Iduh Onah
AS A TEENAGER in my rural peasant community in Okpokwu LGA of Benue State, there was one afternoon chore I particularly disliked: pounding yam after a strenuous day on the farm.
After returning from the farm, I would bathe in the village river and retire to my room, exhausted and eager to rest.
Whenever I heard the call to come and pound yam, the staple menu for lunch, I sometimes resorted to a childish but, which I then thought was an ingenious strategy: I pretended to be deeply asleep.
One afternoon, my younger siblings tried unsuccessfully to wake me. They called my name, shook me and perhaps did everything short of carrying me bodily out of the room. I remained motionless, eyes tightly shut, performing sleep with all the seriousness a reluctant teenager could muster.
That afternoon, my father, however, immediately saw through this performance. He observed that no genuinely sleeping person could be so difficult to wake. He ordered my siblings to leave me alone and announced that he would wake me himself, but with a cane.
Then came the sentence that has remained with me for decades. He declared: “Iduh is not sleeping; it is impossible to wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.” The threat of the cane produced what my siblings had been unable to achieve. I sprang out of bed, laughing uncontrollably.
I did not know it then, but my father had, with that wise saying, introduced me to one of the most penetrating metaphors for understanding human behaviour: a person who is genuinely asleep can be awakened, but there is little anyone can do for someone who has deliberately chosen to pretend to be asleep.
That old Idoma wisdom has acquired an unsettling relevance in contemporary Nigeria. The functional equivalent of this proverb exists in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of linguistic and cultural traditions around the world. It belongs to that broad family of proverbs about wilful ignorance; the human tendency to ignore realities that are inconvenient, uncomfortable or demanding of action.
It is one of those pieces of folk wisdom that survive across generations precisely because they describe something fundamental about human nature.
Among the many insights embedded in the world’s treasury of proverbs, few are as accurate as this one. The truly sleeping person can be awakened by noise, touch, light or danger. But the person merely performing sleep has erected a fortress against reality.
He hears the alarm. He notices the shaking, senses everything around him but will remain stubbornly pretentious, eyes firmly shut, because acknowledging reality would require action.
In many respects, modern Nigeria resembles a vast theatre in which fake sleep has become a national performance art. This performance is most conspicuous in politics.
For decades, successive governments have demonstrated an almost supernatural ability to discover problems only after they have matured into disasters. Thus, roads collapse before maintenance becomes urgent; educational institutions or power infrastructure decays before reform becomes necessary; and, security warnings are ignored until tragedy supplies the evidence that foresight could have provided at a fraction of the cost. The problem is rarely the absence of information.
Nigeria is not suffering from a shortage of reports, committees, policy papers, expert recommendations, white papers, blueprints, conferences, workshops, retreats, summits or strategic frameworks.
Indeed, if development could be achieved through the production of documents, Nigeria would rival the most advanced societies on earth.
What frequently appears absent is the political will to act upon what everybody already knows. The ruling elite often behaves like a man whose house is leaking during the rainy season but who spends his time debating whether the water dripping onto his bed is technically rainwater or dew.
The issue here is not ignorance but a preference for comfortable denial.
The metaphor of fake sleep also helps explain one of Nigeria’s most enduring paradoxes: the coexistence of immense potential with persistent underperformance. For generations, Nigerians have correctly identified many of the structural obstacles to national progress – corruption, weak institutions, ethnic manipulation, poor governance, policy inconsistency, excessive dependence on oil revenues and a culture of impunity. None of these are hidden phenomena.
They are discussed daily in newspapers, radio programs, television studios, university seminars, beer parlours, market squares and social media platforms and the diagnosis has long been settled. Yet, diagnosis without treatment is merely a sophisticated form of spectatorship.
As a nation, Nigeria often resembles a patient who has memorised his medical report but refuses to take the prescribed medication. The metaphor becomes even more striking when one examines the conduct of sections of the political class. There exists a peculiar Nigerian phenomenon in which politicians suddenly discover virtues they spent years undermining.
Individuals who ignored constitutional principles while in office become passionate defenders of democracy after leaving office. Those who celebrated executive excesses become apostles of institutional restraint once they find themselves outside the corridors of power.
The metaphor would be incomplete if applied only to leaders. Citizens, too, have participated in the national masquerade. There are times when society collectively pretends not to see the connection between choices and consequences.
Ethnic loyalties are elevated above competence, and then poor governance is treated as an unexpected surprise. Vote-buying is condemned in theory but accommodated in practice.
Corruption is denounced in the abstract while celebrated when its beneficiaries belong to one’s preferred group.
Since fuel prices skyrocket in the wake of international crises, we debate the immediate hardship without always confronting the structural vulnerabilities that make every external shock so punishing.
When inflation erodes household incomes, we lament the price of food without always asking why production, distribution and public policy remain so fragile.
When insecurity expands, we demand action after lives have been lost, even though warning signs were often visible long before the latest tragedy. Again, and again, we wake only when the consequences become impossible to ignore.
The trader who manipulates weights, the civil servant who demands unofficial fees, the contractor who abandons projects, the student who cheats in examinations, the religious leader who exploits followers and the politician who loots public resources are participating in different chapters of the same story; they are all contributing, in different ways, to a culture in which private advantage is pursued while the collective damage is treated as somebody else’s problem.
What makes fake sleep particularly dangerous is that it creates the illusion of innocence. The pretender can always claim ignorance; insist he or she never saw the warning signs, and express shock at outcomes that were entirely predictable.
Perhaps, this explains why some of the most successful societies are not necessarily those populated by exceptionally gifted people. Rather, they are societies that cultivate the institutional habit of waking up early to uncomfortable truths.
They confront problems before they become crises, reward honesty over convenience, and recognise that reality, however unpleasant, is usually cheaper than illusion.
Nigeria does not lack intelligent people; does not lack talent; does not lack creativity; does not lack experts and therefore does not lack solutions. In many instances, Nigeria has already diagnosed its problems and proposed credible remedies.
What it has too often lacked is the collective willingness to act on what it already knows. Nigeria’s future may therefore depend less on discovering entirely new solutions than on summoning the courage to implement old ones.
The ancient Idoma proverb remains startlingly relevant because it distinguishes between two conditions that are easily confused but fundamentally different.
A sleeping nation can be awakened or a confused nation can be enlightened or a struggling nation can be assisted; but what do we do with a nation that hears the alarm and deliberately keeps its eyes shut?
That is the deeper meaning of my father’s words decades ago in Ogene-Amejo. My siblings could not wake me because, in truth, I was never asleep. I was merely pretending. The moment the consequence of continuing the pretence became real: the threat of my father’s cane; I was suddenly wide awake.
Certainly, Nigeria, too, has spent too long pretending. The alarms have been ringing for years: failing institutions, insecurity, unemployment, poverty, corruption, collapsing infrastructure, declining purchasing power and a deepening crisis of public trust.
We know them; discuss them; analyse them; publish reports about them and organise conferences to discuss the reports. What remains is the question my father’s proverb ultimately forces upon us: Are we really conscious or are we simply pretending to be ignorant?
If we are asleep, there is still hope because someone can shake us awake. But if we are pretending, then no amount of shaking will be enough. And, as it happened that afternoon with the threat of my my father’s cane, I jump up from my fake sleep.
But are we going to continue our pretentious sleep even under the heavy rain beating us?
Onah is the Editor-in-Chief of NATIONAL RECORD and writes this column every Wednesday. Send reactions via email to: nationalrecordng@gmail.com, onahiduh@yahoo.co.uk.
