Japanese fans were spotted at the end of their game with Croatia in the second round of the 2022 World Cup with blue plastic bags walking around the stadium to pick up trash left by fans, including those left by rival fans despite losing the match. They remained defiant and did what no football supporters group would do but have come to represent the Japanese football supporters in football competitions. Japanese fans remained at the Al Janoub Stadium in Al Wakrah, Qatar, venue of the match to pick up trash and clean up the stadium. Al Janoub Stadium is not the only Stadium Japanese fans have cleaned up during the tournament, football fans across the globe have been left in awe and have come to recognise the Japanese fans for their trash-cleaning habit at the end of every game no matter how the game ends. It is not just the fans but the players. Sparkling pictures of the Japanese dressing rooms show how meticulous and orderly the Japanese players have been. They always leave their dressing room better than they have met it
Why do the Japanese clean the stadium and dressing rooms while the fans of the other 31 teams at the World Cup do not? For the Japanese team coach, Hajime Moriyasu, cleaning the stadium is just the normal thing to do, “When you leave, you have to leave a place cleaner than it was before. That’s the education we have been taught. That’s the basic culture we have. For us, it’s nothing special.” he was reported by the New York Times to have said
In Japan, cleaning one’s surroundings is taught at home and reinforced at schools, where students from a young age are expected to clean up their classrooms and school facilities on a regular basis.
In Contrast, as I write this article Côte d’Ivoire, the host Nation for the 2024 African Cup of Nations, has just lost to Equatorial Guinea and their fans began an orgy of violence destroying everything on their way. I tried to find a link. The Japanese coach had reportedly said that it was a norm to clean up in Japan. I wanted to see if it was also normal to resort to violence after defeat in football games in Cote d’Ivoire so I did a simple Google search. Guess what I found?
The Austrian-American Psychologist Herbert Kelman in 1958 developed the social influence Theory where he identified the three phases of social influence that drives human behaviour. Social Influence theory discovered that we are more likely to be influenced by the actions of individuals around us that we admire, especially people of high influence. The three identified phases are compliance: an individual permits to be influenced by an individual or group in exchange for a favourable reaction either to gain a reward or avoid a punishment. Identification: Is what we call in local parlance as “ I must belong” an individual identifies an acceptable norm in a group and adopts that behaviour as his to be accepted into the group. In the final phase known as Internalisation, one accepts the values and beliefs of a group because they hold its belief to be true and collective wisdom.
The Social Influence Theory and the Social Learning give one a leeway to understand why the Nigerian societal value has collapsed in the face of the rat race for wealth acquisition
Recently, I had a lengthy argument in an Anambra Whatsapp forum, where I held tenaciously that the Anambra burial law was an improbable law that ought not to have been made by the Anambra state lawmakers. I thought of it as an economically depreciating law that does not attempt to solve the problems it envisaged. The rest thought otherwise. For them, the Anambra burial law will force the reduction in burial expenditures and as one commentator pointed out, doing so will influence others in Anambra to live within their means.
While I agree that the ugly exhibitionism of wealth which is fast becoming a much sought after Nigerian culture ought to be cause for concern, I have accepted the reality that it has become an integral value of our society and endorsed by our societal influencing agents and institutions, it is not what a law on modest burial can solve. It goes beyond that. About two years ago, a friend of mine asked me to put up a short article on the Nigerian dream for him. I thought extensively for days to find that common value that our society holds dearly, the more I dug deep, the more I found that the Nigerian dream is money centric, I had no option than to respond to him that the Nigerian dream has long been captured by the American rapper Curtis Jackson known with the stage name of 50 cent in his 2003 award winning album as GET RICH OR DIE TRYING.
All over the Nigerian media and any other place where people gather to discuss-in our institutions such as the church, government agencies and even within that smallest unit of socialisation-the family, it appears that we have come to the agreement that the poor must be shamed and mocked for being poor. I dare to guess that Nigeria has more jokes mocking the poor than any other kind of joke. Half schooled but accent speaking OAPs who have littered and taken over the Nigerian Radio and TV stations have made it a duty to provoke the poor. They say a poor man should have no erection and derisively laugh over it. You are advised not to have an opinion if you do not have money- some even suggest that you should not even attend a family meeting if you are poor. I encourage you to make it a habit of reading comments in many of the trending discussions on social media and you will be shocked, assuming you are still available to be shocked. This habit is one that has helped me to gauge the rationale of many Nigerians. The lyrics of our music are no better. It promotes the worship of money over humanity. One Igbo Highlife sang in their hit song that ife nile wetaru ego bu olu- whatever brings money is work. Dare to enquire about the source of income of anyone, and you would be met with a sharp rebuke asking you if you had inquired of his source of poverty when he was poor. Perhaps, Nigeria might be the only country where the rich are never disposed to stating what they do for a living
If we blame the social media for the spread of such money centric value, what would you say of our traditional institutions? I can not remember the last time I saw anyone who has added value to their community being given a chieftaincy title without the person being wealthy. The only measurable value in our society is money, not hard work, honesty nor commitment. If you do not have money, you can not be considered to have any virtue of note. .
The Churches do not fare any better. Gone are the days when the church was the gatekeeper of societal virtues. These days, the church has agreed with the rest of our institutions that money should be all that matters. Steal, Kill, kidnap for ransom, sell drugs to women and children and destroy families, the church does not care. They will accept your money and offer you the knight title and any other available for purchase. You will become chairman of endless committees in detriment to other members of the church who have dedicated themselves to the growth of the church but do have the funds to splash endlessly in the church.
Have money and you can buy the Nigerian Police and every other institution. Drug lords, fraudsters and every other person with a shady history now have the police escorting and serving them at the same time- opening car doors, carrying their bags and washing cars. In any scuffle, the institutions will always take side with the man who has money and not who is right unless a public outcry ensues and the institution is forced to do right.
What is the motivation to do the right thing in Nigeria? My guess is that there is none. What is the punishment for doing the wrong thing? If you have money, it will be forgotten and you will be rewarded by all social institutions. What Kelman teaches us with his social influence theory is that an individual will gradually gravitate towards the acceptable value system of a society so as to seek the respect of that community and the rewards thereof. What does Nigerian society respect and cherish: Money. Kelman teaches us that if you have money that the Nigerian society will reward you with titles and followership, that you will be accepted by all institutions. Money has been internalised in the Nigerian society that it has been seen as collective wisdom and individuals now accept that to chase money is a societal value that aligns with theirs and anything done to create wealth will be accepted.
“ Normalisation creates culture and culture drives our choices which leads to more normalisation….. Our actions are primarily driven by one question: Do people like me do these things?” so says the marketing and branding Guru Seth Godin. Short summary, habit is culture.
The collateral damage in this rat to wealth acquisition just to be accepted by our society is our society. Years back, it was rare to find parents endorsing their children to become fraudsters. I could remember a story in the early 2000 of a kid who was one of the pioneers of the Yahoo genre of fraud in Nigeria who bought a hummer jeep-the reigning hype car of that era, his parents not satisfied with his explanation of wealth reported to the Area F Police command Ikeja and the boy was arrested to explain the source of his income. I remember that I saw that car parked at the police station for months. I doubt if such can happen today where parents search out and pay fraudsters to teach their kids fraud. They also pay and provide the gadgets for fraud. In Anambra state, the ratio of boys to girls in school is widening as boys leave school to chase ego mbute romanticised by the society. Spurred by drug dealers and fraudsters who have become patrons of different influential church societies and title holders, they see that they can become celebrities who would be protected by government institutions if they make money. They move in droves to South Africa and other drug loving countries to push drugs or to engage in different elaborate fraud schemes. The collateral is hardwork and honesty which is a MUST virtue for any society. The collateral is the famed Igbo apprentice system which can not guarantee ego mbute or soft life as they call it. The collateral is the quality of leadership we get- when politicians know that the only measurable index of their leadership is how well they distribute money they must become corrupt and steal public funds to meet societal expectations.
The psychologist Albert Bandura teaches us in the Social Learning theory that social learning occurs through observation, imitation and modelling and he proved this with the classical baby doll experiment. Bandura goes further to teach us that social learning is influenced by the attention, motivation, attitude and the emotions each behaviour attracts to an individual. Actions that are rewarded are more likely to be imitated and repeated.
The implication is that our society has given its cue and signals for acceptance and children are craving and learning. This generation has learnt it will transfer the knowledge to the next generation and the vicious circle continues. Ritual related killing is on the rise, politicians are getting relentless, our girls now understand money to be the driving virtue in a relationship, our boys understand that money is the only thing to command respect and admiration. Hard Work, honesty, productivity are now vices while fraud, drug peddling, cheating are now virtues. Take a trip to social media, every young person now sets their account for the vulgar display of wealth. Our societies are riddled with social clubs which derive happiness in the vulgar display of wealth in any social gathering and repost the same on social media for validation. It is a vicious circle. The learning process will not stop. The signals and cues are enormous. The reward exists. This will not stop
The underlying story is that our society rewards winners only and gives no chance to losers. The collateral damage is PROCESS. Our society is not concerned about the ethical issues involved in the attainment of any result- it is all about the rat race to wealth and success. But, the process of winning is more important than winning. The process teaches and creates a value system that builds and sustains any society.
No one has issues with wealth acquisition but in doing so, it must not be to the detriments of our societal values. It must not be to the detriment of productivity. We must teach a value system that focuses on humanity. Our society should focus on promoting a shared value of hardwork, productivity, honesty, teamwork and other virtues that puts humanity at its forefront. Any society that promotes wealth over time tested human virtues is bound to hit the bottom and we are at the bottom. Curiously, with the kind of money Nigeria flouts and the values they obliterate to acquire wealth, one would have thought that the country would be better for it. But it is not. We still depend on charities from better organised societies where humanity is at the forefront for subsidised drugs, scholarships and other aids, simply because we do not understand the concept of humanity and wealth.
Our society is a bad teacher and we need a cultural change. Nigerians who have learnt from our society that money can buy law and order and provide the motive to be lawless and reckless, will not wait to be told to obey the law and avoid the vulgar display of wealth that they have become accustomed to in Nigeria immediately they find themselves in societies whose value systems are different. They simply ask themselves, do people like me do these things here? The society answers unlike in Nigeria with an emphatic no and they adjust.
As Fela philosophically sang in his song “ Teacher dont teach me nonsense” all our institutions of learning must rise to the occasion and halt this erosion of our value. The family, church, traditional institutions and the government must lead by example. I do not subscribe to the notion of using laws to force certain human values especially those who have underlying economic benefits. I joke all the time, one’s foolishness drives the growth of an economic sector. I do not believe that those who subscribe to this value outnumber those who do not. Because those who do not have refused to make their habits popular and open it to others to learn from the minority are now influencing the majority, hence making those virtues that we ought to promote vices. Nigeria needs outliers- men who are capable of defying the existing culture and norms to refocus the attention of the society on humanity. We do not need to hide under such laws as the burial laws of Anambra state nor encourage the government to become a chaperone of our morals to do the right thing. Social learning teaches that our behaviors are being studied by others to be imitated. It is a war between good and bad and all those who believe in the good virtue must stand up to be counted, and when they do, the institutions of the church, community and the government must reward them. Society must also learn to punish those who deviate from these values by not rewarding them and making them societal outcasts. It is a fight for the soul of our society. You have to pick a side and show it by influencing others daily