Oh, yeah! The most populous black nation just marked 63 years of overt separation from colonial strangulation. Despite some overhanging sense of despair, independence, real or faux, is surely worth celebrating, especially considering that whereas Nigeria has failed to achieve its potentials, it has surely made significant progress standing without the Union Jack. So, we can say a hearty congratulations to Nigeria and continue to hope that our nation’s story can be rewritten for good; that we may build a nation that works for the generality of its people—a nation where peace and justice reign.
Now that we are done toasting Nigeria, can we ask why many Nigerians seem unable to comprehend numbers? There seems to be a national policy for disregarding numbers; treating them as some extremely malleable artifacts to be compressed or blown up on demand. Maybe a few examples would back up this paragraph.
Barely eight years ago, a suboptimal propaganda machinery claimed a former Petroleum Minister stole about $90 billion. Thereafter, a government official claimed over $2 trillion had been recovered by the EFCC, Nigeria’s anti-corruption ombudsman. Recently, some reports claimed the former Central Bank Governor and a certain company were involved in a dollar scam worth $50 billion, while others alleged the same embattled stateless governor had stolen trillions of naira from the country. Earlier, the Central Bank had been accused of diverting ₦89 trillion naira from stamp duties alone. These stories, among others, were swallowed with glee by a population uninterested in questioning whether announced numbers made any sense.
Unwilling to lose the championship to government entities, private individuals also demonstrate flippancy with understanding numbers. Hence, an educated person looked at presidential election results showing the number of states where each candidate got at least 25% of the votes and decided to add up all the states. As expected, the total exceeded Nigeria’s 36 states, thereby prompting this person to allege foul play. Away from elections, some online posts claimed that a Nigerian singer, Asake, spent ₦500 million (~US$600K) in a club in one night. Lacking numerical awareness, several Nigerians proceeded to debate whether the singer was justified to spend such an amount or whether there would be any ruckus if a church had spent such an amount on some religious endeavour.
One thing that remains unbelievable is how the national proclivity to believe any sort of numbers affects even well-educated Nigerians. This predisposition affects our ability to criticize unrealistic promises made by unscrupulous politicians. A quick example would be the since disgraced promise to make $1 equal to ₦1. Ordinarily, one would have expected any person with some basic understanding of economics to deride such a promise. Yet, I had a hard time convincing fellow educated Nigerians that the promise made no sense. This is the extent of our readiness to swallow numbers.
But it is not all gloom though. The recent presidential elections heralded a departure from extremely infantile promises; perhaps an acknowledgement that people had become tired of being promised numbers that lie. However, on very emotional issues like corruption or the economy, we remain predisposed to believing whatever numbers are bandied about. That is why we would believe any amount claimed to have been stolen by a public figure and continue to argue that Nigeria has enough cash to fund petrol subsidies for itself and West and Central African nations.
I think that renewing the Nigerian mind would take an interplay of different strategies that consider our cultural and religious context and varying levels of formal education. For one, getting more Nigerians numerically aware via schooling is critical. Within schools, we need to make Nigerians able to conceptualise the scale of numbers. For example, if the answer to a question shows that a car is running at 40 km/h, a student should be able to conceive what this number means, how it compares to speed limits, safe driving requirements, etc. By getting students to comprehend numbers beyond mindless cramming, we would gradually have a populace that can better comprehend economic numbers and spot bullshit in press releases.
We also need fact-checkers willing to counter false numbers. We repeatedly see clearly incorrect numbers being bandied in the public without rebuttal by credible persons or organisations. Unfortunately, even media houses would broadcast such numbers without questioning them or providing some context for viewers. Although we have seen cases of media houses being persecuted for not toeing the official line, it is unacceptable for media organisations to simply comply and regurgitate any number announced for public consumption. If the media cannot fact-check, they can quote credible fact-checkers rather than being complicit in deceiving Nigerians.
Another angle is getting Nigerians to question numbers announced by authority figures in a society where cultural and religious norms tend to make people accept whatever is said by a “respected figure”. Whereas fixing this would be difficult, it can be facilitated by the first two approaches. If we have more numerically-aware Nigerians, and more cases of fact-checkers demonstrating certain claims as untrue, we would start having more persons doubting what authority figures announce. We also need to be more forgiving of persons who counter publicised numbers, rather than joining the mob to attack such persons for daring to evaluate a claim. Gradually, we can break the chokehold of sociocultural norms.
As we celebrate 63 years of running things ourselves, let us remain hopeful that better days lie ahead. Our yearnings for development require that we be true to ourselves and build on a foundation of truthful claims and promises. This should be our biggest motivation to have a nation where true numbers are upheld, where numbers are not seen as irritants to be dispensed at will. Like Shakira confidently claimed her hips don’t lie, we should someday be confident to say that in Nigeria, numbers don’t lie.
Image Credit: quotefancy.com
Jilomes 