80% of Nigerian graduates are on their own. 80% of Nigerian prisoners are also on their own. Both groups share a common bond - they are under the backward influence of Yoruba culture. That these are the results of Yoruba cultural practices is obvious by looking at how Olusegun Obasanjo destroyed the rule of law from 1999 to 2007. Obasanjo himself is the victim of his Yoruba norms. In Yoruba land, the laws are not important because Yoruba norms are supreme and override the enactments of the state. Gainful employment is less important than criminal activities because the Yoruba mind is caught up in his culture’s ideas about life and progress. According to the Yoruba culture, complacency and dependency are virtues to be pursued with murderous vigor and rage. Think of Adedibu and Peter Fayose. Or think of Bola Ige or Funso Williams. While practicing these two virtues, the Yoruba man can kill another Yoruba man; his Yoruba culture and people guarantee defense and protection, making the laws of Nigeria irrelevant and mute. The 20% of the Yoruba people who can murder their way to the top are blessed and idolized as the heroes of the Yoruba culture.

Even if his pessimism doesn’t seem wholly warranted, a sense of foreboding surely is, which is why his warnings have to be taken seriously. Mr. Phillips writes that the inventors and marketers of the new financial instruments didn’t entirely understand them. An executive of Fidelity International says a panicky feeling has set in on Wall Street because no one knows where the risks really are. The finance minister of France observes that investments may have reached such a level of complexity that no one can assess them. And Charles R. Morris, in his own gloomy book, “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown,” reports that even Citigroup’s chief financial officer “did not know how to value his holdings.