…if Osinbajo now calls for new models to fight corruption, I am with him. The question is what strategy or model is to be adopted? It is said that the best way to deal with a disease is to identify its primary cause and attack the disease from the roots. So, what is the root cause of the rampant corruption in Nigeria?
Acting President Osinbajo calls on anti-corruption agencies to adopt new models to fight corruption. – News
If this statement is not admission that the decades old and useless modes of fighting corruption has abysmally failed, what else can it be?
I must however give kudos to Osinbajo. This is a step in the right direction. The call for new approaches to dealing with the humongous corruption cancer killing Nigeria.
For the selective arrests, by securities agencies, of a handful of individuals, followed by a media and propaganda frenzy about the accused’s looting of billions of dollar, without the security agencies securing a single conviction, makes a joke of the much trumpeted war against corruption.
It is worse that billions of naira in bailout funds and statutory allocations to the 36 states and Abuja continue to be squandered, as has been the case in the past 40 to 50 years. Both the national and state assemblies remain cesspits of corruption, looting the nation blind with humongous salaries, rogue oversight activities, contracts grabbing through blackmail of agencies and ministries, as well as the illegal constituency projects funds.
Add the policemen who have returned in full force to streets and highways across the country and the security agencies at the ports and borders, as well as custom officers lining up highways with automatic weapons, openly harassing and extorting money from citizens, without shame and conscience.
Then come to the civil servants in ministries, agencies and departments of government, where contracts continue to be inflated and are not executed, where contracts are awarded not to the best qualified contractors but to dubious fellows who offer the highest bribes and where payments or documents cannot be obtained until many hands are heavily oiled.
The entire system reeks of the offensive odour of corruption. But Nigerians wear perfumes of deception, they refuse to accept their own complicity in the shame; the anti-corruption agencies dance atilogwu with great energy and publicity but deliver nothing, and the government lies to itself and to the nation that it is fighting corruption.
It is the same in the private sector, from banks to oil companies and manufacturing companies. The blight is endemic. Even in families, parents bribe to get examination papers written for their children, bribe to get them into universities and steal beyond their means to send their children to expensive schools both at home and abroad. They live ostentatious lives on looted funds and mould their children into future robbers and treasury looters. Then they troop to church to mock God.
The church, the otherwise citadel of conscience and morality, has been openly turned, in Nigeria, into money vending casinos by many. Rogues go to church hoping to bribe God. They are hailed by rogue pastors and priests as special gifts of God because they endow the “men of God” with the stinking proceeds of Mammon.
The entire system reeks of the offensive odour of corruption. But Nigerians wear perfumes of deception, they refuse to accept their own complicity in the shame; the anti-corruption agencies dance atilogwu with great energy and publicity but deliver nothing, and the government lies to itself and to the nation that it is fighting corruption. We all know it is not.
So if Osinbajo now calls for new models to fight corruption, I am with him. The question is what strategy or model is to be adopted? It is said that the best way to deal with a disease is to identify its primary cause and attack the disease from the roots. So, what is the root cause of the rampant corruption in Nigeria?
The simple answer: It is free, unearned money, whose poster boy is the cesspool of corruption known as the Federation Account. It is constitutionally empowered by our stupid and foolish unitary system of government, to share, every month, for over five decades, up until today, and tomorrow, free and unearned oil revenues.
These are revenues which ought be warehoused for soft, long term, repayable developmental loans to states and private ventures and for future generations, but are wantonly shared, looted and squandered by politicians and civil servants and contractors and the public sector dependent private sector. It is a national racket. Most folks do not want to admit it. But that is where the problem lies.
…if corruption is to be effectively dealt with – this Shower Rain financial system that makes the federal government a benign Santa throwing out presents to other arms of government and keeping sixty percent of the goody bag to itself. It engenders stealing with impunity, rewards laziness and breeds a culture of reckless disdain for core values, integrity and morality. It has to stop.
If our governments, federal, state and local, are funded with taxes from investments generated by those in power, many of the mafia politicians in government offices today will resign for free money will be dead. Every state in Nigeria is richly endowed with enough minerals, fertile lands, sweet waters, hard working intelligent and enterprising workforce to be prosperous. But the leaders are, in the main, no better than lazy crooks.
We have to go forward to the past when Awolowo, the Sarduana and co, pushed agriculture, attracted investments into their regions and ran governments driven by taxes, making them beholden to the people. Today it is different. Where there is free money, there you will find toxic and destructive cocktails of crooks, cut throats, thugs, killers and ruthless men without conscience and fear of God. Their fruits are poverty, fear, uncertainty, underdevelopment, greed, hate, etc.
Professor Osinbajo, we need to change the constitution to one of true federalism, to dump the federation account and to structure this country to become dependent on the productivity of the land and the people and vision and innovation and investments powered by taxes from citizens in each state, which in turn pays taxes to maintain the federal government.
We must, if corruption is to be effectively dealt with – this Shower Rain financial system that makes the federal government a benign Santa throwing out presents to other arms of government and keeping sixty percent of the goody bag to itself. It engenders stealing with impunity, rewards laziness and breeds a culture of reckless disdain for core values, integrity and morality. It has to stop.
Mr. Acting President, this will require a constitutional process which might take a while. So we need to move fast. We need to table it as the road to stamping out extreme and endemic corruption and to achieving national prosperity. The pursuit of symptoms with advertised arrests driven, in the main, by populism and partisan politics, is a waste of everybody’s time. For corruption rages on in government offices, private offices, churches, schools, hospitals, and on our roads.
How can a country with its policemen extorting money from citizens in full public glare, claim to be fighting corruption? Indeed we need new models for fighting corruption.
Ken Tadaferua is a media and marketing communications consultant. Twitter: @ktadaferua
