OPINION: Of serial rapists, vampires and demons (1)

By Isaac Chii Nwaogwugwu

Living in Nigeria is a challenge. A real challenge. Maybe it is a curse. A generational curse. It is dehumanising. It is injurious. It is brutal and degrading.

The torture. The trauma. The agony. They are exacerbating. Living in Nigeria can be likened to an extreme mental, physical, emotional and psychological suffering that can assume the dimension of the final stage of a painful death.

You wake up in the morning and set out on your daily schedule. You are confronted with the reality that the devil you have always heard about exists here in Nigeria.

You begin to understand the fact that the biblical Lucifer may just be a metaphor for some species of human creatures that inhabit this enclave.

You begin to realise that hell and Nigeria are synonyms. If you can cope in Nigeria, then you can possibly, cope in hell as well.

You live here and your death in instalments is hastened by rapists, by vampires and by demons who operate with stamps of authority.

You find them wherever you go. They are in the banks and other financial institutions.

They are in the telecommunication companies. They are in the security operatives and paramilitary agencies.

They exist in ministries, departments and agencies of the government especially the revenue generation/mobilisation ones. They are in electricity distribution companies.

They are in water corporations. They are in environmental sanitation agencies. They exist even in the organised private sector.

They are everywhere. There is no difference between weekend and weekdays for some of them.

They come out every day. They chase you every day. Yes, every day. Sunday. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday. Saturday. Some of them don’t sleep. They have murdered sleep. They work twenty four hours in a day. Maybe, their own day is even longer.

They are all on a mission. That mission is to meet their productivity target. Their performance index on which their remuneration and upward mobility are predicated. These are the fieldmen and women of an ordered hierarchy.

They pursue ‘targets’ that are commensurate with their positions. That defines their efficiency rating . That measures their productivity. Productivity is a concept dressed with plurality of meanings.

According to Wikipedia “productivity describes various measures of the efficiency of production. Often, a productivity measure is expressed as the ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production process, i.e. output per unit of input, typically over a specific period of time.’’

In general terms, it connotes efficiency of a production input or effectiveness of efforts – mental, physical, managerial, technological and material. It is a dynamic concept. It has an inter-temporal dimension.

It is an index of performance. It is deterministic. It is relative. It is a statistic. Like any other deterministic relative statistic, productivity might be a useful instrument of strategy development where it may assume the meaning of a construct.

This affords the strategist the opportunity to properly situate the concept or concoct strange meanings to it depending on what he or she wants to achieve. One of such concoctions in the Nigerian clime is ‘Target’ which as wide as it is by definition and application has become one of the radiant measures of efficiency in public and private sectors especially in the subsectors where opaque financial operations and distorted balance sheets subdue substantive financial flow information.

Superfluous ‘targets’ — gross or net financial inflows are set for the organisation with a Greek-gift kind of tokenism for the employees who must use their blood to appease the powers that be in achieving the miracle targets.

‘Target’ performance index has become akin to slave task in Nigeria. In chasing the targets the sanity of the employees (the victims) is invaded while their innocence get violated in a typical style of a serial rapist.

In chasing the targets, the blood of the employees (the victims) become the delicious feast of the vampires that must be nourished distinctively. In chasing the targets the employees (the victims) are confronted with the horrific menace of sub-human existence that can only be unleashed by demons or those under demonic possession.

Wikipedia again, says that “a serial rapist is someone who commits multiple rapes, whether with multiple victims or a single victim repeatedly over a period of time’’ and a vampire as “a creature that subsists by feeding on the vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living.’’

According to Oxford Languages dictionary a demon is “an evil spirit, especially one thought to possess a person or act as a tormentor in hell.’’

While some corporate bodies and agents of both the public and private sectors in Nigeria might be described as serial rapists, vampires or demons others strongly exhibit characteristics of the three put together.

They invade people’s sanity and violate their innocence, suck their blood dry and torment them physically, mentally and emotionally. We have them everywhere. We are their victims.

The Nigerian economy has been in and out of recession many times. The economy remains grossly incapacitated. It has remained monolithic. It has been brought down to its knees. The manufacturing sector is sluggish.

The agricultural sector is struggling. Social and economic infrastructure are on a continuous state of dilapidation. The ‘ease of doing business’ index downgrades the Nigerian economy on virtually all its pillars.

But ironically the banking sector has remained strong. Possibly stronger if the billions of naira profit they have been declaring were to be used as an indicator of healthiness. Indeed, the banks have been posting huge profits. Billions of naira profits. Year in, year out.

What a contradiction! How have they been able to make that possible? What is the magic performance drive that they adopted? The answer is not farfetched. It is the surreptitious cash flow strategy that dresses a tomb in gold plates.

It is reflected in the cloakand-dagger ‘targets’ that diminish our bank balances in criminal deductions at the end of every transaction and at the end of the month under ambiguous narrations.

It is expressed in the form of excess charges in ordinary banking services that are rendered pro bono in other climes.

It is captured by the persuasive effort of your relations, your friends, yours foes, your admirers, your haters, your enemies, your contemporaries, your church members, your school mates, your cousins, nieces, our everything to cause a sneaky cash movement in the name of marketing.

You are forced to open an account that you may not need just because you want to help someone to boost his or her target. Inquiries reveal that Nigerians have become victims of inexplicable target driven performance index.

A bank sets its global target even when it is fully aware that that goal cannot be met using conventional and genuine banking techniques.

The regional manager is then given a target for deposit mobilisation which is then distributed among the branch managers. The helpless branch managers then allocate the branch target to the powerless marketing staff.

They are ordered. to go all out, using ‘all available means’ to deliver on their ‘targets’. They are treated like slave workers.

They have to deliver or be ready for scornful attacks, abuses and humiliation. Yes, they must deliver or get fired. Don’t tell me that these people are human beings. Are they rapists? Are they vampires?

Are they demons? Do they need the services of exorcists? Maybe they do, for it is difficult to understand how a creature with his head above his shoulders will be driving his fellow human being to an early grave with reckless abandon because of his insatiable greed for materialism. Yes.

Only monsters, rapists, vampires and demons can derive pleasure in the suffering of others.

Yes, only these creatures will have the audacity to exploit and extort money from their hapless clients whose only sin is safe-keeping their meagre resource in bank’s custody. Only the wicked can do that.

Our banks are wicked. They are wicked to their staff. They are wicked to their clients. They are wicked to the society.

Stealthy target-driven banking is killing all of us. The Nigerian banking system has distinguished itself through obnoxious , unethical, immoral and exploitative practices.

READ ALSO: 80% of sentenced Lagos rapists were victims once -DSVRT

They charge you for everything even when services are not delivered. What maintenance do they do on the ATM card in your wallet or the account you opened more than twenty years ago?