For a society to develop (in all aspects
and areas of human endeavour – technology, agriculture, governance, industrial,
infrastructure, communication, transportation, sports, youth development,
labour and employment, human and natural resources utilisation, etc.), there
must be elements of complete sincerity, altruism, commitment, willingness and
will-power, cooperation, diversification, tolerance, unalloyed patriotism and
love for each of the component peoples
and for the country.
There must be an absolute ostracism of corruption
in the society, or being humans, must be kept to the absolute minimum and not
tolerated.
It is very simple, yet very complex,
especially in a multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-religious society such as
Nigeria. But when we observe and fully absorb what has happened, and is
happening in most developed countries, East or West, that we like to crave, and
emulate from Nigeria, all these traits above are there to see.
The developed countries of the world
today did not achieve development, peace and progress in a day, or even in a
century. Their commitment, perseverance, sincerity of purpose, focus have been
painstaking, some covered with blood and gore, iniquity, denial,
self-awareness, admission of guilt and retrospection of their past history.
They have recognised, agonised, and
admitted their mistakes or bad deeds; made amends and adjustments and moved on
to concentrate of not only nation building, but making life easy for their
citizens, and indeed foreigners living amongst them.
We are still sitting down in Africa
passing blame on and damning Britain, France, etc for taking slaves and then
colonising us and then abandoning us with their religion and brand of
governance; then heaping abuses on the Americans for neo-colonialism and
corrupting our leaders and now the Chinese for attempting to take over our
lands and lives for their own benefit.
Every society, throughout the millennia
of history have had to do something to survive, and to develop. And this
includes even Africans to a very large extent, though confined within our
continent. We have also fought internecine wars of attrition and conquered each
other, taking slaves, slaughtering whole villages or communities and taking
over each other’s lands and wives and children as slaves, to be sold to
themselves and later to Arabs raiders and European slave traders.
When you have government officials
looting the treasury every day, any kind of development is stunted and
prohibited. It is just plain impossible to develop, as resources needed for
progress are frittered away, profligacy and mismanagement are the order of the
day and corruption have taken over the everyday areas of endeavour and lives of
the people, from leaders to followers.
Appointment of mediocre into public and government
positions, just to satisfy nepotist, tribal, religious and political favours
has already condemned development of any kind to the backwaters. Election of
people of doubtful integrity into political positions means selfishness and
corruption in governance. It is all there for us to see, it is not rocket
science.
In Nigeria, the endemic and flagrant
corruption, conscious and barefaced nepotism, deliberate sabotage of
everything, gross ineptitude in governance, insincerity of purpose and lack of
vision in legislation, corrupt and slow justice, will always preclude any form
of human and national development. It just won’t work. We can’t eat our cake
and have it.
I've been writing and pleading to
Nigerians that "religion or ethnicity" are not, should not, be our
problems, but Corruption, stemmed from our Oil and our greedy politicians and
leaders.
Let there be Oodua, Biafra or Arewa countries, and the corruption will
be even more massive. I don't even think all these calls for Restructuring,
blah blah blah will solve our problems. We need a proper reorientation, and in
a way, the minority tribes hold the aces.
Since 1999 (and I must admit even since
1966) Nigerians have seen, experienced and have become inured to massive
corruption, profligacy, ineptitude and outright brainless disregard for good
governance. Nothing seems to have changed in the current dispensation. The
mind-boggling looting and wasting of the country’s abundant resources are still
going on unabated, and with even more brazenness. What is abnormal has become a
normal way of life for us, so much that we cannot distinguish between good and
evil, or between abnormality and normality. We are in a spiral of depravation
and dishonesty in our everyday lives.
The people make up the Government; they
cannot be separated. In any country passionate on development, they do not
elect or appoint charlatans and jokers and criminals into public positions.
We always make the mistake, to our
eternal suffering, of separating the government from the people. Who makes up
the government? The people. But once we elect or appoint people into
government, we leave them on their own, and believe they should do everything;
we don't monitor them, we don't make them accountable. As such, they do
anything they like. They loot the treasury, they become lazy, they become
oppressive and arrogant, they start acting like mini-gods. And then we, the
people outside government, start moaning and complaining, when it is too late
to call our errant representatives to order.
When we say Nigerians are lazy, do not
separate adults from youths (in fact, the adults are worse than the youths) or
government from people. There are millions of hard-working Nigerians, in the
country and all over the world - we know, that is a fact. But unfortunately, it
is the few lazy ones, mostly based in Nigeria, who dominate government and rule
us. And it these indolent cliques who make the most noise (and crimes) that we
see every day, and the world see every day. How can a Senator who works less
than 60 days a year be earning N40 million a month while a teacher in a
secondary school, works 9 months in a year, earns less than N40,000 a month?
Isn't that lethargy for the Senator and his ilk?
"The problem of Nigeria is not
Corruption. The problem of Nigeria is Unpunished Corruption"
-- The Guardian (NIGERIA)
“No system should be 100% democratic or
autocratic. A good system is a blend of both. A good leader knows when to shift
from one to the other.” -
Unknown Author
“To fight corruption in a Corrupt
system, you don’t follow Due Process; you follow the Necessary Process.”
- Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation.
I am of the opinion that corruption in
Nigeria started from the top (those in government) and trickled down to the
people. I have often heard stories of how honest Nigerians were in the past,
how newspaper vendors would leave their stalls unattended and people would
still drop the money for every newspaper that they picked up, how dishonesty by
a person in a community brought shame and disgrace on the person's entire
family.
Somewhere along the course of our
history, bribery (which was often done secretly) became a norm. I remember
vividly who the head of state at the time was. I also noticed how morals as a
people took a nosedive. It all started from the top.
However, I do agree that the solution
can start from the bottom and we push it up to the top. I admit that we all
have an individual role to play.
But to be frank, cleaning up our country
would be much faster if it started from the top.
Corruption represents a threat for
democracy, for law supremacy, social equality and justice by undermining the
market economy and endangering the stability in public institutions.
Where does salvation lies for Nigeria?
•
Corrupt,
selfish, insensitive and unsympathetic political leaders?
•
Antiquated,
lethargic corrupt civil servants and public officials?
•
Greedy
and devious banking/financial executives?
•
Dubious
and mediocre business magnates?
•
Tainted
and compromised academician?
•
Totally
befuddled, desperate and lazy youth?
•
Compromised
and mediocre judiciary?
•
Compromised,
biased and lazy press and media?
•
Gullible
and discordant hate-filled followers?
DO WE HAVE ANY HOPE OF, OR, FOR A NATION
AND COUNTRY?
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