Everyone in the country today is talking
about how unbridled corruption has ruined the nation. But what I think
is actually taking place is a celebration of the same vice at every
opportunity. It sounds like an institutional hypocrisy whenever the
government makes statements indicating an official disposition to
confront the demon of corruption that is ravaging the moral fabrics of
the Nigerian society. How do we explain, let alone, justify the
phenomenon wherein someone who we all saw in the morning without a dime
in his pocket suddenly returns home in the evening a multi-millionaire
and the family, the community and the state will not ask him questions
about the “miracle” affluence.
Last week, nearly all the mass media in
the country reported that a top General was almost swindled the sum of
N300m in the supposedly ‘cashless Lagos.’ Typically, they failed to
disclose the name of the serving army officer who is so rich that he was
almost defrauded of such a stupendous sum. The next question should
have been: how did he come about such money?
Let’s assume that the General in
question is the real “Oga at the top,” it would still be necessary to
ask him of the source(s) of so much money. We all know that it is
impossible for a serving military officer (be he a Field Marshal) to
have amassed so much cash even if he has never spent a dime of his
salaries and other legitimate emoluments since enlistment.
In sane societies, the law enforcement
agencies would have since been asking how he came about such money. Of
course, the taxman would have been knocking at his door seeking to know
how much of the lot (loot?) was paid to the society by way of tax.
Because this is a miracle economy where anything goes, nobody is going
to ask any question in the face of such a glaring mismatch between
possible legitimate income and the wealth-in-hand. That explains, for
example, why nobody queried the heartless pension fund thieves as they
carted away billions of other people’s naira: Not their banks, not their
churches, not their families, not the taxman or the police.
People loot the nation and then go to
their churches to give testimonies of “what God has done” and the
congregation in apparent endorsement chorus: “Hallelujah!” Traditional
rulers call them for chieftaincy conferment; equally, fraudulent
awards-distributing agencies, both official and private,
enthusiastically join in the fray to ‘recognise’ the new rich men in
town while the government gives its own final seal to the whole
aberration with national awards.
It is really questionable if the
society, taking a cue from the churches and the government, is not
actively promoting corruption and its associated criminalities by the
way it acquiesces to sudden and unexplained affluence. There are many
ways to earn good money. It could be from paid employment, business,
inheritance, gift or a lottery haul. Of course, more money could also be
made (not earned) by heist, robbery and fraud. While the first set of
sources are generally legitimate and therefore encouraged and promoted
by all decent societies, the other set of sources are strictly forbidden
and punishable. Our economy is unduly distorted by corruption as
legitimate incomes are made valueless by illegitimate ones: bad money
drives away good money, they say.
Unfortunately, the universal code of
good behaviour is ignored in Nigeria by all those whose duty it is to
enforce same, including religious institutions and the community at
large. It would seem as if the operative code of conduct is that which
promotes the belief that the “end justifies the means.” This abominable
state of affair is made possible by the massive corrosion of societal
values by an unethical elite class that has subverted the
socio-political process to gain power and, naturally, brought with them a
behavioural trait that suited their otherwise low station in life and
since it is natural for people to look up to their “elite”, it became
the reality that misfits and ill-prepared individuals became the ruling
class which then imposed their base culture on everyone below.
The beginning of this moral slide is
generally traceable to the unfortunate intervention of the military in
the politics of Nigeria which made it possible for erstwhile bodyguards
to kill and replace their masters in office as the new helmsmen. Under
the new order, anything was possible: powerless today, very powerful
tomorrow; poor today, a rich big man tomorrow all with no questions
asked. It was a revolution of sorts.
It was also the era in which prophets
and pastors who were ex-communicated from the established churches for
sundry sins broke away and dispersed to form their own churches, more
like businesses than religion, decorated themselves with high ecumenical
titles like archbishops, overseers and other bogus names.
Rather than preach about salvation, they
opted to harp on prosperity and affluence to congregations already
gripped with acute poverty and misery and, naturally, their message hit
its target and the churches proliferated while sins blossomed. These
were not the pastors that would preach against corruption because their
own doctrines were also based largely on corruption and falsehood.
Thieves and murderers rush to their ‘fellowships’ to give offerings and
in exchange sought spiritual cover for their sins. Everything but
righteousness became acceptable!
Whereas it was the expectation of
Aristotle and other men of wisdom that only educated (not necessarily
with degrees) and cultured people should lead society under his general
pontification of the ‘Philosophy King,’ it however became the case that
leadership recruitment in Nigeria for a very long time was restricted to
coupists and their cronies. That was why before MKO Abiola of blessed
memory won a presidential election in 1993, no previous Nigerian leader
was formally educated beyond the ordinary level when Ghana already had
an Nkrumah with a solid CV while Leopold Senghor, the philosopher, held
sway in Senegal, etc.
It became impossible to tell the people
that honesty pays when fraudsters, coupists and other felons constituted
the ruling class. By whatever means possible, others also want to get
to the top and join in the fray, more so, as they couldn’t beat them,
and the easiest route, it turned out, is fraud and criminality and that
is what has given character to the Nigeria of today where you dare not
ask anyone the source of his wealth
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