Breaking the Cycle of Rewarding Bad Behaviour: A Call to Action

By Nkiru Ogbuli

I have had to ask myself severally and I will ask you too: why do we like to reward unruly behaviour in this part of the world? If you are prim and proper, chances are that you will always be overlooked. Even in families, the stubborn, disobedient children are always pampered and pacified while the obedient, intelligent children are neglected by their parents because they are expected to always remain the way they are. My father was the opposite of such parents though. No good behaviour went unrewarded.

Even the Nigerian state rewards grossly recalcitrant behaviours! Should we delve into how militants in the Niger-Delta region were granted amnesty and placed on salaries for doing harm to the Nigerian state, even till today? Some awarded huge contracts to protect oil installations when we have security agencies? What about ‘repentant’ Boko Haram terrorists? People who have killed and maimed innocent citizens, destroyed government facilities and rendered citizens refugees in their own countries? This could be a topic of its own to be honest.

Let me just stay in my immediate environment. I have had to challenge such baseless rewards severally. Few months ago, I attended a Real Estate event where the spokesperson of the former Labour Party Presidential candidate in the 2023 general election was called to the podium to deliver a goodwill message. Trust opposition politicians to seize every opportunity to take swipes at the incumbent administration, she dwelt extensively on what they were doing wrong. At a point, some people in the audience began to murmur, then someone began to shout her down.  “Talk to us about Real Estate not politics!”

At a point, she couldn’t go on with her speech. It took efforts from the organisers to get the unruly guy to keep it down. She was later able to complete her speech but to my greatest surprise, on her way out, she called the guy to follow her. They were ‘kiking and kakaing’ on their way out of the hall. I had to approach her. I told her she was only rewarding unruliness. She tried to explain to me and said she was also talking to me because I criticised her for giving the guy audience. Huh? She asked that I followed her out too. Of course I declined. I didn’t need to!

Weeks ago, I saw a viral tweet of how an X user tweeted in the lines of Chike not being a good musician and that it was the late Mohbad who got the former a hit song. In retaliation, Chike tweeted that the X user was hungry and that elicited a back and forth. Finally, Chike asked for his account number and sent him a whooping million Naira. My reaction was: For what exactly?! To prove what point? Would it have been a bad thing to pick 10 fans who had dropped nice words under his tweet, asked them to drop their account numbers, credit them with 100k each while the unruly X user looked on? He would have learnt a valuable lesson from that!

A few weeks ago, I also read another post about a man who went out intending to give 5 random hawkers 20k each. According to him, the plan was to first buy their products and then pay them plus extra 20k cash. The first woman he met was selling African pear in tiny baskets and each basket cost N1,000. He then asked for 5 baskets, each had less than 10 pieces arranged inside. Immediately she brought down her tray, since he couldn’t see what she was doing from inside the car, he turned on the car’s 360-degree camera and watched as she emptied 3 baskets into the nylon bag instead of 5. She quickly tied the nylon and raised her head to tell him she had added two pieces of pears as gyara and then quickly opened the back door and dropped it there.

The buyer gave her 3k and she protested with an ‘unbelievable audacity’ that her money was remaining 2k. Amazed by how such an elderly woman could tell such a petty lie with a straight face, he pointed at the dashboard screen of his car and when she saw her tray on the ground and her legs, she quickly left.

Same thing happened with a plantain seller. They had agreed 10k for a large bunch. He again turned his camera and asked the seller to put it in the trunk of the car. Before he (the seller) got to the trunk, he quickly switched the plantains and put the smaller one in the car. He went to collect his money and was asked why he switched the plantains and he swore in the name of the God of his religion that he did not. The man went to the trunk of the car, brought out the plantain, handed it back to him, and drove off with his money. He said he sent the equivalent of the 100k to his mother’s bank account and had restlessness thinking about the dog-eat-dog mindset that had become a tradition in our society.

After reading the post, I was happy that he did not reward lack of integrity by giving them the money like other people would normally do. Another person would have cited “hardship” as a reason for what transpired at the market and gone ahead to give them the money still. I call utter rubbish!

Let’s make a conscious effort to stop rewarding bad behaviours and unruliness in our spaces, well unless you are the president general of the obstreperous cartel.  People should be rewarded for being orderly and truthful among other things.  Maybe we can begin to make Nigeria a better place if people see that being good truly pays.

Have a productive week ahead.