The Webster’s ninth new collegiate dictionary on page 360 describes discipline as “to impose order upon”, or “orderly prescribed conduct or pattern of behaviour, self-control, a rule or system of rules governing conduct or activity”. One of the problems of Nigeria today is indiscipline which is a lack of discipline, a lack of orderly prescribed conduct or pattern of behaviour, a lack of self-control, a contravention of rules or system of rules governing conduct or activity and that is why the nation has become such a big challenge.
Nigerians generally lack discipline, orderly behaviour and prescribed conduct. They lack a way of life that should normally enable a smooth running of affairs. Nigerians daily are subjected to harrowing traffic experiences. We find ourselves locked roads and expressways spending hours on what normally should be a few minutes drive.
Most of the causes of these traffic jams are people who don’t obey traffic rules or some people who had thought that the best way to drive is to drive on the opposite side of the expressway facing the oncoming traffic.
Most of the time, you find a lot of traffic jams in Lagos and other parts of Nigeria and when you get to the source of the traffic, you find that something very minor had been the cause of the traffic jam. Sometimes you find a car parked improperly or a set of people had double-parked or two people had a minor accident and they decide to block the road over something very minor or a car had broken down because of poor maintenance and the owner refuses to move it. It is usually very excruciating and sometimes takes the combined forces of police, LASTMA and FRSC to get people to end what is usually a grievous entanglement.
In any advanced country, we would have been able to estimate the amount of loss and waste resulting from these logjams. For one, I know that a lot of businesses and social appointments are missed and therefore maybe some dues and contracts are also missed. I know that people develop various illnesses. Sometimes, armed robbers and hoodlums begin to attack innocent people who find themselves helpless and can neither run nor defend themselves.
Somehow, we are being controlled by elements that should be under our control. This has consequently led to a lot of stress, frustration and irritability amongst a lot of people. Let us leave the traffic and move to our university system. You find that the cause of a lot of problems that we have there; the strikes, the students’ unrest, can be attributed to indiscipline. Matters that should be resolved amicably and in a matured manner across a negotiation table are resolved through riots, breakdown of law and order and actions that lead to damage of property and peoples’ lives. A lack of respect for orderly behaviour that leads to total chaos and anarchy.
A couple of years back, a young lady left her home saying she was going somewhere very quickly and would be back soon. As she was being driven by her friend, they had an accident as they approached a traffic light. The young lady barely twenty-three years old, law graduate, just back from the U.K. about to start a new life in Nigeria, full of hope and a great future and from a very respectable Nigerian family lost her life. Hopes for the future and investments by her parents and years of preparations all dashed just because of one truck driver’s indiscipline. The fellow refused to stop at a junction to see whether there was an oncoming car and he ran into the car of these young ladies causing this grievous harm to this family. The pain and the trauma that this family went through can only be best imagined and even till tomorrow the pain and the ache is still there.
Some years ago also, a small fire started somewhere in an industrial estate somewhere in Lagos. By the time the fire was put out, about seven factories had been burnt down and the livelihood of over 250 families had been disturbed and upset. At the end of the fire, the people who were affected by the fire naturally assumed that it was an act of arson and sabotage. But the truth of the matter was simply that the fire was as a result of indiscipline and lack of planning and a lack of understanding of basic safety issues in a working environment. What had happened was that when a storm started on the night of the fire, it blew down the electrical wires that had been improperly set up around the factory. The wires began to spark and these set fire to the environment. A small fire got bigger because, nobody was there in the first place, secondly there were no safety issues, and thirdly there were no fire fighting equipment. Again, a colossal loss because of undisciplined behaviour.
If you go to our hospitals today, you find that a lot of people are dying because hospital staffs are undisciplined; when they should be at their posts, they are at several other places, when they should be calm and collected, they are all phased out and hassled. I know of a lady who lost her son to leukaemia. When she went abroad for treatment for herself and saw the level of organisation, the level of efficiency and the level of discipline based on the treatment she got for herself, she came back with a mournful look and said these people (hospital personnel in Nigeria) killed my son out of lack of knowledge, out of indiscipline, and due to improper conduct and behaviour.
Indiscipline has sort of become a way of life in Nigeria and it is leading to a lot of loss, waste, trauma and hardship for the average Nigerian going about his business and trying to make a living. Most corporations and organisations are run by undisciplined leaders who have a lot of undisciplined staff working for them. You get to a reception and the receptionist is making up her face, reading a novel, picking her hair or chatting away with her friends either on the phone or with other co-workers. You stand there shifting on your leg and coughing trying to get attention, which you don’t get until you finally say you want to see so and so and then she waves her hand to a seat lackadaisically and starts asking you all sorts of questions. Her manner, her conduct, her tone all reek of a lack of training and a lack of discipline.
If Nigeria is going to progress as a nation, we need discipline and it is not impossible. When we had the Buhari/Idiagbon regime, it was interesting to see Nigerians queue up at the bus-stops. It was interesting to see a clean and orderly airport environment. It was interesting to see Nigerians not urinating against the walls or throwing up pieces of paper all over the place. Same thing since the Fashola government in Lagos put in place fines, levies and structures to penalise and arrest people. So, it can actually be done. Now in Lagos, people were not selling on the roads again. That is what just a bit of discipline can do.
That is just what is needed in Nigeria. People should learn to line up and queue. People should learn to wait in their own traffic lane when there is a traffic build up. People should learn to respond to traffic instructions. A lot of the economies of the world are run based on disciplined people and that is why there is such a difference between their economies and our economy. I think it is possible for things to improve. It is possible for things to get better right from the top to the bottom. Part of the indiscipline that we have in Nigeria is because of the indiscipline of some of our leaders. The way they move around in their convoys, the way their escorts and their guards behave. Escort and bullion car drivers drive recklessly on the roads putting other people in danger.
I think that it is possible to have an organised society, to have a responsive government and to have a responsible people and to begin to do things the way they should be done. I think that if there was a bit of discipline there will be a bit of good life and good health. It is time in Nigeria for us to change our attitudes, to change our values and bring about growth and development through an orderly and organised society.
