Ah, God, what's wrong with Valentine?By Reuben Abati

Ah, God, what's wrong with Valentine?By Reuben Abati
THE growing obsession with Valentine's Day, February 14, that is tomorrow, the day that is specially reserved for the celebration of love, friendships, the sharing of goodwill, international as it now is, wears a cloak of such beguiling paradox in Nigeria that highlights one: the imitativeness of social class behaviour in Nigeria, two: the hypocrisy of our people; and three: psychological yearning for love and affection that is more about the emptiness of our passions, rather than our true understanding of what love is. This phenomenon is fairly recent and it is Southern and Christian. It is as if the more unsuccessful Nigeria is, and the higher the level of anxiety in the land, the more desperate the people become to cry out for love. They seek love as catharsis, as refuge, as compensatory target.
Sadly, every February 14 in the past decade or so, Nigerians remember the need to love and share only on Valentine's Day, and even then, our expression of love is libidinal, selfish, and alimentary. The religions and all the spiritual catechisms preach love. "Love thy neighbour as thyself," says the Scriptures. Confucius, a patron-saint of Lodges and theosophical/ philosophical movements, had reasoned that every man should do unto his neighbours as he would have them do unto him.
Buddhists and other spiritual groups preach that to gain a mastery of self, the first step towards knowledge and illumination (Socrates: "Man know thyself"), the individual must be capable of love. Love comprises the high values of giving, of duty, of virtue. Christian eschatology is built on this irreducibility of love: the Birth, the Death, the Resurrection of Christ, and his entire career, are circumscribed with the context of love. The Holy Quran equally preaches friendship, and loving others, more especially the underprivileged in society. The etymological and historical connection of Valentine's Day, as we know it, with Christian love reiterates the higher normative values that it is supposed to represent.
Hence in Corinthians 13:4-7: "Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not envy. Love does not parade itself. It is not puffed up. It does not behave rudely. It does not seek its own. It is not provoked. Thinks no evil. Does not rejoice in iniquity. But rejoices in the truth. Bears all things. Hopes all things. Endures all things. Love never fails.... And now aside faith, hope, love, these three: but the greatest of thee is love".
Since love is the greatest value of all, it is normal to expect that men and women will celebrate it earnestly, and truthfully. Alas, in Nigeria, we merely pay lip service to love. Even to faith. Even to hope. But we love ceremony, pretense, and ritual. Tomorrow, February 14, all of these three would be on display. And ahead of that moment, there is so much to-ing and fro-ing in the land, so much talk about Valentine's Day - an obsession that has been pushed to new levels by communication technology - Face book, the internet, the cell-phone, e-messages. The power of modern technology makes it possible for love to be professed at the speed of light. The act of love and loving has also become fully commercial. Business opportunists organise travel tours, special evenings, they bake cakes, stock their shops with flowers, perfumes, chocolates, cards dripping with effluvia and sweet-nothings, and every lover boy or lover girl is encouraged to show love by spending money to buy cards and all of these. I used the word obsession earlier.
Last year, Valentine's Day was around mid-week. School proprietors told their pupils to set aside the school uniform for a day, and wear clothes with a touch of red. They were also instructed to show up in school with gifts for a chosen Valentine. Companies also announced to staff that the colour red, would be the chosen dress code for February 14. By 4 p.m, the streets had been taken over by bright splashes of red colours turning the entire city into a love garden. But there was nothing in all of this about love. Or honesty of feelings.
For Nigerians, Lovers' Day is about money and sex. It is a grand ritual of deception. It is all about men and women looking for romantic dalliances; reckless dalliance of a thousand degrees, sex and more sex. Biology gone berserk. Valentine's Day 2009, in many Western capitals is being seen in relation to how lovers and couples will respond to the global economic pinch. Projections in many Western countries indicate a sharp drop in Valentine spending. Relationships could be threatened as lovers try to save costs. In Nigeria, I wager the bet that in Lagos where the Valentine craze is most felt, there'd be a near-commotion on the streets. In matters of sex, Nigerians are less circumspect.
A friend had opined that STJs (short-Time Joints) around Lagos are already fully booked; and restaurants are making special arrangements to accommodate a likely rampaging crowd of lovers. Ordinary Nigerians are yet to start thinking about the economic crunch. Instructively, this year's Valentine's Day falls on a Saturday, a day when many husbands and their partners will be at home. But it is beginning to look like a day when married women may have to embark on an "Operation Hold on to your Husband". When Valentine's Day falls on a regular, working day within the week, unfaithful husbands take advantage of this to attend to their flock of sweethearts. Wives have been known to complain about their husbands returning home rather late on Valentine's Day, with excuses about meetings, and other business commitments. It is in most cases, a day of misery for many wives whose husbands have been taken over by young ladies with more tempting assets. Valentine's Day could well be renamed "Cheaters' Day". It is a test of romantic appeal. It is a day for dating. Parents should keep an eye on their daughters and sons. No other day turns Nigerian women into sex objects more than Valentine's Day. There is so much affirmation of the myth of masculinity on the Day. On Saturday, February 14, 2009, many wives may be in a better position to insist that their spouses must stay at home, receive no suspicious phone calls, and stay with family.
This may sound like an old wives' strategy but it speaks to the reductionism that attends the idea of love and loving in Nigeria. Why is love so restricted to one day in the entire calendar? Love is a habit. An attitude. A way of life. A belief. But when it is reduced to a biological episode, and a set of empty phrases that do not travel beyond the lips, it is the character of society itself that is projected. On Valentine's Day every year, Nigerians do not remember to love widows, or the underprivileged, or the aged. They don't spare a thought for the sick, or the needy. It is all about physical attention. Beauty. Emotional transactions. Love thus defined becomes a means to an end, and not a complete end in itself.
The dissociation is seen in national life. Nigeria is a country in desperate need of love. It is a society that has been taken over by a growing tribe of haters and cynics. Our day-to-day interactions, our language of social contact and negotiation, governance systems, and inter-personal relationships confirm this. Nigerians are so vicious towards one another, so lacking in civility, always you are compelled to wonder whether the churches and mosques are filled on Sundays and Fridays, by imported persons, and not by the same swearing, cursing and unkind Nigerians of our daily encounters.
There is no love on the streets of Nigeria, only unbridled hate. Take the motorists, the motorcyclists who drive recklessly, threatening to push you off the road and maliciously hating you simply because you drive what is in their reckoning, a better car. There is no love either in official circles: the public servants who loot the treasury do not love the rest of us. Those who have been elected to serve us, but who spend more time pursuing their own vanity cannot be men and women of love. All men and women who promote disaffection, religious hate, violence , and who seek willfully to inflict pain on the other lack faith, hope, and love.
Nonetheless, on February 14., they will all pretend to be agents of love - men and women who care. But it is lust that inspires them, not genuine, transparent love - the type that pushes nations to greater heights, and which can only save our nation from perdition.