They are not motivated to change themselves and become perfect. They are not motivated to change other people and make them become perfect. They are not motivated to change reality and make it what it is not, perfect. They deal with imperfect reality as it is.

Generally, politicians tend not to be socially withdrawn, introspective, introverted, and idealistic neurotics; they tend to be socially outgoing extraverted persons.

Appearances would suggest that politicians ought to be persons who work for society’s common good. But appearances are sometimes deceiving. Some politicians tend to have the same characteristics as criminals. Most criminals tend to have narcissistic and or antisocial personal disorders.

Criminals tend to feel special and worthy of other people’s admiration; they tend to think that they deserve getting attention from other people and that they are not obligated to reciprocate and give attention to other people.

Some narcissistic personalities and all antisocial personalities tend to exploit other people. They feel superior to other people and rationalize using other people to achieve their desired superiority goals. They use people to attain their goals and then discard them when they are no longer useful to them. Indeed, they tend to see other people, whom they perceive as inferior to them, as existing to serve them. They tend to have a sense of entitlement, and feel that they are entitled to the good things of life and that other people and society exist to give them those things they are entitled to by virtue of being who they are, special. Thus a narcissistic politician may believe that he is unique and ought to prove it by going to war and conquer new lands for his people. He may justify sending young solders (18-38 olds, those who do the actual fighting and dying at wars) to war with the notion that they are fighting a noble course; nobility as he, of course, defines it, not as it is, in fact. Gullible young persons die so that the narcissistic politician may attain his desired fame and glory and write his name in history books as an outstanding politician. (So far in human history, great leaders tend to be those who won great wars, so narcissistic leaders who aspire after greatness often indulge in unnecessary wars.)

The desire for fame and glory is narcissistic; using other people to achieve ones desired fame and glory is antisocial.

Nigerian politicians carry the universal trend for politicians to be somewhat narcissistic and or antisocial in personality structure to excesses. The typical Nigerian politician is totally narcissistic and antisocial. He is totally self centered and thinks that other Nigerians exist to admire him. He feels special and worthy of other people’s admiration. He does not care for other Nigerians; in fact, he does not care for any other human being. He sees other people as existing for him to exploit, to use to achieve his infantile desire for attention and glory. He uses people and discards them when they are no longer useful to him. He thinks only of himself and not the public.

The Nigerian politician is a crook, pure and simple; he is a despicable and contemptible human being. He belongs in the garbage dump. Any one who respects the Nigerian politician is respecting a criminal. Throw these subhuman apes masquerading as human beings into the bonfire and burn them. Their mental, emotional and spiritual ages are below that of the great apes like chimpanzees and gorillas; the later, at least, love their kind and work for them; Nigerian politicians do not work for their people, they exploit their people for their belly and their belly, mercifully, is for worms. To call a Nigerian politician a human being is to insult that term; he is an animal.

Human beings are individually unique. Each of them is different from others. Therefore, one should hesitate in making general statements about them. Be that as it may, I make a general statement about Nigerian politicians. They are thieves. I know that this general statement probably does not apply to all of them, but it applies to too many of them that one might as well consider all of them thieves. Where the necessary exception to every general rule is so negligible one must go with the generalization.

I believe that most Nigerian politicians are narcissistic and or anti social personalities. Furthermore, I now suspect that most Nigerian politicians are born with a tendency towards criminal behavior. I think that they probably inherited thieving genes.

I am not a microbiologist or geneticist; if I were one, I would have undertaken a study to see if stealing is in the genes of Nigerian politicians. Since I cannot perform this research by myself, I am urging geneticists everywhere to undertake the study of the possible genetic etiology of Nigerian politicians’ proclivity to criminal behaviors.

We simply have to find out if these people are born criminals. Such finding will save us a lot of headache. If they are born as criminals then we do not have to worry about them. We simply assume that they are going to steal and then do something in anticipation of their stealing tendencies.

If they are born criminals, either we simply leave them alone, to steal to their hearts’ content and not care for their people, or we build prisons and enact draconian laws and should any of them steal, not waste our times debating putative sociological reasons why they stole, but just clamp them into prisons, lock the doors and throw away the keys.

We should get these criminals locked up in prisons until genetic engineers come up with a way to engineer out the putative criminal genes in them. We do not need to be sentimental with these criminals. We must keep them locked up for their and society’s good. And we should not feed them either; they should feed themselves. We could build prisons in remote areas and have the prisoners work on their own farms, obtain their own food and feed themselves. Society has no business feeding and supporting garbage; refuse ought not to be kept alive, it either dies or finds a way to support itself.

Elsewhere, I described the thieving behaviors of Nigerian politicians and do not need to rehash it here. At any rate, everybody already knows that the term Nigerian politician is synonymous with being a corrupt person, a thief and attention seeker.

Contemporary Nigerian politicians are totally self centered and have no social interests in their behaviors. They exhibit the same characteristics as their forefathers, those who sold their brothers and sisters into slavery and apparently did not feel guilty and remorseful for this criminal activity.

Beginning from around 900 AD, Africans sold their people to Arabs; and from around 1500 AD they sold their people to Europeans. African slave trade, thus, lasted between 900-1900, a period of over one thousand years.

For over one thousand years, Africans sold their people into slavery. They must have developed a culture of selling people and a culture of not caring for their people.

I postulate a thesis that Africans’ one thousand year history of selling each other has led to their development of anti social personality disorders. These people do not love one another; they use one another and, in fact, seem to enjoy causing each other pain. Like sociopaths every where, they seem to have no remorse and guilt feeling when they do wrong; and worse, they seem to enjoy hurting other people.

The Nigerians that I know are depraved creatures. They are fallen so low that only God knows how we are going to transform them into caring and loving human beings.

I think that one thousand years of evil behavior, selling their people into slavery, has led to genetic mutation and selection in Africans. I think that those Africans who survived slavery were largely those with preponderance towards antisocial behaviors.

I will be very frank with you: when I see a Nigerian, the word association that comes to my mind is thief.

I have never seen a more thieving people as Nigerians. How else do you explain their not helping their people, their stealing public money and redirecting it to their personal use, when the income per capita of the average Nigerian is $1 a day? Nigerian thievish politicians roll in millions and billions of stolen dollars while their fellow country men are malnourished and live in abject poverty. These people must have some sort of genetic programming to psychopathic behaviors. We might as well study and understand the genetic roots of these people’s sociopathy.

I have given up trying to understand why Nigerians are always stealing; I have given up trying to explain their unacceptable criminal behavior sociologically. These days, I just assume that these people are born thieves. Their thieving behavior no longer surprises me. What I would like to do is for those with genetic engineering skills to study the genes of Nigerians, indeed all Africans, to see if they are born with a tendency towards criminality.

Sociological and psychological explanations of why Nigerians do the incredible things they do, do not seem to cut it with any rational person any more. These people simply seem to exist only to care for themselves; to steal as much money as they could from the public treasury. They could care less for their fellow country men and women. If that is the case, then let us not bother trying to understand why they are spiritually and psychologically stunted and warped, let us understand the biological genesis of their malady and treat them medically, if it is possible to do so.

This idealist has reached the limit of idealism. I think that it is now time to pay attention to empiricism, to the possible biological genesis of most human behaviors. So let us get on with it; let us do genetic, not social-psychological studies of why people do what they do.

I do not want to hear misguided black persons crying fowl, trying to prevent such studies on the ground that it stereotypes the black race. If such black persons do not want their race to be seen as criminals, they ought to be telling their people to stop stealing too much. Some of us simply no longer want to hear excuses and rationalizations why these people steal.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji, PhD

Ozodi@africainstituteseattle.org

November 10, 2005

PS: I will send this and supporting materials to those who are in a position to do “Genetic Study of Nigerian Politicians’ Proclivity to Narcissistic and Anti social Behaviors”.