Scaffolds of Primitive Corruption

By

Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh

ogbunwezeh@yahoo.com

 

 

 

In the philosophies of Battista Mondin, one of the most renowned philosophical anthropologists ever to sit on the hallowed professorial chair of anthropology at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome, man is a bundle of possibilities. He may be following in the great humanistic path charted by Protagoras of old, who viewed the human being as the measure of all possibilities; and which has been towed by many philosophers since then. Martin Heidegger, the German existentialist presupposed, anticipated, and incorporated this in his philosophy, which is more of an anthropological metaphysics, when he realized that the death of man is the end of all possibilities. This dialectical humanism does not contradict or nullify what some other admirers of wisdom would chose to hold and apply; which is that every human individual is a micro-universe of meaning and significance. This expression, the way it comports itself to my understanding, captures the beautiful essence resident in the human phenomenon. This for me is because the human individual possesses in himself the majestic immensity and sovereign infinity of the universe. In other words, man summarizes the universe.

 

To this end, man could be seen as a social animal that is a micro-universe of infinite possibilities. And the human society to this end becomes a conglomeration of micro-universes. This assembly of individual micro-universes of infinite possibilities transforms the society into a theatre of possibilities. Every imaginative creation falls then within the grasps of actuality. Simply put, everything becomes possible. This bundle of infinite possibilities, which the human person is, is capable of transcending the heights of innovation, plumbing the infinite depths of reality and mastering the tyrannical hold of inclement nature. These are on the positive scale. Here, man could be romantically labelled an angel. The Hebrew sacred writ and many other religious traditions outdo themselves in propagating this vision.

 

But this angel is equally capable of incredible crudity. In spite of his fair capabilities, he is equally capable of the obverse. He could simply matriculate into a social criminal, without rhyme or reason. But just like there are infinite universes that ordered or organized themselves into infinite series of constellations, dutifully following their ordered charges, so should human societies. If these universes disobey the laws guiding their location and orbit, they would collide with each other, mutually destroying and annihilating themselves. At that occasion, reality would be incinerated. Equally as the planets orbit in ordered trajectories round their various suns, so should the human micro-universes orbit round the suns of social legitimacy, or the society would graduate into that Hobbessian jungle, that forever terrified Thomas Hobbes; where man becomes wolf to his fellow men; making the life of man solitary, nasty, brutish and short. 

 

At this level of desperation, the society rallies all its resources and deploys them only to the mass-production of fractured personalities who amble about as mutual risks to each other, very busy doing each other in. The human personalities that should be positively driving the dynamics of social evolution, becomes nothing but fractured, dysfunctional egos ever-on the brink of exploding; incinerating each other, and ripping the social fabric asunder. In this scenario, social interaction goes Darwinian. The fittest survives. The strong preys on the weak.  Justice compromises its majesty; allowing itself to be configured only to the protection and furtherance of the sick and opulent indiscretions of privilege. The less privileged are simply written off, quarantined in the ghettos of irrelevance as the wretched of the earth; to be used as fodder for social misfortunes, or as toilet paper to wipe the undeodorized asses of power and privilege.

 

Here, the poor are fortified with minimum of the influence, but shoulder the maximum consequence of the decisions reached by influence. The privileged, unwilling to contaminate their delusions, with the reality of the social jungle created by agency of their collusion, choose to isolate themselves in high-brow neighbourhoods reminiscent of their holiday resorts in the valleys of sin, where they spoil themselves, embezzling the range of sinful luxuriance cornered at the expense of the many; and cultivating their desperation in the process. Such hoods are the social incubators of desperate housewives, dysfunctional kids and adult delinquents. But they remain unfortunately elitist; perpetually influencing the tide of social affairs.

 

Their leadership bids no society no good. They themselves are no good. They are social foxes, with hypocritical affectations to goodness and social altruism. Nothing they do for the society ever ignores their profit in its computations. This profit would not have been problematic if, it is really the sort that inspires or lends credence to economic behaviour. It is really the savage, irresponsible crave for privilege paid for in the inglorious coins of slothful non-productivity and grotesque incompetence.  This accounts for the fact that Nigerian Millionaires are not doyen of industries who rode on the waves of free enterprise to enthrone themselves and their ideas on the tribunes of wealth. Neither were they rugged capitalists, who created wealth out of nothing, nor great inventors that gave our milieu what it lacked, but needed; creating wealth in the process and driving the economic as well. No! Almost all of them are contractors, rent-seekers, influence peddlers, obscene sycophants and outright crooks. They are never creative visionaries, nor courageous pioneer into the frontiers of the unknown. To this end, they spend their lives inventing arcane ways of conjugating communal wealth into private coffers, in the most illegal of ways.  They elevate the most primitive and savage instinct to business. And they create a pillaged society divided lopsidedly between the hyper-rich and the wretched poor.

 

The social poverty that this primitive corruption driven by elitist greed creates enables a social scenario where every interpersonal contact among the poor becomes a context of emotionally wounded personalities striving to take undue advantage of each other. Here a jungle is enabled. In the market economics of the jungle, rules are recklessly broken and contracts routinely breached. Every theology is created to serve self interest, although well sugar-coated with altruistic themes. Potentials for violent conflicts abound. Every point is lethally contested and is capable of getting medieval and very ugly. On a more extended scale, arms and ammunitions are invited. Heads get broken. Bodies get buried. And the society ends up the loser. This is why in Nigeria; armed robbery is on the rise. And the armed robbery enterprise in Nigeria remains the most brutal in the world. Here, the rogues swoop on unarmed innocent citizens with superlative brutality, which cannot even be consulted in states of war.  Their cold-bloodedness, though inexcusable, is really asymptomatic of a society that fertile incubator of primitive corruption.

 

The operative word “should” in the introductory sentences of the former paragraph is absolutely necessary to underscore the ideal envisaged, but in most cases unrealized in human social set ups. This underlines and consolidates simultaneously. It underlines that this infinite human possibility came raw and wild. On the other hand, it consolidates that the demands of social existence make its creative education and positive direction imperative. And that any society that fails to tame the wild nature of individuals by recommending rules of social conduct and executing sanctions in cases of default, has contrived its self destruction. Ethics facilitates an effortless compliance to the norms of social conduct.  But laws mandate observance with legal sanctions. Ethics may have no legal teeth. But no human law would be credible if it violates the principles of natural justice, equity and good conscience, which are nothing but ethical principles.  And obedience to laws, which facilitates social conduct and cohesion are greatly eased when the ethical integrity of individuals in society are high. To this end, when ethics is jettisoned in favour of Machiavellian rules of social conduct, then laws lose their sanctity, and become liable to being patronized with absolute disregard.

 

This is why it is of supreme importance that a society cares vigilantly the way it cultivates its ethics, licenses or manages elitist impunity, checks or liberates the selfish ambitions of the strong; acquiesces to certain extreme conducts, cheerleads the choirs of mediocrity, rewards merit, or confers privileges.  No society which sacrifices merit for mediocrity, or exchanges honesty for filthy lucre ever knows peace, development, or felicity. It would eternally be plagued by social discontent, poverty and decadence. The demise of social morality in any society; the allowance of savage greed, as well as the empowerment of impunity are the scaffolds raised for the construction and consolidation of primitive corruption, which will forever haunt any society that allows itself the sick luxury of entertaining such within her embrace.

 

Despite the dictatorship of relativism diffusing across contemporary social discourse and behaviour, all epistemologies mourn the death of morality. No gnoseologic tradition would ever canonize immoral conduct without imperilling social integrity. And once a society loses integrity, it enables a jungle. This is because social cohesion cannot withstand an incestuous rape of its hallowed precepts. To this end, no society that erects monuments in honour of thieves and morally compromised rogues, should expect to be a paradise of probity and honesty.  That society compromises the foundations of its cohesive equilibrium. It took liberties with the wrong by elevating primitive depravities to an ontological level, where it desecrates all that is good, true and beautiful. Corruption is then empowered by this alchemy of leadership-orchestrated brigandage and social laxity to burrow unrestrained, and infect the genetic codes of such social contraptions; replicating itself in such quantities as to overwhelm its social defences.

 

This explains why in contemporary Nigeria, corruption seems to grow on trees.  That contemporary Nigerian society mass-produces fraudsters in almost all branches of human endeavour, and licenses impunity is not because of our poverty-which is an artificial creation, and symptomatic of leadership-orchestrated reign of avarice-but thanks to the fact that in Nigeria we have allowed our decadence such leeway that the makers, executors, interpreters and custodians of our laws are certifiable scoundrels, who are all in league to honour, celebrate, canonize, revere, and defer to criminals and mediocres. To this end, there exists this mass scramble for privilege without responsibility. This is because privileged mediocrity is the only way to survive in a dog-eat-dog society that Nigeria has degenerated into, where the law only serves the rich and is deployed in the oppression of the less-privileged.

 

The matriculation of the Nigerian society into the ranks of decadent nations was never an event. It was like in all human circumstances, contrived through a process; an alchemy, which once established hijacked the genetic codes of our social character, manipulating and deploying it to the manufacture of social discontent and collective discomfiture.  Our collaboration, and conspiracy of collective silence at the dethronement of merit, and worship of unearned privilege, paved the way for the triumphant entry of corruption into our social bloodstream.

 

Nigerians kept mum, when men, who in the words of Okey Ndibe, “lacked moral capital” formed a coalition of willing scoundrels to embezzle our posterity and heritage. These elitist rascals transcend tribes and stratification. But we cheered them on when they come at us with crumbs and peanuts to bribe our resolve into senile acquiescence. Only few voices of reason stood incorruptible. But their voices were more often than not drowned in the vociferations of paid cheerleaders. Those of their interventions which escaped the black holes created by hired sycophancy peter out in the great silence of our collective inaction, or get wasted in engineered tribal bickering aimed at making their reasoned stands dead on arrival.  Achebe saw the hypocrisy of power amply advertised by Obasanjo and his PDP. He spoke his truths to power. But the ogre of Aso rock deployed his Rotweilers to discredit one of the greatest sons of Africa; a patriot extra-ordinary. The same fate met Wole Soyinka, Abubakar Umar, Adamu Ciroma, Alex Ekwueme, Okey Ndibe and all lovers of truth. Nigerians looked on in inaction as they took the ogre in a lopsided battle. But these guys never trembled before power. They trembled more at the prospects of having to lie against their consciences. Nigerians watched like castrated spectators, while these courageous Davids took up the Goliaths that oppress us and keeps us tied to the slavery of poverty and underdevelopment.  

 

Today, the whole social structure is paying the price of our silence in dereliction, rottenness and decay. Our infrastructure bears eloquent testimony to this reign of decadence. Nothing works in Nigeria. Power which underwrote development in other climes, refused to function in Nigeria, despite billions of dollars sunk into it. Water supply which summarizes the presence and bubbling of life is significantly absent in our cities and the computations of our government. Our economic has slid into dysfunctional non-productivity. We are only marketers of what others produce. Nothing is produced in Nigeria that can stand international competition in this age of globalization. The only product we have to offer is a natural resource-petroleum-which we even lack the technology and expertise to effectively exploit. The list is inexhaustible and rightly so because we kept silent, when circumstance called for our collective refusal to be compromised. We sold out when the august occasion arose for us to save our heritage from the hands of home-grown plunderers.

 

Once upon a time in Nigeria, a student who cheats attracts social disrepute for himself, and does irreparable violence to his social status. He is looked upon as a social pariah and an extraordinary deviant. Today, examination malpractice is so rampant, pervasive, and mainstream that honest students are an endangered species.  Parents now help and finance the facility of their kids to cheat. Some parents hire mercenaries to sit and write examinations for their kids, because the society now regulates its conduct with the Machiavellian guidepost of the end justifying the means. These are the same parents that are wont to hypocritically complain that this generation is hopeless. But the reality is that just like charity, a generation’s hopelessness begins at home. The parents or the older generation are not equally immunized against this Machiavellian conceptual construct. They are, if not the initiators or originators of this derailed social train, vectors or transit reservoirs of its dangerous wares. They cultivated it, nourished and passed it on to their kids in a sort of generational relay race, where the good, the bad and the ugly are transmitted to the succeeding generation. An instance is imperative here. A parent who is in custody of a stolen certificate like Maurice Iwuh, or who bought and dons an unearned degree with all the privileges accruing thereto, like Andy Ubah; would not be in possession of any moral authority to chide his child if he steals in an examination. It will ring so hollow due to the profound insecurities that hypocrisy confers. And kids, who by nature see through parental insecurities, would not take him seriously. And that dismissal of the authority of this most intimate acquaintance of theirs, would only serve to reinforce their dismissal of other social norms, in their bid to fund their unhealthy indiscretions. A child who sees his parents worship such discredited models like Babangida, Abacha and other thieves of their ilk or even the village scoundrel who suddenly appears with a bag of money and an abundance of attitude, has been taught in the most visually eloquent manner possible that thieves are honoured; and that thievery is not wrong, provided you steal big and with impunity.

 

The Nigeria ranks scandalously low on the international corruption index, does not detract from the fact that corruption is a universal phenomenon. But proves that the Nigerian exemplar of this social malady is among the worst instances, both in its depraved depth, incidence, and trend; as well as in the flamboyant hypocrisy it generates and empowers in our leadership corridors and power matrices. Examples abound to convict the perennial hypocrisy of the Nigerian leadership, once the subject reverts to corruption. The Babangida’s regime was mass-mobilizing (MAMSER(ing) Nigerians into a Structural Adjustment that meant tightening their belts due to increasing hardship, while the sly General was busy attending his health needs in France; with his wife was donning the most flamboyant of costumes, which would make the peacock look hopelessly pedestrian; as they both stole Nigeria blind, running one of the most corrupt regimes that Nigeria has ever known. Sanni Abacha, the arch-kleptocrat was stealing and scouring the Nigerian treasury clean while docking failed banks chiefs, and conducting a war against indiscipline and corruption (WAIC). What impudence?

 

Under Obasanjo, some of the most sordid ironies were incubated and hatched to our discomfiture. The man empowered to catch thieves in this instance, metamorphosed into one of the greatest thieves ever to cross our firmament.  Tafa Balogun was his name. This Police chief was an extra-ordinary thief. Obasanjo himself claimed to be conducting a war against corruption, while honouring history’s greatest treasury looter, Sanni Abacha, even though post-humously.  May be he hopes to be honoured in the future for his abuse of due process and his oath of office while presiding over a civilian dictatorship in Nigeria. Obasanjo is kicking the ass of his deputy; while his finger is stuck deep in the same gravy jar he accuses his deputy of decimating. This is the apogee of hypocrisy. And that has never been a recipe for any social revival or economic reform.

 

At the beginning of the Obasanjo administration’s war on corruption, hope seems to have finally dawned on our hitherto dark horizon. But at the twilight of this administration and its war on corruption, all may now be construed as a Machiavellian ruse designed to keep the populace busy in timid inaction and postural unconcern. There are ample reasons for that construction. The PDTF scandal that rocked the presidency shows the duplicitous underbelly of the Obasanjo administration. The president and his vice were taking turns in plunging their dirty, corrupt hands into our common weal for uses unintended and un-envisaged by the laws setting up the fund. And they do not even deem it fit to give us a rational account of what happened in this impious transaction that was the PDTF slush fund. And when these criminals strain their ankles, they rush abroad to receive the best medical treatment, after embezzling the funds that would have given Nigerians many functional hospitals.

 

This government has like all others before it, not only broken our hopes to our faces once more, but has reinforced social corruption by making its war on corruption so selective that the corrupt friends of the man of power are insured against prosecution, while his opponents are liable to being harassed, framed up and discredited.  This increases the unhealthy competition for unearned privilege, which sycophancy, and hypocrisy confers.  Everybody who wants to retain relevance then scrambles to join the party in power. The party that is in the right is deserted because it most times lacks the requisite ruthlessness to attain the kind of power we advertise in Nigeria.

 

By allowing raw power and naked might the leeway to gain admittance into all privilege attainable, even when it is unmerited, we unwittingly took our society to Golgotha to be crucified among thieves, and brigands.  This is why economic development will always be a toxic utopia unattainable in Nigeria. The thieves would always cast lots for our commonweal and divide it up among their various interests.  And the country would never muster enough resources to channel into meaningful development. Her human resources would always waste itself emigrating from the mess at home, or busy vegetating in the sloth occasioned by the rot. Her material resources would be crated and bundled into the private estates of the winners of the power game.  The losers of the power game, in this case, a great majority of the population, are left out in the cold irrelevance that powerlessness makes possible.

 

The most painful realization is that Nigeria and Nigerians lack innovative and dynamic response to this social quagmire, which our collective guilt renders current. Those, who have an honest inkling into our pathology and are ready to devote their competence in service to our interests, are an unfortunate minority. They are never allowed to smell the power and authority they need, to set functional reforms in motion. But the crooked rascals are allowed to meander their way into our power epicentres, and stay there to generate nothing but visionless amblings and dysfunctional policies that serve narrow, parochial insularities, instead of the interests of the greatest number of Nigerians.

 

For instance after missing begging opportunities of at least placing Nigeria on the ladder towards escaping poverty, Obasanjo has now decided to sacrifice Nigeria to protect his ass. He has concluded plans to impose Umaru Yar Adua, on Nigerians as his successors. For this august emperor, Nigerians must have Yar Adua whether they want him or not. After all, the opinion of Nigerians has never mattered. By this crude act, he is teaching generations of young Nigerians that if you have power, you could consult the most scandalous impunity that your knavery can muster or contrive, without fearing consequences or reprisals. This is the Nazi concept of power. And yet, this president claims to be fighting corruption. Corruption starts with injustice. It then eats up the moral fibres of the society by infecting every available social orifice without exception.

 

Another example recommends itself to our expression here. When Obasanjo succeeded to the Nigerian presidency in 1999, he promised to go after corruption wherever he could find it in Nigeria. Then, there were two icons of corruption within his crosshairs, waiting for him just to pull the trigger and set an eternal example of what would happen to corrupt individuals in Nigeria. Nigerians held their breaths in apprehension. Nigerians waited for him to act. One of the corrupt ducks was Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, who single-handedly installed the reign of brazen corruption in Nigeria. The other was the estate and heritage of the defunct tyrant, Sanni Abacha. We waited for these guys to be docked, with their privies, agents and loot. But like all things Nigerian, the Nigerian factor crept in and Obasanjo developed cold feet, proffering flimsy excuses for his monumental ineptitude. He became smart by half in Babangida’s case, challenging any Nigerian that has evidence of Babangida’s corruption to come forward with his evidence. The government he headed that has all the resources to achieve a successful investigation and prosecution of such delinquents, bucked at its responsibility shifting it to private citizens. This shameful abdication of responsibility by Obasanjo’s government was the prologue to an eight year reign of executive recklessness, irresponsibility, dereliction of duty and breach of oath of office. Babangida remains a free man clutching at his loot. He would one day use this stolen resource to attempt buying the Nigerian presidency again, someday.

 

Abacha’s case calls for Obasanjo’s head. This is the one of the most unfortunate advertisements of hypocrisy that really discredits Obasanjo’s personality and casts questions on his sanity.  Obasanjo hunted Abacha’s estate at the inception of his administration. He offered a deal to this estate for them to keep about a hundred Million dollars out of the over five billion dollars, the crude tyrant pilfered from the Nigerian coffers, and return the rest to the rightful owners; the Nigerian people. But the estate headed by the conniving matriarch Maryam remained recalcitrant. The government went about tracking down the stolen funds. In some the government succeeded. In some others it met brick walls.  Abacha’s son was clamped in prison in relation to the crimes and the illegal liberties he took under his father. But few weeks ago, this same Obasanjo, clad in military uniform, awarded a certificate and a military medal of honour to Abacha, apparently as daily independent online of 20th March, 2007 http://www.independentngonline.com/?c=44&a=23104  satirically surmised; “in recognition of his dedication to duty, hard work, loyalty and leadership qualities.  We would not attempt to analyse this laughable double-standard. The fact is that Abacha deserves nothing but eternal forgetfulness. He deserves an excision from our collective memory, not honour. Honouring Abacha represents honouring the worst affliction ever to grace our national memory.  Honouring Abacha is licensing impunity. And this is scaffold for primitive corruption. Obasanjo by that singular ill-advised act, told Nigerians and generations yet unborn, that you can steal with impunity and hope for some future rehabilitation.

 

Until this fateful that on which moral outrage was eclipsed from our national firmament, we never knew that Obasanjo’s war on corruption was a comforting illusion; his way of taking us for a Machiavellian ride.  Our fatal shortsightedness never reckoned with this arrant volte face. Midway into this anti-corruption war, many observers started dismissing Obasanjo and his pet war as a shabby swindle. And casting aside their cares has proved to be some catastrophic folly. We applauded when Obasanjo docked Osuji and Wabara for bribing and desecrating the Senate in the education budget saga. When Obasanjo fell on Abachas, they felt that it was because their estate has become cheap game consequent on the demise of their patriarch.  They doubted the notion that they are in reception of just recompense for their heritage of knavery, since Babangida who contrived the same indiscretion like Abacha, was breathing free air.

 

Today, Abacha is honoured while Kudirat Abiola who was murdered by this rogue is buried without consequence. This kind of government’s approval for rascality will always dissuade any opposition to mediocrity and social knavery. That is the greatest disservice that Obasanjo did to our social ethical clime. And this is the kind of cosmic stupidity that nature never forgives any nation, as citizens would forever be fed with mediocrity as role models. And when mediocrity and criminal rascality install themselves as social role models and sources of social legitimacy, the scaffolds of primitive corruption are then enabled to haunt the trajectory of social development with impunity, crudity and viciousness.  Honouring Abacha remains an eternal insult to all that is good, true and beautiful.