does not understand mathematics. This creation of ours is based on our babalawo mentality, the belief that everything is abracadabra and facts and mathematics do not matter. You will be surprised that millions of Nigerians still believe in what we call money rituals.
It is this babalawo mentality that pushes some of our country men to take the lives of fellow human beings, lock up their corpses in cupboards and expect that when they chant some magic words, the corpses will be conjuring money in every day, in every currency for them. Ask yourself: what kind of ‘money ritual’ did Elon Musk, the world’s richest man do, to own much more money than Nigeria?
It is our babalawo mentality that makes us believe that once a ‘man of God’ has prayed for us, we do not need to plan or work hard anymore. We simply go home and there will be money everywhere. The ‘man of God’ is our later day babalawo, the middleman between us and the gods. OMG! We have a big problem. Our Babalawo mentality is killing us!
