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Nigeria: Corruption and Poverty By Zarah Abubakar Ngileruma
Nigeria, the sight of corruption is never hidden. It is an everyday show of a saddening tale of how certain people are going through the lives of deepening frustration and hopelessness.
The third most corrupt nation, worst example of growth without development in Africa, a hotchpotch of traditionally oriented economy. Whatever economic growth rate was recorded did not lead to any remarkable rise in the standard of living of the masses. Corruption, greed and disunity now become the most dominant features of our national life. There was a lot of conspicuous consumption as politicians flaunted their newly acquired wealth in the midst of their poverty-stricken countrymen and women.
But it was in politics that the country faced the biggest confusion. Nigerian leaders were described as cool-headed moderates while our country is a showcase of democracy in Africa.
In Nigeria, we daily witness the horrible images of the ruin of poverty and what it has brought to our people – some poor Nigerians, visibly frustrated, perching on roadsides, on busy highways, at bus stops combining refuse dumps for food and ‘valuables’, begging for alms etc. There are many other poor Nigerians, who live under bridges; in dirty and dilapidated buildings; against a normally decent choice. Many of these displaced populations have managed to raise offsprings within their endangered settlements; some of them maimed by falling bricks or other harmful objects or even diseased as a result of the poor quality of the environment in which they live. As expected, life for them has come to be rather short, nasty and brutish, because their already hassled life as further curtail by the ravage of poverty, feeling of rejection and denial of human charity unkindly or rather mind boggling the society, and its humanitarian agencies move on, unperturbed because we have come to believe that all men are not equal; some should die and be buried rather miserably without dignifying rites.
These scenarios and other silent images of inequality and denial which daily confront us tend to confirm that justice is yet to be done in Nigeria. We live in a society where the poor are severely endangered and have got no place to hide. I had imagined that government is meant to address the condition of poverty in any society. The leaders fly over the heads of the people they are meant to lead to get to their destination, and they fly back pretending that they do not know the condition of the poor man. T hese poor people are creatures nearing extinction; they are the choice recruits of politicians as thugs. The children of the poor are always rundown on busy highways during their hawking endeavors. At school, they are the first to be sent home, not for poor performance, but for failing to pay tuition on time. It is a horrifying reality that as large as Nigeria is there seem not to be enough room, enough homes, and enough food for the poor.
Corruption now appears to have become a permanent feature of the Nigerian policy. It had become completely institutionalized, entered into the realm of culture and the value systems; it is now normal and no longer an aberration. The young ones are born into it, grow up in it, live with it, and possibly will die in it. The aged are not left out as they are re-socialized and begin to conform to it. Corruption has virtually turned Nigeria into the land of starvation and a debtor nation in spite of the nation’s enormous resources.
Having accepted that corruption is now part and parcel of the value system, the logical question then is “what is the way out?” When you cut a tree at the top, the tree grows up again, but when you uproot the tree, it dies completely. From this background, it is better to take care of the roots of the corruption rather than the symptoms. Two factors make up corruption in Nigeria; the first factor is the problem of poverty and second, unemployment.
Poverty remains the main root and the anchor of corruption in Nigerian politics. Poverty has increased over the past few years, in line with deterioration in the economic and social poverty line. The gap between the rich and the poor is so wide that the rich ones can afford to buy even the consciences of the poor ones. There is lack of social security while unemployment has reached alarming levels.
Unemployment and poverty go hand in hand in an equitable society. It is aggravated by failure to assure equality of opportunity for all the citizens. The people now become extremely vulnerable to all kinds of social vices which include corruption. They are hurt, damaged and discounted by the very society that should protect them, promote their interest and welfare. Their past is blighted, their present compromised and their future endangered, mortgaged and at risk.
As government engineers to re-invent Nigeria how will those sensational jargons they spin day after day bring meaning, succor and hope to our poor comrades? It is beyond the human contraption called politics to locate and address the problem of the poor. It goes beyond the rhetoric’s of hypocritical politicians who hide under silky eloquence to deceive the masses. Party ideological framework, no matter its level of articulation, cannot heal the social wound of the poor.
The most educated and politically experienced candidate brought out by any of the contesting parties in the coming 2007 presidential election cannot give meaning and hope to the poor of this nation. We all know from past records and unfolding events that poverty and its eradication, despite the dubious palliatives the ruling class present: PAP, better life, etc, are not in sight. ‘The poor can only smile when a man of conscience and sense of humanity emerges as our leader. One who can come down from his high horse and walk the streets to feel the pulse of the greater majority’.
I do not see hope in the character of the people angling for leadership come 2007, they are political machineries that have been hardened and obsessed by the criminal and corrupt invention of the political power in “ASO ROCK”. In the next election, as politicians meet to strategize and develop their manifestoes and their often bogus speeches, let them insert in the first page a practical progranmme for the poor like providing enough food, water, free and functional education, good health care and modest security for life and property. We need basic things of this life to be happy and pleased. To make Nigeria rich, my country needs the right type of leadership for many years to come. She needs leaders who will see things steadily and see them whole; men and women who will know that the world is neither their master nor their servant; men and women who will accept their limitations and be creative within those limits. These leaders must have a great deal of self-discipline, selfless spirit, vision and a deep appreciation of the country’s basic problems. Those who can fight and destroy poverty, put the greatest emphasis on education, science and technology and build a modern self-reliant economy that will be based on the imaginative adaptation of socialist ideas to our peculiar circumstances, until Nigeria b ecomes a great modern nation like China or Canada. Nigeria will also need a decisive revolution in education in order to effectively meet her leadership responsibilities.
In this respect, my country has a lot to learn from the rest of the developed world.
Zarah Abubakar Ngileruma Department of Mass Communication, University of Maiduguri, P.M.B 1069, Maiduguri.
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