The Hegemony of Corruption in Nigeria and the Rawlings Solution
by
Yima Sen
Capital punishment, that is execution of offenders, should be used to fight corruption in Nigeria, according to Farida Waziri, Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Hear her: if some 20 high profile offenders are tried and sentenced to death, this will send shock waves to Nigerians and curb both the impunity and intolerable prevalence of corruption in Nigeria. Let us remember that corruption means breaking or spoiling, which may therefore require shock therapy to fight it. Hegemony refers to a totalizing social experience which will be defined later.
It is quite tempting to agree with the EFCC’s iron lady, given the logic that informed a similar action in Ghana by its former President, John Jerry Rawlings. Many Nigerians have suggested a Rawlings solution to corruption in this centre of blacks in the world. It is now globally established that this rich-poor country is wasting its resources. The problem with the direct Rawlings solution is that it would involve a military coup, which is not what is being suggested here, although it could become highly probable. A probability arising from the fact that what would have been the political will for change is already infected with the virus of corruption, which is sometimes honoured with national awards.
The attractiveness of the Rawlings solution in civilian form however is based on empirical evidence of how Ghana has benefitted from it. Ghana has outclassed Nigeria on several indicators in recent times. Some would argue that Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah gave Ghana a head-start even at independence in 1959 with his colossal intellectual capacity and output in political leadership as one of the philosophers and activists of “consciencism” and Pan- Africanism. The counter to this argument is that with far greater human and material resources, Nigeria should by now have overtaken virtually all African countries in many spheres of social, economic and political life.
How did the term “Ghana–must-go” emerge? Was it not from the depression in Ghana which sent its citizens out to scavenge world-wide? There were many Ghanaians here with us as economic refugees. We later sent them away with their belongings in plastic bags. Today they can return based on the arrangements of the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS). However, we are the ones invading their country now as our educational system fails, and as we look for countries whose infrastructure and services like roads, schools, power, hospitals and financial systems work, to live and invest in.
Rawlings instilled the fear of God in Ghanaians about bad conduct, with the bar-beach show in Accra, where prominent Ghanaian (mis) leaders who had misgoverned the country or had engaged in corruption were publicly shot after trial. Building on Nkrumah’s legacy, Rawlings reconstructed Ghana. Today Ghana is clearly a better disciplined, better organized, better behaved and more highly achievement-oriented society than Nigeria. What with credible elections, good management of scarce resources and appreciation that small is beautiful.
We have just ended the soccer World Cup in South Africa and Ghana had the best performing team from Africa. If you looked critically at the Ghanaian team it probably did not have the quantum of high profile players of the Ivorian team, the Cameroonian Lions or Nigeria’s Green Eagles. The confusion, lack of commitment, weak organization and poor discipline of the Nigerian team were palpable. Even with a very serious and experienced European coach, Nigeria’s vast resources, as usual, just remained resources. Untapped and not delivering. This means that we have already failed and we do not need the American prophecy.
The benefits of a Rawlings solution in Nigeria would be immense. They would help our electoral process to give us better political leaders, discipline our civil servants who vastly embezzle public funds, improve our educational system, which is now mainly producing semi-literates, or secondary school students who want expensive Blackberry cell phones and university students who want to drive Range Rover Sport jeeps. They may give us better roads and enable us to have power, water and good health services. We could provide better land tenure for our small farmers or develop a productive rather than a consuming economy. Our housing system could also improve so that we do not have to demolish poor people’s homes without compensation or buy mere land in Abuja and Lagos at the cost of mansions in London, New York or Paris.
They would slow us down to cherish hard work and earned income. They would curb prostitution and the devaluation of our womanhood, which are mainly promoted by thieves and criminals.
And if we care to undertake social engineering to reorient our values, we would purify our culture. We would learn that re-branding begins at home. We might even preserve some of our indigenous languages, improve our spoken and written English, and consign “pidgin” or “broken” English to where it belongs, that is in the market and not on national television or on our radio airwaves. And without television presenters some of whom are over-weight, badly dressed and speak horrible English in ugly colour-riot studios.
Maybe they will also help our young people to play better music and not engage in vulgar mimicry in dressing, choreography and noise pollution of the music of the western sub-culture from its ghettos, except when a few of them meander to some danceable music. What about improving on the huge social relevance of Nollywood, which now garbages out surrealism to obfuscate our psyche, with movies conceived, scripted and completely produced in three weeks? And it could sanitize our political practice from opportunistic and thieving politicians, mercenary youth who are hired to endorse politicians in the media or kill for them, to ideological and issues-based politics. They might also stop kidnappings, cultism and ritual killings.
All of these, I agree with Madam Waziri, could happen if about 20, 50, or 100 high profile rogues are executed. In addition the others should be definitely jailed and all ill-gotten wealth recovered and used for women and youth empowerment programmes and projects. We have executed drug dealers in this country before. Soldiers have executed themselves including killing their best. So why should we shy away from a surgical “paradigm shift”, if it will regenerate the country with the largest concentration of blacks.
The lessons from other African countries are there. The late Thomas Sankara sacrificed his life to create Burkina Faso and rebrand the country. As the world globalizes, with no country as an island, low standards stand out like ugly sores. Nigeria’s sores stand out and stink to high heavens, especially at 50 years of political independence age.
The South African freedom fighters created the modern democratic state which has hosted the soccer world cup to the glory of Africa and the joy of the world. Our people travel to Egypt to get medical attention. Kenya is the only host of major United Nations agencies in the southern hemisphere and their universities recently beat all Africa in a television intellectual contest. Our rogues here shamelessly end up investing in little Gambia which is like a local government council in Nigeria, because it is an investment–friendly country. Even the Congolese are still playing good African contemporary music.
In the final analysis, we either adopt the Rawlings solution through the civilized process suggested by the EFCC boss, or we my face something worse in the near future. I do not know how long it will take for social discontent in Nigeria to build up to a revolutionary outburst. The danger is not revolution itself but the anarchy which could take place in the absence of a well-coordinated revolution.
When a dominant, preponderant or leading social order is corrupt, oppressive or no longer positive, it requires a massive overhaul. In other words, the people and the social order in which it has developed or is evolving, have to produce counter-hegemony. Hegemony takes place when socio-political and economic structures like political systems (executives, legislators, and civil servants), educational systems, mass media, religious institutions, social clubs, cultural values and the like, take on a dominant form and become the norm. So as bad practices become endemic they translate into negative hegemony.
In the case of Nigeria, the hegemony that has emerged is the hegemony of evil, of corruption and of underdevelopment. Nigeria has become a disappointing vineyard (oil, gas, agricultural products, solid minerals, human resources, culture and more) wasted to God himself. In Nigeria evil is now good and good is now evil. This is the character of the hegemony of evil that has emerged. In addition to this, the elite, especially the political segment do manipulate clan, ethnicity, religion and region for the purposes of political power in order to oppress, exploit and short-change the masses, for selfish and personal material gain. However, God has his hand still stretched out to Nigeria. Salvation may well come if we repent, including punishing some of our extreme sinners with the Rawlings solution. This may well be the counter–hegemony and our sacrifice for God’s mercies and our redemption.
As for concrete development policy, there are no new ideas. We have had the Lagos Plan of Action, Ibrahim Babangida’s basket of policies (NDE, DFFRI, Community Banks, Peoples Bank, Better Life, MAMSER) then the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, and the National Economic and Empowerment Development Strategy. Currently running are the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, Umaru Yar’Adua’s Seven Point Agenda and the Vision 20:2020 programme. A mesh of all these programmes can be knocked into a TEN POINT PLAN to take Nigeria to great development heights, precisely by 2020, if we reduce corruption from it present level of about 90 percent to ten percent. And this can be done within five years.
*Sen, an anti-corruption revolutionary, lives in Abuja