|
Nigeria, Another Penkelemess, Cultured Corruption By Prince Charles Dickson Jos, Plateau Nigeria
In the last few days I
have busied myself going through every material I could lay hands on,
with bias for the politics, corruption, thuggery and violence of the
First and Second Republics, from 1956 to 2006, 50 years of cultured
corruption. I have tried to convince myself that we are not repeating
history, the more I read, it strikes me that till today, our leaders and
even the led have continually behaved in a fascinatingly repulsive
manner. I tried to reflect on events as recalled from that perspective
and recent happenings, I ended my musing by reading for the umpteenth
time Wole Soyinka's Ibadan The Penkelemess Years and I
just smiled painfully as it dawned on me that not so much had changed.
Towards 2007, events
are unfolding, we wake up and that is for those who sleep not knowing
what to expect from our corrupt leaders. We have been cursed with a
morally bankrupt leadership that rather than hide their heads in shame,
are exchanging verbal blows which when looked at critically only exposes
greed, greed and greed. One minute this camp is releasing checks paid
out to the President's allies, the next minute, the other camp tells us
how it had been helping the VP's camp pay their collective debt, and
this is when , the VP's camp is not accusing Baba of forging checks..
What examples are we really setting, and as usual rather than
condemnation for these crooks, people say they should resolve their
differences peacefully. Sadly the President by asking for a ceasefire is
trying to deny us another right to know.
It is in the resolving
of this conflict and Nigeria's culture of corruption that I see a repeat
of the penkelemess, and I will graciously borrow from Wole Soyinka's
foreword, "the inventor and embodiment of this deliberate populist
corruption of 'peculiar mess' was appropriately, a certain Ibadan shon
of de soil by the name Adelabu..." Today that same Ibadan boost another
A, this time Adedibu, the nation another A, Atiku, and another A, Aremu,
not forgeting the Adenugas, Alis, Aninehihs and all the A's. If the
corrupt calculations of our number one and two men were as certain as
their hard work for the masses Nigerians would have been better off.
Such was Adelabu's
following that when "he was accused of financial wrongdoings, he drove
his newly acquired motorcar into Dugbe market and invited the throng to
ride in it and treat it as their own, protesting: 'This is what I bought
with the money I am alleged to have stolen. It belongs to you all. Treat
it as your property'."
The ecstatic crowd
lifted him up simply because they could not have lifted the gaudy
American Limousine that was the rave of the moment for politicians of
that time, shoulder high they carried him from Dugbe to Mapo Hall,
taking up the song that a voice from the crowd had spontaneously
composed
Owo wa ni, saa maa ma b'o ti fe
Se bi 'gunnu lo ni Tapa
Tapa lo ni 'gunnu
Owo wa ni, saa maa ma b'o ti fe
The chant in English
meant; Isn't the money ours? Go ahead spend it as you please. The igunnu
mask belongs to the Tapa. The Tapa owns the igunnu. So? The money is
ours- go on, spend it as you please! This is the sad commentary of
Nigeria and Nigerians, leaders and the led, to imagine that the
President and his Vice are exchanging and trading words, insults over
and about their vices without shame. While a large proportion of
Nigerians are trying to justify who stole most, or who stole less, when
indeed we are being treated to the regular overdose of corruption
tablets that our leaders willingly take by abusing our collective trust
which they stole from us.
The position we find
ourselves in this nation has become one of a 'penkelemess', a peculiar
mess traceable as usual to our culture of corruption. Corruption is an
insidious scourge, in Kofi Anan's words "it is widely understood that
corruption undermines economic performance, weakens democratic
institutions and the rule of law, disrupts social order and destroys
public trust, thus allowing organized crime, terrorism and other threats
to human security to flourish". In this situation only the public good
suffers.
Our culture of
corruption has put basic public utilities beyond the reach of those who
are not up there in the society. It affects the Nigerian masses in their
daily life, pushing them down the ladder of poverty and deprivation,
thus fundamental needs such as food, health and education become
luxuries only affordable by the likes of Obasanjo, Atiku and family.
While fighting graft, in the last eight years what have we really
achieved, debatable as it were, larger discrimination have taken place,
the kind of scenario painted by the fraudulent conspiracy of President
and his Vice only feeds fat the negative laws of inequality and
injustice, deprives the nation the much needed political stability that
can ensure social and economic development, so what we witness is a case
of one week, one squabble, one month, one major wahala.
The present
penkelemess is as a result of our inability to build a multi-monitoring
system for prevention of corruption instead we are chasing shadows,
while political corruption continues, manipulation and nepotism, despite
the apology by the PTDF an organ of government that facilitated this
saga, we have a culture that does not help us in evaluating integrity
level, and results made public. The truth is that efforts are being made
to rubbish the names of ATIKU, IBB, Governors and co., however an
undisputable fact is that hard as one may try, you cannot soil a good
name by cheap blackmail.
I once asked a friend
at the EFCC, and discussed same with his ICPC colleague, have we
provided anti-corruption education at the primary and secondary level of
education, a group that account for a sizeable percentage of the
population, how about our tertiary institutions, what comprehensive
educational plan do we have that can assist in tackling the 'penkelemess'.
With all the noise, it took several weeks before we were finally told
that the controversial Obj Shares were actually not blind after all, so
all these while, that the shares could see, why did Transcorp not tell
Nigerians, does the brain behind transcorp not know there is something
referred to as Corporate Ethics Support Center that is saddled with
providing the public with the truth, nothing but the truth, and in cases
of scandals or where public perception is wrong, you right it with the
best practices in conflict management as it regards to Information
management.
In Nigeria, we have
turned corruption into common business culture; our leaders tutor
themselves on how to impoverish. While Obasanjo has been in charge of
the Petroleum Ministry it is common knowledge that technically,
Nigerians have been cheated through the practice of oil mortgaging,
there are several of them where these deals were not routed either by
the Finance Ministry nor the Central Bank, where interest rates were
manipulated to produce money that was transferred into slush accounts
and funds. Top aides of the Presidency and government functionaries in
the last seven years have continued to practice this form of corruption
while we are daily bombarded with messages of anti-corruption by this
same people.
Obasanjo and Atiku
probably never heard of the phrase politically exposed persons, they
never knew that every little action of theirs was open to public
scrutiny; they claimed ignorance of the fact that both men had the
loyalists doing the spy job on each other. How top government officials
can explain the huge sums of money that move through their accounts is
just some of the root of this culture of corruption and sleaze.
The present leadership
in all this present drama lack moral rectitude and have no respect for
traditional values, they lack discipline and it runs down to the
ordinary Nigerian on the street that lacks discipline. Between, the
President, his Vice and their foot soldiers, there are no values of
patriotism, honesty, diligence and hard work, trust, personal
discipline, tolerance, mutual respect, justice and fairness, love, care
and compassion, rather as it is now generally a Nigerian culture, their
corruption blinds them with slothfulness, nepotism, indiscipline,
bitterness, prejudice, ethnic jingoism and parapoism.
Only Almighty Allah
knows the number of PTDF's we have in the 36 states, how many Governors
and their Commissioners of Finance and top government functionaries that
have been helping themselves, from the boy on the street that would
demand gratification to explain a direction to you, to Policemen that
collect toll tax and politicians that promise to eradicate mosquitoes,
but end up being the reason for the most dreaded malaria fever inflicted
on citizenry. There is hope...certainly there is hope, if only we turn
to Almighty Allah.
|