Understanding selfishness

I sat quietly at the corner of a restaurant and literally watched my countrymen undo themselves at the table. It was not silver service i.e. where the waiter delivers your meal one by one and no one needs to leave their seat. It was a buffet, which meant that we all had to queue up nicely and arrive at the buffet table to fetch what we would eat. There was salad and Okra. In Nigeria, they certainly don’t go together. Then there is Semolina and a bit of Jollof rice. How possible is that!

But I have often wondered how some decent human beings have fallen to the way of selfishness. What can it possibly be? My Dad used to say hunger should never drive you to steal. But how we arrived at a point where Nigerians otherwise considered decent fell by the wayside is a story for another day. But selfishness is now seen from a different prism. If you do not physically take food from someone’s mouth, it’s not considered selfishness.

Betraying someone, cutting someone to the quick, stealing someone’s proposal as can sometimes happen in my industry is today described as sharpness. I hear people talk about not dulling oneself. It means sharp practices, corruption in any other guise is sharpness. We get angry when international organisations accuse some Nigerians of taking money meant for hospitals and schools for personal aggrandizement. Many children are out of school, and many women die needlessly from childbirth. Someone took the money for these services to last his family, one hundred holidays abroad and eight estates. It’s the story of corruption across the world. Gross selfishness is now considered by some in Nigeria as sharpness. Who had to die for you to get your luxury items?

“Gross selfishness is now considered by some in Nigeria as sharpness. Who had to die for you to get your luxury items?”

But let’s shift gears a little. It was morning in Lagos in one of the leading hotels. Breakfast was a spread. I lodged in this hotel. Top-level members of the cognoscenti lodge here as well. I sat to observe. Juice. Yes, that simple drink, affordable by most at this hotel, was available. Glasses on display were long for water and short for juices. Of course, hotels would usually replenish to a point.

But my countrymen drained out all three juices of pineapple, orange, and apple in a New York minute. You guessed they were getting two tall glasses of juice for themselves without a care in the world if other people got it. Pure selfishness. A man in front of me met only four pieces of battered fish in the chafing dish. He took all four and added to his burgeoning plate of three pieces of chicken, three pieces of beef, and three different types of rice. It did not matter that as I approached him, he could see I had a small serving of salad. He had to deny me the fish. It’s all sharpness.

I wonder what he would teach his children. But note must be made that some of those who are greedy in dishing food at these places are not paying from their pocket. It’s government money or some private sector company’s money. Then, when they retire, they don’t cope. Awoof no get bone.

But God rest my parents. I truly wonder if what they taught me still exists. No matter how small the meat or piece of cake in front of you is, that’s what you pick. You must never go beyond what is in front of you. A lesson in selflessness. At over sixty, I still take what is in front of me, each time, every time. How do we describe jumping a queue? I rest.