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Nigerians, When Will this Hypocrisy Stop? Terkura Aku
When the EFCC published the names of 135 Public Officials it had investigated and found wanting, the release was followed by a large outcry by many Nigerians.
Many of these men and women rose in outrage, with one form of condemnation or another regarding the list and the intention of the anti graft agency. Some people dismissed the release as the PDP’s game plan to retain power, while others simply regarded it as President Obasanjo’s unending vendetta against his enemies, perceived and real.
While some of these fears may have legitimate basis, I believe majority of them were driven by factors other than the general interest of Nigeria or the democracy they are claiming to protect.
Else, how can one be fighting those fighting corruption and say he is protecting democracy? Nigerians need to see through the games of these men and realize that they are the real threat to the country’s democracy, not the EFCC. Their cry against the EFCC list is unfounded and not actually in the best interest of Nigeria’s development.
We only need to cast our minds back to 1984 to see what I mean. When the Buhari/Idiagbon regime came into power with its gale of War Against Indiscipline, a wind of change swept across the land that sought to blow away indiscipline and its crippling effect on orderliness in Nigeria. At the time, indiscipline was so rooted in Nigeria that it was unfashionable to be disciplined.
But this gale was sharply followed by a national outcry that resisted that change. At the head of this outcry were Nigerians, most of them beneficiaries of the ousted government. They were not necessarily politicians, but all the same, they were people with links to governance, whose interests were threatened because they were founded on indiscipline or some form of corruption. It would be recalled that the Shagari government was notorious for corruption.
Not many Nigerians appreciated Buhari’s method at trying to restore discipline as a national culture. Instead, they sheepishly upheld the views of these few manipulators who thrived on exploiting the ignorance of the majority to achieve their personal interests and created the conditions that would lead to the achievements of their aims.
And as soon as these antagonists of change got the chance, they collaborated, like they are doing now, with an exploitative section of the military to sweep the Buhari regime off. What they wanted was for business to return to the pre-Buhari/Idiagbon era - an era when three passengers will rush and become stuck at the entrance of an empty fourteen seater bus, or where people could suck sugar cane and throw the chaff as they walked on the street.
Well, they got their way and by August 1985, another military regime came with messianic promises that later left Nigeria the worse off for it. That government not only legitimized corruption through its ‘10% theory,’ it also institutionalized corruption to the extent that it became the new culture of doing business. And since then, it has become wrong thing for anyone to serve in public office and not be corrupt!
That government, and indeed many after it, promoted a new culture where corrupt public officials were not only celebrated but honoured with honourary degrees from even the highest University.
The object of this piece is not to recount Nigeria’s history to you, reader. I know you are well versed in those issues. The object is to throw a word of caution. The same detractors that led to the fall of the Buhari/Idiagbon regime are at work again. This time, their fuel is the EFCC list.
They are not talking of the issues in question, rather they are politicking with it, hammering more on the constitution of the list than on the issue of corruption these men are said to be involved in. Is it that the men on that list do not each have some questions to answer? No one is concerned that EFCC has done a marvellous job. All they want to impose on the rest of us is their belief that the EFCC is biased.
This outright hypocrisy! Nigerians have for ages been crying against corruption. Now a government appears to want to fight corruption, yet these same men are fighting the agency with their criticisms and court injunctions.
Let us, for the sake of argument, agree that the EFCC list is biased. One question would readily come to mind: are these men blameworthy in this regard or not. If the EFCC has investigated them and found them culpable, is it not in the power of the law courts top establish their innocence or not? Why then should some people arrogate to themselves the powers of the courts and insist that their views are correct?
Even if the courts have not yet pronounced judgements in these matters, is it not proper for Nigerians to celebrate and support the fact that the EFCC is taking the fight against corruption to another level? Moreover, the EFCC does not investigate anyone unless there is a petition against such a person. Many at times, we know that such petitions come from the person’s constituency.
To blatantly say that what the EFCC is doing is wrong is a wanton admittance of hypocrisy and should be rejected by every well meaning citizen! This is because the proponents of this opposition would prefer they be allowed to go on stealing what belongs to the rest of us.
There is no normal and well meaning Nigerian who approves of corruption. Indeed, to show that corruption is alien to us as a people, there is no language with a single direct word for corruption in its dialect. Most languages have a descriptive phrase for it. So why should we allow a few men to impose on us a culture that is alien?
Rather than join these miscreants to condemn the list, I urge all Nigerians to rise up with one voice and demand for justice to be done. Let the law courts, not the political parties or freelance lawyers, acquit these men of the charges proffered against them by the EFCC. Nigerians should not allow themselves to be told what to do by a few who have no one’s interest at heart but theirs. To do that would paint us all as hypocrites and we can be sure, no one would take us serious.
Terkura Aku 32 Busa Buji Street, Jos
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