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Consider these scenarios:

An employee is
fired for his poor performance on the job, and his lack of integrity.
Two weeks later, he calls his previous employer to ask whether he can
use his/her name as a reference for the application for his next job.
He gets that positive reference.

A CEO is disgraced
out of his role, but immediately finds another high profile role, and
then another and another. The same applies to our political landscape,
as our underachieving rulers continue to reinvent themselves under new
parties and in new roles.

Why do we Nigerians
give each other multiple chances, even when we have demonstrated our
inability to change – or to deliver results – over and over again? From
a very young age, my parents instilled the concept of blacklisting into
me: the belief that through my actions, I could bring disrepute to the
family name. The belief that whatever act I committed would not be
easily forgotten, and that I would not easily get a second chance. The
reverse held true as well – that I would enjoy the benefits of the
goodwill that my parents’ and siblings’ excellent track-records would
bestow on me. Thankfully, I enjoyed and benefited from the later.
People often assumed that I was smart and hardworking, simply because
my parents and two older sisters had proven themselves, over and over
again.

This belief system
in the importance of a track-record was further reinforced during my
university years. As a first year student in the university, the career
counsellors often spoke about the close knit circle in corporate
America, and how easy it was to get blacklisted by all firms, based on
bad behaviour or poor performance at one firm. As students, we studied
the stories of alumni Michael Milken and Joseph Jett who had brought
shame and financial ruin to their companies because of their unethical
behaviours. I remember the mood in the lecture rooms after each of
these sessions, when we often swore to ourselves that we would never
become ‘subject material’ for case studies on ethical failures.

Unfortunately,
there are no similar case studies being conducted in Nigerian schools.
What is it about Nigerians that makes us forgive and forget so easily?

Please, do not tell
me it is our religion! Neither the Bible nor the Koran record examples
of individuals who repeatedly exhibited moral failure and were promoted
to higher positions or reinvented themselves over and over again. Yes,
Jesus instructed his followers to forgive seven times seven a day, and
Saul had a conversion experience, but Jesus and his disciples never
celebrated or promoted mediocrity and immoral behaviour. Please, do not
tell me it is our culture. It is not…or it was not, until we made a
mockery of tradition by putting up chieftaincy titles for sale to the
highest bidder.

A famous idiom
states: ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!” In
the case of Nigeria, shame on us for being fooled over and over again.

Yes, we need a
national ID system that would prevent people from falling through the
cracks under new identities, and we need strong institutions that can
prosecute and punish offenders, but while we wait for all of these to
take hold, we need to rebuild the fabric of our society, and re-instil
in ourselves and our children the importance of a name – and a
track-record.

Whatever happened
to those songs that we used to sing as children? “Good name is better
than silver or gold, and nobody, nobody, nobody can buy good name!” or
“Ezi o mume Ezi o mume, Ezi o mume, were ezi o mume di ka uwe – Good
behaviour, Good Behaviour, wear it every day, just like you put on your
clothes…”

Let’s not regard this as being too idealistic, or nostalgic. We
should teach our children the importance of a good name, and the
realities of blacklisting. And during the upcoming elections, we should
not give second or third chances to people who have demonstrated their
inability to deliver results.