Corruption,
especially in high places, may be an ineradicable feature of human society and
its proportion and influence can be of tolerable, manageable proportions that
infect but neither grounds nor kill a nation.
On the
other hand, corruption can be so all-consuming as to render the entire system
ineffective and terminally ill. Nigeria, it would seem, suffers from the latter
category. This is why the country has neither developed nor progressed
meaningfully to justify its huge natural resources, its age as a self-governing
federation and its standing as the most populous black country in the world.
As
noted earlier, Nigerian public servants and their fellow looters working in the
private sector have acquired a nuclear-level audacity to steal hundreds of
millions and billions of naira.
Three
reasons, as previously pointed out, may be considered responsible for this
betrayal of trust. One is a lack of self-control with power and money. The
other is a lack of a sense of shame of the repercussion of detection. The third
is that corruption pays handsomely in this country at no cost to the
perpetrator. Should the punishment be swift and severe enough, a man without
self-discipline or a woman who lacks a sense of shame would think twice before
stealing from the treasury.
Once
again, what sense does it make to ask a man convicted of stealing billions of
naira to pay a few hundreds of thousands of naira? How can a woman who defrauded her business
clients to the tune of millions be jailed for a few months and sent home to
enjoy the rest? How can anyone reasonably defend a judicial decision to prevent
law enforcement agencies from investigating and arresting a former public
office holder?
While
the argument is often that the nation needs more laws to curb corruption, the
truth is that there are enough laws in the statute books, if well enforced, to
rid Nigeria of corruption. But there is a desperate dearth of honourable,
courageous, patriotic men and women to do their enforcement duties no matter
whose ox is gored. Too many in the entire gamut of law maintenance – the
executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches of government are in the public
service for self, but not for country. If the spirit and letter of extant laws
were implemented today, Nigeria would turn around for the better within only a
few years. The thieves would stop stealing and the intending thieves would
refrain.
It is worth
reiterating that the values of the elite constitute the dominant value that
drives the wider society’s values. We cannot say it enough that the Nigerian
elite—political, traditional, religious, intellectual, business — has infected
the rest of society with selfishness, avarice, and mindless ostentation
No
society, again, has ever developed on the greed and wasteful conspicuous
consumption of its elite. None. The
burden of redirecting Nigerian values and repositioning the country for serious
thinking as well as productivity lies squarely upon the leaders of Nigeria.
This must start from the political leadership. The menace, of course, has eaten
deep into the very foundation of Nigeria’s existence and hardly is anyone
immune to it. The temple of justice, the judiciary, and the most important
internal security institution, the police, have even been fingered as part of
the most corrupt institutions in the country.
Once
again, it would seem that the greater access public officials have to public
funds, the greater their propensity to steal staggering sums from the treasury.
The startling revelations of billions of dollars that have been misappropriated
in the last 10 years should explain the dire poverty of the people and the
country’s underdevelopment.
Nigeria’s
National Bureau of Statistics’ report the other day that a total sum of N400
billion is spent on bribes each year since 2015 in a classic illustration of
how the scourge of corruption is indeed capable of killing the country if
nothing is done about it.
Indeed,
corruption is Nigeria’s most powerful enemy, which both the government and the
good people of this country must strive to defeat. (Guardian)
No comments:
Post a Comment