/Offong Okodio/
Any nation that puts an innocent vocal man in prison attempts turning
him into a radical saint. This has been proven right in the emergence of
President Muhammadu Buhari as the Executive President of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria.
He had had many years of tortuous journey in
governments until he was finally elected the president in 2015.
He
inherited a battered nation staggering towards the brink of precipice,
and has succeeded opening our eyes to see the secret vaults where our
wealth are stacked away from the common pool.
Though he himself had
added some measures of energies to that movement to the brink of
precipice for having been a one-time military dictator that scuttled a
stage in our democratic development, he has been trying with difficulty
to make amend and to prove himself a different person. Perhaps that
informed his decision to drop the title of General from his name.
The situations we see in our country under President Buhari today gives
the idea of war on corruption following the dictate of the rhythms of
certain drums -the rhythms of the time. Of course, every administration
has a style of pursuing corruption away from the nation in a rhythmic
pattern that matches the character of that government.
Series of
developments even under the present administration has proven the former
Federal Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala right in her outcry
that corruption is a monster, as you fight it, it fights back.
Corruption is aggressively fighting back the army of anti-corruption in
the country.
The revelations on the roles of the suspended SGF, Babachir
Lawal, in colluding with some companies that were not even qualified
for the Federal Government’s contracts in the on-going rehabilitation
and reconstruction of the Northeast but the same companies are used to
rake in, through fraudulent procurement process, billions of naira and
paying kickbacks to him, among other issues like the MTN N500,
000,000.00 scandal appear to be the argument of the general public on
the reckless handling of numerous corruption cases in the country.
Quite
a number of the administration’s top functionaries are parading the
corridors of power with shamed faces following a number of corruption
cases identified with them, yet the government looks the other way and
the anti-corruption army take instructions and order from them on who to
prosecute.
The hostility between the DSS and the EFCC over the
handling of the Ikoyi’s $43m NIA scandal has proven that the two
sensitive bodies under the Presidency seem not to work in tandem with
the policy trust of Mr President.
The reaction of the DSS to the EFCC’s
handling of the NIA show of shame in the $43 million scandal is a story
of its own that indicate some lacuna in the war on corruption.
The
logjam between the Presidency and the Senate over the confirmation of
the EFCC chairman, Magu, is a pointer to the fact that there are certain
things going wrong somewhere in the war on corruption.
The enormous
task of discovery of looted funds from both past and serving public
officers, appointed and elected, is a fait-accompli to the
anti-corruption agency to give Buhari’s administration a facelift.
The
inability of the EFCC to properly coordinate and prosecute the many
corruption cases to effective conclusion generate public interest in the
on-going war on corruption, with a constant reminder of how the war was
fought under the administrations of presidents Olusegun Obasnjo, Musa
Yar’dua, and Goodluck Jonathan, thereby giving the impression that war
on corruption often follow the dictate of the rhythms of the time, the
rhythms of certain drums..
The recent dramatic display of opulence
in Minna where the richest Nigerians display over 30 private jets in
honour of IBB on his daughter’s wedding is another pointer to the fact
that the EFCC and other anti-corruption agencies only act the scripts of
their paymasters in the Presidency, as they lack the capacity and
effrontary to question the sources of the private jets owners’ wealth,
who of course must have in one way or the other enriched themselves
through the lopeholds in our system.
Of course, the recklessness in
the handling of the corruption cases over the years is mostly induced
by our inability to clearly define the word “corruption”.
It is very
laughable that close to 60 years of independence, no Nigerian
institution or functionary can rightly define the word “corruption”, and
so the difficulty in fighting or curbing corruption in the country,
with the attendant risk of running the economy aground by the privileged
few.
It was widely reported that the former president, Dr Goodluck
Jonathan, openly said that stealing is not corruption.
And recently, it
was also widely reported that the serving vice president, Mr Yemi
Osibanjo, joined the fray, saying that stealing is not corruption; and
one begins to wonder what it means to pocket the public funds, depriving
a whole lot of others the benefits of being Nigerians! Jonathan and
Osibanjo’s notion on stealing not being corruption is a clear case of
the nation not having the accurate definition of corruption from even
the presidency; and therefore the inability to diagnose the virus eating
deep and deeper into the fabric of our national life and existence.
No
wonder things are handled haphazardly in cleaning the slates and
properly designing the template of our commonwealth! If stealing is not
corruption, that means we can steal public funds and then be treated
like thieves but not as corrupt persons; and, the law against stealing
has an adult face with stiff punishment, while the law against
corruption has a baby face with mild punishment. This is the contraption
that informs Jonathan and Osibanjo’s interpretation.
And the
result is obvious! We have the big thieves, the small thieves, and the
little thieves that swindle our commonwealth and resources thereby
reducing the sixth largest oil producing nation of the world to a
begging nation.
The little thieves suffer retrenchment when caught, the
small thieves suffer prosecution when caught, and the big thieves parade
themselves as messiahs, controlling the system and determining who
rules or govern –all because we are unable to clearly define what
corruption means.
Perhaps, because they stole and are stealing the
public funds, they are not corrupt; which therefore means corruption is
made of sterner stuff.
Where men and women are unable to cover their
tracts or had failed to groom their successors to cover their tracts,
they are afterwards deemed corrupt.
Failure in this tact, you will
certainly be dug out and tagged corrupt; and that is when stealing
becomes corruption. No wonder Nigerians are classified as the smartest
people on earth!
The on-going war on corruption is indeed the best
that ever happened in the history of our country. We have been able to
discover some of the little thieves and the small thieves who have
aligned with the big thieves directly or indirectly to squander our
commonwealth and ruin our national economy.
The Economic and Financial
Crime Commission, EFCC, has opened their secret vaults to show us the
magnitude of what the little thieves and the small thieves have stolen.
The EFCC, though still struggling to define corruption, has truly
exposed to the world that Nigeria is on the brink of precipice; for,
there is no home, no state or nation suffering such untold dispossession
that can truly stand the test of time nor live a buoyant life, both
economically and politically.
Of course, the root cause of African
underdevelopment is the pre-colonial and postcolonial dispossession of
her wealth by Europe through the mechanization of imperialism, using the
big thieves as their agents, hence their unchallenged superlative
status in the country.
But what then is corruption? The word corruption is a noun form of the adjective “corrupt”, which simply describes a perverted character, or depraved person. It means someone who is dishonest in caring for what is entrusted to his care.
Simple!
The word “corrupt” has “bad”, “immoral” and “rotten” as synonyms, which
therefore implies that anyone who is noted to be bad, immoral and rotten
is a corrupt person.
Of course, in our religious, social and cultural
contexts, we know what is meant in judging a person as bad, immoral, and
rotten.
We cannot therefore isolate our religious, social and cultural
evaluation of characters from our economic and political life; doing so
amounts to dressing truth with coat of many colours.
And of course, that
has been our manner when it comes to the issue of corruption, and so
the difficulty in identifying who is corrupt and who is not corrupt; who
is fighting corruption and who is the real culprit.
Until we are
able to clearly define corruption, it will be very difficult to know who
is corrupt and how to properly tackle corruption cases as the nation is
sinking under the weight of corruption.
For the purpose of clarifying
issues as raised in the on-going war on corruption, the focus here is on
anyone who is dishonest in caring for what is entrusted to his care.
This therefore draws our minds to the way and manner we care for
whatever has been entrusted to our care: money, goods, personnel,
students, children, offices, institutions?
When we take a cursory look
at ourselves and at what we do with what is entrusted to our care, then
we would have done some self-examination to know how honest or dishonest
we are to the authority, society, state or nation we are working for.
Socrates says, an unexamine life is not worth living.
As we examine
ourselves individually, sure the inner meter in us called conscience
would tells you are ‘’corrupt’’ in so and so way. And you would ask
yourself, who is not corrupt?
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