“And unless we summon the courage to laugh at their pretensions, resist their charms, and strip their crowns of borrowed feathers, our societies will remain as they are, prisons where the wardens are blind, boastful, and stupid, and the prisoners cheer them on”.
BY MAHFUZ MUNDADU
It is a tragedy of our times that societies no longer fall because of plagues, droughts, or even the collapse of trade routes, but because of the unholy trinity of human absurdities: the pious fool, the arrogant idiot, and the compound ignorant. Each one, in his own grotesque theatre, dances to a tune that ruins communities more effectively than locusts on a millet field. You can pave roads, build schools, and import whatever, but if your village square is ruled by either or all of these three, your children will grow up eating slogans and your grandchildren will inherit empty rhetoric, cracked promises, with dreams turning into nightmares.
The pious fool is the man who ties a “rosary” so tightly round his wrist that he can no longer feel the pulse of his own heart. He mistakes muttering for morality, ablution for absolution, and length of beard for a depth in wisdom. He is the one who will argue endlessly about whether angels are right-handed or ambidextrous while his neighbour’s roof is collapsing in the rain. You meet him in the mosque, in the church, in the shrine, always on time, always loud in devotion, yet always absent when a widow or an orphan needs to be fed. He is the one who, when reminded that religion is meant to change society, not just decorate tongues for optics, snaps back, “Brother, do not mix faith with the affairs of this dirty world.” And yet, if you follow him home, you will find him arguing with his wife about why his cousin got the juicier portion of –ranka-daɗe’s – handout.
Rumi once said that the man who carries a book on purity yet spits on his neighbour is like a donkey laden with holy texts. It carries wisdom without ever tasting it. The pious fool is exactly this donkey, marketing his righteousness from the pulpit of ignorance. Society, in turn, kneels to him, mistaking his noise for knowledge. And once a society bows to the pious fool, it begins to lose its capacity to tell light from shadow, perfume from stench.
Then there is the arrogant idiot. He struts into the square with a chest so inflated you would think he swallowed a tractor tube. His arrogance is his only degree, and his ignorance is his only qualification. He is the man who sneers at books because he once stood beside someone who skimmed a newspaper headline. He despises reflection because his tongue outruns his brain. You meet him on podiums and on social media platforms where wisdom is measured by decibels, not substance. He is forever “making history,” though the only history he writes is the kind that generations curse.
The arrogant idiot is dangerous not because he lacks intelligence but because he lacks humility. He sees every challenge as an insult, every correction as treason, and every differing opinion as blasphemy. Like the crow that paints itself white and calls itself a – ƙwaaƙwa– a goose. He mistakes pomp for progress. And because societies today prefer sensationalism to substance, he often rises fastest. Nations have been ruined not by external armies but by arrogant idiots who signed alliance with their pens dipped in vanity, not ink.
Rumi warned that arrogance is a veil that blinds the eyes of the heart. When the arrogant idiot stands at the helm, the ship steers straight for the rocks, and he blames the passengers for sitting on the wrong side. And yet, the people clap, because nothing entertains the masses more than watching a fool insist, he is a genius.
But the deadliest of them all is the compound ignorant. Unlike the pious fool, who at least respects the idea of virtue (even if he misses its meaning), or the arrogant idiot, who at least believes he is leading (even if he leads down to a bottomless pit), the compound ignorant is a vacuum disguised as a volcano of wisdom. He does not know, and he does not know that he does not know. Worse, he does not want to know. He dismisses doctors while swallowing – aɗaral-bakhuur – from the roadside; he mocks scholars while failing to spell his own name; he sneers at architects and engineers while living inside the structure they built. He is the one who, when asked why the bridge collapsed, replies, “Because the enemies of progress are jealous.”
The compound ignorant is the most frightening because he is incurable. With the pious fool, you can whisper that religion is also justice; with the arrogant idiot, you can pray that time humbles him. But with the compound ignorant, you face a man who builds walls of hallucinations and windows of delusion. He swallows conspiracy theories as breakfast, vomits them as dinner, and teaches his admirers to call it a balanced diet. He does not argue from knowledge but from the sheer intoxication of pomposity. Like a cock crowing at midnight, he thinks his sound commands the sun.
Societies that permit these three to dominate do not collapse dramatically; they rot slowly but surely. The pious fool turns prayer into theatre, the arrogant idiot turns service into a circus, and the compound ignorant substitutes scholarly discourse with superstition. Before long, activities become gambling theatre, schools become warehouses of parroting, and discourse becomes louder than empty barrel. By the time the people wake up, they are already deep in a desert, carrying buckets with no wells in sight.
Take Nigeria, for example, or any postcolonial state where politics has become a masquerade show. The pious fool waves his scriptures to bless thieves in agbada; the arrogant idiot sits in a chamber, convinced that GDP grows when he grows louder; and the compound ignorant sits in the crowd, masking in the euphoria of his ego.” By the next (s)election, the roads are still filled with potholes, hospitals with corpses, and schools with chalk dust, but the trio are fatter, louder, “holier”, and somehow more indispensable. Mirror this to our circle, and some semblance of familiarity strikes.
What makes this trio succeed is not their strength but society’s weakness. We love being deceived. We clap for the pious fool because he rationalises our spiritual and moral bankruptcy; we tolerate the arrogant idiot because he entertains us with his scandals; we become the echo chamber of the compound ignorant because it feels less lonely to chant nonsense together. As Orwell once wrote, the people can survive bombing but not lies. A lie told daily in the mosque, on television, or at the market square soon becomes holy scripture.
Rumi tells of a parable: a group of blind men touched an elephant. One felt the trunk and said, “It is a snake”. Another touched the leg and said, “It is a column.” Another touched the ear and said, “It is a fan.” Each clung to his fragment as if it were the whole truth. The pious fool clings to his rituals, the arrogant idiot to his vanity, the compound ignorant to his illusions. And while these three argue, the elephant walks away laughing. Society, however, follows them into the pit.
If you want to see the danger of these three, look at history. The pious fool cheered the Inquisition while science was burned; the arrogant idiot led nations into world wars because celebrating diversity was beneath his dignity; the compound ignorant turned rumours into genocides, from Rwanda to Myanmar and Gaza. Every century has been scarred not necessarily earthquakes but by the stupidity of these three, multiplied by the cowardice of the silent majority.
So, what is to be done? First, never confuse religiosity with righteousness. The man who prays five times yet slanders five times is not devout but deceitful. Second, never mistake confidence for competence. The loudest man in the room is often the least informed. Third, never reward ignorance with applause. When someone says two plus two is five, do not clap because he is devout and committed. Correct him, even if he calls you arrogant. Societies rise when truth becomes stubborn and unyielding, not when lies become polite.
But, I fear my caution may be ignored, because fools have always been more daring and entertaining than sages. And today, hashtags and cheap slogans are defeating us more effectively than pandemics. The pious fool will continue to sell paradise on credit, the arrogant idiot will continue to auction dignity for applause –biyu-aahu – and the compound ignorant will continue to baptise ignorance as common sense garnished with intelligence.
My friends, beware of the pious fool, the arrogant idiot, and the compound ignorant. They do not just ruin society; they ruin generations. And unless we summon the courage to laugh at their pretensions, resist their charms, and strip their crowns of borrowed feathers, our societies will remain as they are, prisons where the wardens are blind, boastful, and stupid, and the prisoners cheer them on.
The tragedy is not that these three exist. The tragedy is that we follow them.
