When Stockholm Syndrome is not adequate

Social Psychologists will need to come up with new terms to describe what afflicts us in Africa as terms like “Stockholm Syndrome” are simply inadequate.

That some African officials resort to looting the commonwealth is really not what baffles me, my mind just can’t comprehend how some citizens, the same people who are the victims of the grand theft, come out to rationalize and defend the very actions that deprive them of the basic things that make modern life worth living.

My head has been reeling from reading comments by some Ghanaians who are out to defend a presidential staffer, a speechwriter who specializes in plagiarism, over the monumental properties his estranged wife alleged he accumulated in about four years.

What exactly is it that turns many of us into “Capitalist Niggers,” with no more elevating ambition than to engage in the most mind-boggling, “primitive accumulation” - described as the obsessive-compulsive acquisition of money and other material possessions far beyond what is needed for dignified human existence?

How do our officials manage to sleep well at night after treating our national treasury like a war booty, stole more than is necessary to live a wealthy lifestyle in this life and the next, and watch their compatriots struggle to eke our some miserable existence in our numerous Ghosttowns - ghettos within ghettos??

It speaks volume that the man remains at his post despite the charge levelled against him in the public domain!

And what happened to all the state agencies charged with fighting corruption?

©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọmọlàfẹ́

February 12, 2021