By Eben Ledion
The term “a piece of the national cake” has, over the years, become very widely used. Unsurprisingly, this coinage is originally, and still mainly, Nigerian.
A quick Google search would show that the metaphorical “cake” refers to our collective wealth as a nation, and having a piece of it implies taking one’s share of this cake for personal aggrandizement when provided with such an opportunity—often, but not necessarily, through access to political power, public funds, or the corridors of government.
Sadly, as Nigerians, this is increasingly our reality.
Many of us wake up praying, whether consciously or viscerally, for someone we know—an uncle, a husband, a brother, a sister, an old friend—to win an election or be given an appointment into the corridors of power, so that we too can somehow gain access to the national cake. This is our reality.
It is even sadder to see Nigerians who have left these shores and lived in other climes, benefiting from societies where things work, where the national cake is baked collectively and shared with a reasonable measure of equity, return to Nigeria only to jettison those noble ideals at our borders and enthusiastically join the madness of slicing up the national cake.
It has become common to see headlines and videos of Nigerians vandalising public infrastructure—railways, bridges, electrical installations and other public assets—often for metals that are subsequently sold to willing buyers. Unsurprisingly, most of us are aghast when confronted with such news.
“How can anyone do this?”
“What kind of people are these?”
“These people are evil.”
“This is wickedness.”
These are the predictable reactions.
The same reactions follow when we are confronted with reports of vendors selling adulterated or chemically contaminated food in our markets.
Make no mistake about it: these are heinous acts that have no place in any sane society.
But the begging questions are: Can Nigeria, in any meaningful context today, be described as a sane society? And are the perpetrators of these heinous and despicable acts not, in their own distorted way, claiming to be taking their share of the national cake at the level to which they have access?
The average Nigerian politician, having amassed lucre from an array of questionable, and often illegitimate, sources and using that wealth to buy his way into the corridors of power, would usually not hesitate to dip his dirty fingers into the national cake to take his piece.
The civil servant who, throughout his career, has participated in graft and eventually reaches the acme of his career may become even more vicious and determined to outdo his predecessors in the accumulation of wealth. At that point, he may have little regard for the consequences of his actions or the damage they inflict on society.
Indeed, we may soon need to coin new words and phrases to describe the figures we hear have been stolen by our politicians and senior civil servants. The words currently available to us seem inadequate to capture the enormity of these amounts.
Mind-boggling.
Staggering.
Eye-watering.
Surely, even these words do not do justice to the scale of what we are witnessing.
Some may argue that these people are stealing from our national patrimony and that there is no immediate personal injury, as there is in the case of the metal scavenger or the vendor selling poisoned food.
But the truth is that the personal injury can also be traced.
I have always insisted that corruption is a cancer that will eventually metastasise through its entire host if it is not quickly checked.
Unfortunately, this is the Nigerian case.
What started with the national cake being our collective patrimony has morphed into something far more sinister:
The national cake is now us—all of us, collectively.
The man vandalising a bridge or railway line may reason that he has no access to a politician or senior civil servant. He may believe that he is therefore only taking his share of the national cake at the level to which he has access, never minding the personal or public injury his actions may cause.
Likewise, the vendor selling chemically contaminated food.
The artisan stealing materials from a public project.
The contractor cutting corners because nobody is watching.
The medical doctor performing a sham procedure on a healthy patient simply to get paid.
The policeman demanding a bribe.
The civil servant demanding “something” before doing the job for which he is already paid.
The politician diverting billions from a public project.
Different scales. Different levels of access. Different degrees of damage.
But perhaps the same underlying logic:
“Let me take my own piece.”
And this is where the metaphor becomes tragically complete.
We have moved from a society in which a few people were accused of stealing from the national cake to one in which virtually everyone who has the opportunity seeks to take something from it.
Except that the cake is no longer some abstract national patrimony sitting somewhere in Abuja.
The cake is us.
The bridge being vandalised is ours.
The railway being stripped is ours.
The hospital being looted is ours.
The public school being neglected is ours.
The road being abandoned is ours.
The tax money being diverted is ours.
The food being poisoned is consumed by us.
The bribe paid today creates the system that will extort us tomorrow.
The corruption tolerated at one level eventually arrives at another level and knocks on our own door.
The truth, therefore, is that we have all become guilty of eating from this cake, and in the process, we are all foolishly stealing from ourselves.
Perhaps the ultimate tragedy is that we have become so accustomed to the idea of taking “our share” that we no longer ask the more important question:
What happens when there is nothing left to share?
And so, to end on a darker but perhaps fitting note, let us imagine the poetic justice of one of those vandalised bridges eventually collapsing while some of our most powerful politicians and senior civil servants are driving across it.
Perhaps then, for a fleeting moment, the metaphor would become brutally literal.
This would surely be a case of the proverbial:
Oturu gbekering.
Eben Ledion writes out from Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria
