CORRUPTION - OUR COLLECTIVE ACHIEVEMENT.

I have once discussed the need to avoid the snare of reductionism – the tendency to assume that the breaking up of complexity into smaller parts solves problems. I am equally convinced that a large section of the Nigerian populace has been smeared with that disease and has become brazenly confused about routes to addressing the most pressing challenges of our nation. A lot of people whom I have had interactions with have concluded that the problem of this country is corruption and that once addressed, the journey to socio-economic freedom would have commenced. That unfortunately remains a mirage – a falsehood thriving on the collective failure of us all to attend to understanding the problems of our nation from the fundamental. Nigeria is at the crossroads once again and we have a choice to make, one that we cannot avoid. The new found interest of many friends seems to be grounded along the lines of political developments – specifically the 2015 presidential elections. There have been very optimistic convictions, expressed on the altar of change too, that the 2015 elections would be a watershed in our fight against corruption. I fail to share that optimism because our problem solving machinery is oiled by the symptomatic. We are fixing symptoms of a bigger problem – thinking that corruption is the national problem of Nigeria where it really isn’t the root problem. How can we solve a problem that we do not understand? How can we resolve a challenge that we do not know? How do we ascertain the effectiveness or otherwise of our resolution mechanisms in the absence of feedback on efforts already made? Are we throwing punches in the dark while hoping that we will one day hit this problem on its head without any definite timelines? We cannot be that disorganized. So how do we understand and begin to take reasonable cause towards solving our problems?

Permit me to digress a bit to discuss contemporary political happenings. There is currently a common cry for change amongst Nigerian youths with many of them angling for a Muhammadu Buhari presidency. The almost unanimous belief is that Buhari will fight corruption. Interesting developments I would say, for us to witness such levels of consciousness in a little over 20 years of our experiment with democracy. The youths have begun to realize their power and that is heartwarming. I am however usually disappointed when I ask an average youth the question, “what is corruption?”. It is at that point that I see bathed breaths, an energy withdrawal and sometimes paused meditations. It is at that point that I smile seeing that while many would like to fight ‘corruption’ many still cannot place exactly what corruption is. Of course, the usual and first victim in defining or describing corruption is the financial. Many perceive corruption to be misappropriation of money, diversion of money or indecent conduct relating to finances. I am forced to question immediately, is that what corruption really is? Is corruption only denominated in the financial? I often see a struggle by others to escape the financial tag but what I get in response are vague and often ambiguous interpretations of what corruption is. So to you the reader, are you immune from this school of thought that pitches tent with financial corruption as the prime challenge of Nigeria? Or are there more? What corruption in particular is Buhari poised to fight? Could it be corruption ‘in general’, which I really doubt or financial corruption? Without a clear cut identification of what corruption it is we are waging our war against, we may make no significant progress in the wide arena of that hydra headed malaise.

The problem of Nigeria is however not corruption. Yes, it is one of our many problems but by all means, it fails to sum up our problems as conveniently as we want to assume it should. How can our problem be corruption when we cannot even define what corruption is? Do we even have agreement on whatever it is we want tackled? Is it corruption as reflected in the mass looting of our financial resources? Or the corruption of the mind which strips people of their sense of morality and which engages their bodily and mental functions in condemnable lust? History teaches us that corruption can be philosophical, spiritual or real. Nigerians must place a demand on political leadership to tackle whichever it is that we face. When we say corruption is Nigeria’s problems, our non-specificity is also equally a problem. A nay sayer I may be but I have pulled back from the very noisy spectacle that dotes my Facebook timeline and social networks and have come to the very regrettable submission that we may experience no change with a Buhari presidency. It is expedient to immediately share that my sentiments are based on the assumption that Nigeria may witness a Buhari victory at the polls, a much needed breather from all the seeming oppression we have come to face under the PDP.

Corruption is a national embarrassment to Nigeria because we have failed in our socialization process. Families have failed and they must admit their failure at imbuing in their new members, values and cultures that defy the force and pressure of uncontrollable social values. Society has no soul, we think it does. Society is wicked, we think it is nice. Society cannot train our children to be good, at best it makes them neutral. It is the duty of fathers and mothers to shape their children and prepare them for a ‘bad’, ‘wicked’ or ‘corrupt’ society. Parents have failed to communicate worthy values to their children who grow up believing that big cars mark success. Children grow up believing that achievements must be symbolized by vacations to foreign lands, houses and homes in expensive locations. Education is no longer for enlightenment of the mind and liberation of the soul – it is today for pride of place in society. Rather than obtaining an education in the greater interest of society, we have individualized the value and monetized the gains. Society will therefore cash in on these ‘new recruits’ to strengthen its power and further chart the course and destinies of nations, when the reverse should be the case. The culmination of societal values and what they achieve or fail to achieve defines the moral fabric of that society. The Nigerian value system breeds corruption. It provides a fertile ground for corruption to thrive. It is not the singular acts of corruption that is the problem; it is the latent, unspoken, hidden but present capacity of you and I to engage in wrongful conduct and behaviour in secret that forms the root cause of corruption in our society today.

Political parties can punish offenders but can they punish graft in our homes? Politicians can wage war against administrative corruption but can they wage a moral war on our religious institutions? Buhari can jail crude oil thieves but can he address immorality in our campuses? After 4 years of a successful Buhari presidency, what happens? Would we suffer a national relapse if we fell back into the hands of corrupt politicians or hope that his successor continued the war? We know Nigeria and the likely retributions that will be pursued by parties who will feel victimized by the actions of the Buhari administration and who will seek their own pound of flesh. This is Nigeria, I will put nothing past us. It is simple. We have bended our knees to the interests of materialism bred by capitalism. We have become materialistic. We place the duplex over the bungalow. We cheerfully place DSTV over terrestrial channels, Ikoyi is better than Isheri and so on and so forth. The drive and motivation for success today is often determined by who is on the higher rung of the material ladder – there, right there is the basis of corruption in Nigeria. What has the media come to celebrate? Do we celebrate academic excellence over acquisition capacity of members of society? These values are what MUST CHANGE for Buhari to succeed. The success of the Buhari Administration is more in the hand of the populace than in the hands of the leadership. I sincerely hope that the General and his team will not be fooled to think that it is solely their war – therein lies the booby trap that many governments across the world have fallen into.

We require a re-sensitization, a re-orientation and that may take us 30 years to achieve. Families and social institutions must return to teaching us the value of labour and the dignity it carries. We must again be taught honesty being the best legacy that a man may leave for his children. We must advance learning over materialism and pursue reverent prioritization of the place of a superior being over the affairs of our society – we cannot be a secular state. Our fathers must not pressurize the young men to marriage or own property and our mothers must allow the true course of love for their daughters with less emphasis on the pedigree of the bachelor. Without advocating recklessness in what should be organized social inter-relationships, parents are to return to traditional values of mutual respect and faith in marriage.  Families must consciously educate children that there is indeed a thereafter after this life. One would have expected this to be the sole function of religious institutions but they themselves have been guzzled by society, its lucre has drawn them into deserts of materialism and have thus become unable to return to their God-given social roles and functions. If the churches, mosques and schools fail to groom our children well, then the best that you can have is a society riled by corruption, the likes of Nigeria. It amounts to a triple jeopardy if the family, religion and education leave our youths pandering to learning as found on TV, radio and social media. Parents have found it a significant challenge sharing such rare values of transparency, honesty, and truthfulness because these also are their struggles. They were also not sufficiently refined. Will the blind lead the blind?

God bless Abubakar Shekau.

I am about to lose many friends and I, with this full blown, self-enlightened realization offer no regrets nor apologies for this seemingly eerie yet deliberate extenuation of what our human universe agreeably demonize. We are all now part of a global choir, rendering cantatas of uncharacteristic vilification in unprecedented dimensions and colourations of Boko Haram, a group of Nigerians with uncommon interpretation of their world and their earthly assignment. I am a part of humanity and thereby naturally assimilate advertised virtues of being human, rightly or wrongly, accurately or otherwise but find myself today questioning the rights that I have acquired and so brazenly exercise in the face of another man’s judgment or misjudgment. Understanding the world and its inherent tendencies remains a challenge to the brightest of human minds and leads me to the irrevocable conviction that the best of us can only do so much even if it fails to exceed ability to bath a new born.

Raised in a Christian family and in conscientious admiration of the advancements that the west have introduced to the evolution of human society, I have pursued every means available and otherwise unavailable to me - frontiers that facilitate a calibration of self and my values with the sole purpose of positively affecting my world and in subsequently making this world a better place. The credits of this humble life goal go to my parents who gave up their comforts for me to learn. This piece is however by no means an egotistic trip on the benefits of having a close knit African family but an affront on the deceptive prioritizations that mark our objectives as a people. This piece aims to deflate the over bloated egos of present day living Nigerians, a most undesirable path under the agony foisted on us by kin in the Boko Haram group.

It took Nigeria 43 years, post-independence to enact a law protecting the rights of children. The Child Rights Act (2003) was passed as a federal law under the Obasanjo administration but little has been achieved as the UN reports that 48 million children are living and working against their will in sub Saharan Africa, a vast majority of them from Nigeria. Till date, this law which required enactment by states Houses of Assembly has only been adopted by 23 states -  Nigeria has 36. If a law is passed by the National Assembly which at that time engaged in a little more work than the flagrant jangle over play our present crop of legislators are renowned for, why would it amount to such a herculean task,  getting  13 states to simply adopt legislation that protects children? Of the over 10 million children on streets in Africa, the world is demanding only 276 from Abubakar Shekau. If these girls were found, would we not again embark on another slumber till Brother Abubakar abducts some 500 boys from the streets of our Arabia, Abuja? It is one thing to be a continental rallying point for the fight against mindless acts of violence aimed at minors and another to be a continental laughing stock. We must act now to seriously address rights of children.

Why demonize Abubakar Shekau in a nation where, according to UN reports, between 750,000 to 1 Million people, consisting mainly of young women and minors are trafficked for sexual and economic exploitation every year in Nigeria? Are we ignorant of the fact that 47% of convicted Traffickers are from Edo State in Nigeria? Is Abubakar Shekau from Edo state? As it  is said in local street parlance, Shekau is just “a learner” if he can only be accused of less than 300 abductions in a nation where hundreds of thousands of young Nigerian girls languish in secret slave camps in France, Italy, North Africa, Spain, the Netherlands up to Austria and Norway. Was Abubakar Shekau involved in this international menace? The hard work of government in Edo State remains under significant threat of these syndicates that have almost perfected their art. The culturally endowed brilliance of the Edo people was almost tainted by a stigmatization that suggested Edo Sate as a transit camp for girls headed to Italy. The challenge of human trafficking is a national one and Abubakar Shekau has only by the condemnable abduction of young girls, citizens of our fatherland brought more need for a decisive tackling of the problem. This act will be the straw that breaks the back of the Boko Haram sect I equally believe. The war is on in Edo and other states of the federation where these anomalies are prevalent and must be roundly supported by all.

Pensioners die in their hundreds in Nigeria with no special media attention on these individual deaths which is occasioned by government stealing. Police pensions of about N32 Billion were stolen. Railway workers reported N1 Billion Naira of their pensions stolen. A convicted pension thief was released by a Nigerian court on bail of N750,000 for stealing N1.3 Billion Naira. Did Abubakar Shekau instigate these thefts that have left many senior citizens in untold hardship? Was he involved in the grand schemes reported in the civil service administration that facilitated such heights of stealing (not corruption please)? Does the fact that the hash tag campaign #bringbackourpension was never ran or popular diminish the pain and suffering of our senior citizens? Has anyone paid a visit to a Nigeria Police Barracks in recent times? It took the President to embark on an unscheduled visit to the Police College, Lagos to effect some level of sanity in what was little different from a sty – worrisome conditions that our police men and women were forced to live under. Where was Abubakar Shekau when men in positions of authority ran public funds into their private pockets with government overlooking such stealing? Corrupt lawyers, police, judges are Abubakar Shekaus in their own rights. They have sentenced many to early deaths and by their actions deprived millions of basic amenities.

Our universities were out of work for 6 months. Polytechnics and other tertiary institutions for about one year have also been on strike. Did Abubakar Shekau steal money meant for educational development? There is terrorism against educational aspirations of followers in Nigeria perpetrated by successive governments and while secondary schools in some regions of the north are shut on account of threats of violence by Abubakar Shekau on one hand, government has carefully ensured closure of sister schools in the south on the other!

Nigerian manufacturing companies have been engaging in partial shutdowns or complete shutdown of operations due to increasing costs of power provision. Just what organisation does not run on either petrol or diesel in Nigeria today? Power generation has failed to reach 5000 Megawatts of electricity for a nation of 180 Million people, for the 16^th year. Did Shekau steal our Mega Watts too? I have no recollection of how Abubakar Shekau contributed to the embezzlement of $16 Billion Dollars which we were told were expended for dealing with the challenges of power generation under the Obasanjo administration. I also fail to see how he has supported the wanton corruption oozing out of the NNPC and the Petroleum Industry in Nigeria. We may not have the figures but we know that we are giants in financial corruption and so, discounting the suggestion of the erstwhile CBN Governor, Lamido Sanusi that $20 Billion Dollars cannot be accounted for might be at our own peril. While the grand prize for distracting the present national leadership goes to Abubakar Shekau, he cannot be held liable for continuous acts of financial terrorism that present and past governments and their representatives have nurtured, harnessed and cultivated. Our Ministers are terrorists who use offices to commission recruitment disasters. Our Ministers guzzle public funds like it is no man’s business. Our security chiefs engage in obscure procurements and disregard for staff welfare, how will Abubakar Shekau not arise?

Abubakar Shekau is undeniably a Nigerian, with rights under our constitution. If reports in the media, and the pronouncements of Nigerian military authorities generate any reliable truth, it makes sense to label the man Abubakar Shekau a specie with a half human core and the other half, awaiting christening by the Devil himself. I however would like to state that Abubakar Shekau is just one of us. Like millions others in Nigeria, he breaks the law. Like a million others, he disrespects authority. Like tens of millions others, engages in stealing of our gold and now our girls.  If as a nation we fail to hedge our future with the underlying realities of correcting financial terrorism, moral terrorism, NEPA terrorism and all the likes, how better are we than members of Boko Haram? Are we not terrorists to the future of our unborn children if we refuse to stop corruption in its tracks by those whom we supposedly elected? Are we not throwing bombs at the future when we remain silent, divided on ethnicity rather than common good? Are we not terrorists of morality when we deliberately exchange our traditional values of integrity and honesty for money and the things that it can buy? Is there not an Abubakar Shekau in every Nigerian pursuing government contracts? Abubakar Shekau only represents the worst of us but is in the same league with those friends of government that keep our medical institutions comatose, our roads potholed and homes in perpetual darkness.

Pray tell, are our sufferings not variants of terrorism? The results are the same – undeserved suffering and deaths of Nigerians, either in the hands of Shekau or in the hands of government – historic and present. Did Shekau blow up the EFCC office to render investigations into financial crimes ineffective to the point that hardly does the EFCC win any serious convictions under this government? Has he killed any Judge to the point that we are unable to have Judges face the truth and dispense justice in our law courts without favour? Did Shekau conjure a potion that made the House of Representatives self-serving political prostitutes with no interest in providing valuable legislative governance to Nigeria?

I am a Christian and I am taught by my Bible to bless Abubakar Shekau and his clones in government, it is the only way I know to heap coal, burning ones.

The Nigerian Youth and the Journey to Nowhere

Social media was yesterday riled with visuals and videos of what has turned out to be the most recent display of disgrace that Nigeria as a nation is. The Nigeria Immigrations Service conducted recruitment tests but unwittingly showed the world the near comatose state of this nation state called Nigeria. We are pointedly headed to a graveyard and we do not know it. Nigeria is sunk, and underneath the wasteful centenary celebrations is a nation already being eaten up by maggots. This is no time to get political about our condition but the time today is one that requires a honest dissection of exactly what makes us so willfully accepting of suffering. Pictures of Nigerian youths hurled into an arena as large as the National Stadium should not have been the wake up call to the extent of rot in the economy, but the application to use the National Stadium in the first place! A serious administration would have been bothered beyond startled that a zonal recruitment test should hold like the camp meeting of the celestial church. More worrisome was the deployment of teargas carrying police men to the midst of hungry youths, looking to government for hope of survival.

I recall how about 9 years ago, I was in a recruitment exercise organized by First Bank of Nigeria Plc. We were 4000 candidates in the Abuja zone, while about 17,000 wrote from Lagos. It was not until after a few months that we learnt that we were over 70,000 that applied with about 35,000 qualifying for the tests. It turned out that just about 1000 candidates got the job. That number might look small, but I give kudos to First Bank of Nigeria for contributing to youth empowerment in Nigeria over the years. Intercontinental Bank, the then Oceanic Bank were also hiring youths and engaging us on a frequent basis back then. God bless the owners of those banks who helped in no small measure in reducing the towering numbers of the unemployed in Nigeria. The suspended CBN Governor, Lamido Sanusi and his policies however made nonsense of those manpower gains of the banking sector with his scare tactics and ended what would have been a continuous growth of youth employment in the industry. I maintain that Lamido Sanusi did more harm to the Nigerian youth than the government that he represented. We were the ones who lost real jobs not the Ibrus or the Akingbolas. His personal grouse was most inappropriately settled and I hope that posterity will judge him accordingly. Thousands lost bank jobs yet the CBN remained a closed recruitment zone primed only for the elite, politicians and their children.

From Obasanjo to Goodluck Jonathan, it is an F9 altogether for failure to efficiently manage the resources of this country appropriately. When you do only 20% from a possible 100%, it is a failure because it seems that it is only the GSM and Sure-P projects that PDP lays claims to per creation of employment opportunities in our economy. We have earned trillions in sales of our oil resources over the last 14 years but we have almost nothing to show for it in favour of Nigeria’s youths. Beyond the presidents, it is equally a shame to majority of Nigeria’s politicians especially Legislators with the privilege of providing leadership over the last 14 years. This is not about PDP or APC, this is about FAILURE. We have failed and we must admit that, the suffering in the land is not only in the North East but also in the South West.

 I hate to state however that at the heart of the problem is the Nigerian youth.  We are the ones waiting to be served like princes in an Egyptian court. We are carefully bidding our time like astronomers watching the stars. We have no worries, we have no agitations, we will be fine we believe. We are today engrossed with TV, Football, Malaysian hair, Swag, Range Rover Sport, and Kim Kardashian and have allowed our national leadership erode and corrode what is supposed to be our future. Do we really think we can continue to carry on as if the future is guaranteed? Or else how does one explain the docility of the Nigerian youth? How else can one comprehend the perpetual complaisance that Nigerian youths have adopted as home? And to put it out very quickly, I am not asking that Nigerian youths go up in arms, killing people and destroying property, we have Boko Haram unfortunately taking up that ignoble responsibility. What Nigerian youths lack in my opinion is a united voice. We do not have a manifesto; we do not have cords that bind us. We are tossed about by winds of political doctrines and money. I am happy to however observe that we are ripe, we have been sensitized and I think that we have been sufficiently gingered by the enablement of social media which has provided opportunities for us to vent. We must now pursue a deliberate advancement of these ideals – the articulation of what we might want to call a youth agenda. 

What do we represent? What do we aspire to? What drives us? What motivates us? What defines our hopes? What defines our past? What defines our future? How do we achieve an agreed vision? When do we achieve this? Who are our friends? Who are our enemies? Where do we go? What do we say? How do we say it?

We have all settled for “normal” and so we are treated like orphans because political leadership usually always underperforms. If we therefore would like to be treated with minimal respect, we have to demand higher. The truth today is that, the future is no longer sure. We might have no nation to cling to, we might have no resources to rely on anymore and even the few jobs might be totally taken out. God forbid that recruiters in the future would have to hire Local Governments for recruitment tests! Let us forge our unity, for us and by us. Nobody will do it for us, angels in the stadium say so!

WE ARE ABOUT THE ELECTION: AND NOTHING MORE…

Our socio political existence has been profoundly established to be inherently tied to elections and re-elections. Nigerian politics and by extension Nigerian politicians live by elections, for elections and die by elections. The essence of politics in other nations of the world  seem lost within our national frontiers and this might reasonably explain the near comatose state of our national development. This primitive precondition has numbed our senses so disturbingly that I wonder if any chance remains for us to effectively demand an inseparable tie between politics and national development.

The Dubais and Abu Dhabis of this world could have been just another Nigeria. They however did not have the misfortune of leaders without capacity to look to the future or the sense of deliberately designing a national vision to run with. We could have decided for instance, since the discovery of oil in commercial quantities in the 60s to be the most developed country in Africa but no, we were satisfied with tactical little wins - one year victories without a care about the wonderful prospects of a purposely created future. Time has proven without fail, the unchallenged truth that without a will, there is usually not a way. Many so called visionary plans were mere academic and socio economic parties organized by past governments to divert and distract attention from gross incompetence and manifest display of ignorance of the universal objectives of leadership. The family of Bin Fayed practically redefined the fortunes of the UAE which today ranks as one of the world’s hotspots for commerce and tourism. It took a conscious, deliberate and collective resolve to determine to establish a Kingdom that would have the whole world streaming to it. Nigerian governments look at pockets of scattered development without a holistic approach that is more enduring and in the greater interest of the nation.

The world over, everything has a price. From roads to medical facilities, shelter to energy and even security and intelligence, at the right price, anybody or government can almost get what they want and desire. I have often questioned if the lack of the financial means accounts for the very poor state of our national facilities and infrastructure. I usually have been tempted to assume so but the news media fail to help that line of reasoning. Why can we not have the best in and of the world as a nation despite known facts that we have 20Billion dollars available on a yearly basis for private profit sharing?

It has to now become a prayer for every well-meaning Nigerian to ask God for leadership that goes beyond politics. Truth be told, state or regional policing might have been a more effective approach towards curbing g the mind boggling satanism that insurgents across the country perpetrate. We however have not been collectively governed by a true national leader; we have been broken down into clans, tribes, groups and kith and given varying treatments depending on the whims and caprice of whomever it was that held power. If we had the fortune of being groomed collectively, served collectively and punished collectively, perhaps as a people we might have matured now. It is this state of unsettling divisions in our collective mentality that makes it so hard for us to demand accountability from people whom we supposedly elected into offices. The usually self-serving divisions often employed by a certain political class would have been roundly defeated if we were first united and if we had selfless leadership. We lose the advantage of unity because our leaders from their inauguration become obsessed with re-election and therefore sacrifice the requirement for meeting leadership objectives on individual altars depending on how much such an individual controls in the political scheme of things and how much he or she has potential of contributing to a re-election.

Religion and ethnicity have often been basis for internal wrangling among the led in Nigeria. This puts them to a disadvantage in the face of real physical developmental challenges. The Northern led and the Southern led must come to a consensus of opinion on their suffering and agree to tackle it head on, united and focused on improving their lot. Or else, we become faced again with another re-election monger….