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Of The Complicit Bank Executives And Bad Leadership In Nigeria By Salisu Ahmed Koki Power is literal and the lust for it evidently natural. The lust for power and control is as old as humanity itself and has played a pivotal role in steering the course of history. Being powerful and able to wield enormous power is one thing and the ability to channel power into useful corridors of the mechanisms of leadership is another. Misuse of power is what has characterized various tasteless and equally lamentable Nigerian leaderships, reference to a gang that helped in no small ways in suffocating the collective dreams of helpless Nigerians, their dream of living a decent life, a universal right as enshrined in the popular United Nations' Human Rights dictum. Contrastingly, a lot has been said about the ability of the Nigerian masses to swallow the purposeless incapacitation and nonsensesical behaviors of their leaders at all levels. Egocentric leaders that see little or no logic at all in breathing sense and health into the so-called Nigerian system and by all extension, into the Nigerian state, a fact that led many to designate Nigeria as a 'failed state'. May be, one can see the reason behind the ability of the masses to swallow all these depressive negativities in the concept of 'undue patience'. Naturally, in patience there is some strength, a sense of self-control and a soothing feel of latent power. The more one is able to shun his aggressor and the accompanying aggressive behaviors, the more one can be able to tidy up his ability to shoulder the excesses of the aggressor. Ability to weather a storm can be said to be a byproduct of patience that comes naturally or developed through experience. Unlike patience that comes naturally, undue patience is always born out of necessity and most notably where limited choices are involved. One can easily conclude that the Nigerian masses are left with little or no choices at all; hence they almost always painfully embraced the undue patience, a patience that has proved to be an accumulative burden! While our banking system and its ever complicit bank executives are busy further enriching themselves, their kith and kin and the rich and famous in our society, a poor fellow that worked very hard under the most unfavorable business conditions that prevailed in Nigeria to earn and deposit or rather save his meager fortune in the system will solicit for a meager loan from the banks in order for him to prop-up his business only to be told that the effect of the global economic meltdown has necessitated the system to ask him to surrender some ridiculous collaterals which he don’t have and to equally agree to pay an unimaginable interest on the loan which cant afford, practically denying him the opportunity of accessing the much needed facility. Interestingly enough for all concerned, while their counterparts in the countries genuinely devastated by the effects of the meltdown are grazing down interest rates to almost zero percent, the powers that be in the Nigerian banking sector are busy devising means to charge ridiculous interest rates on loans and to lace the same loans with hidden charges and costs with some degree of sophistication and by so doing rendering the whole process dubious! As a colleague once inferred ' it is a well documented fact that what keeps the black race behind is our pre-occupation in playing the blame game instead of working our way out', and this is very true. Banks will use the global economic meltdown to scare poor loan solicitors away from a loan facility and will ironically pamper and invite the greedy and stupendously rich (now rich debtors) to shamelessly rape the system and drain it of funds. On the other hand, shameless government officials will use the idea of over speeding to excuse preventable deaths caused by needless and repairable pot-holes on our highways. The same government will use a vividly short term drop in the price of crude in the international market to justify a long term and possibly permanent increase in the price of refined hydrocarbons sold in the local market and the same government cannot do the other way round when the price of the black oil skyrockets in the international market. Sadly, it is the same government that will attribute widespread corruption for non-implementation of projects and budgets, while by all logic and sense it is the government that is entertaining a severe type of moral corruption for not acting or rather dealing squarely with the corrupt officials that are standing between Nigeria and its anticipated progress, selfish people that are strangulating the Nigerian state to death while pursuing their obsessive greed. While richest people once considered the untouchables, people that are by all measure stupendously richer than our government-pampered rich and famous that are guilty as charged in the recent distressed banks debacle, people like Sir Stanley of Stanley Bank and Bernard Mardoff of the United States of America are busy warming their seats in their respective jails for committing similar offenses , offenses rightly considered by the US government as an avid threat to its economic and social security, it is no surprise that the inverse proportional of the same punishment meted on the likes of Sir Stanley is obtained in the Nigerian case. Laughable enough is the fact that some of the rich debtors that almost suffocated the affected Nigerian banks to death are allowed to preside over sensitive financial institutions like the Nigeria Stock Exchange and Nicon Insurance and it will come as no surprise if before the expiration of the year the accused ladies and gentlemen of the private sector and their accomplices in the banking sector are conferred with now infamous Nigeria National Honors. Besides, in Nigeria it is that any absurdity can happen, little wonder the 'Re-Brand Nigeria' project is evaporating into oblivion. Indeed, it is time we become masters of our own destiny and stop blaming anyone and everyone but ourselves for our corrosive misfortune.
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