Okechukwu Udeagwu
The world is currently afflicted with a health pandemic – Coronavirus – which the World Health Organisation, WHO, has codenamed Covid-19. The figure in the name acknowledges the year of debut of the infection in Wuhan, a city in China’s Hubei Province. The devastating and mortal health risks of this infectious disease are current affairs. And so is the ongoing global trauma in every facet of life – economic, political, cultural and many others.
In answer to real and imagined ways of the infection, the WHO has pointedly said it occurs when droplets from a host, an infected person or carrier comes in contact with the eyes, nose and mouth of another, or victim in this case and finds way to the respiratory tract or system. The rest is deadly health emergency both for the young and especially the old. The infection is global, and widespread in any district and hamlet it enters; and the rich and developed nations of the world are affected as are the poor countries of the world, including those in Asia and Africa.
Beyond the fatal prognosis due to inadequate healthcare system, it is already a clear and present danger in many Second World’s Latin America, Asia and most notably Third World countries of Africa, and, of course, Nigeria.
In the backward nations as Nigeria, this infection, as in many others, is aided and abetted by even a more deadlier malaise – corruption!
To rehash, corruption is a deadlier malaise in our dear nation, Nigeria. Some may say the nation would survive as it is surviving the scourge of malaria and other prevalent, but preventable diseases. Amidst the pretence and the famed resolute resilience, Nigeria and Nigerians aren’t surviving corruption. Check where we are in human development and existential index.
Indeed, truth be told, almost every Nigerian agrees that corruption has been a walking plague strutting the nooks and crannies of the landscape. It takes patriotism to acknowledge this fact and reality of our existence especially seeing that patriotism is “an emotion of love directed by critical intelligence” as Chinua Achebe posited in his seminal novellete, The Trouble With Nigeria.
To put it as it is, corruption is worse than the Coronavirus pandemic that has brought the global community to a standstill. A peep into what this corruption plague has done and is doing to our fatherland, or motherland show mind-blowing evil in multifarious forms.
By the way, what exactly is corruption? The answer is akin to the blind folks with the elephants – and all are correct in their differing perceptions. Let is assume the simple meaning – any wrong (in)action that negatively affects the public good.
The conundrum is that every nation, every society has a share of wrong (in)actions that affects the public; however, the distinguishing fact is that nations and societies have developed enforceable consequences for bad behaviour. Emphasis is, consequences for bad behaviour. Instances abound.
In my motherland, the councillors congregate once or twice a month to share the allocation or funds that trickles in from the table of His Excellency, the Executive Governor of the state. Sometimes these councillors prick by conscience, and out of magnanimity, grades one or two earth roads, cuts down grasses on their main feeder road, installs one or two culverts and rub paint on the walls of council secretariats buildings. By the way, these only happen in luckier and fewer councils across the land.
The Lord of the State, His Excellency the Executive Governor superintends state resources made up chiefly of allocations from Abuja every month as well as the internally generated revenue comprising pay as you earn, PAYE taxes from public sector and organised private sector payrolls. The Executive Governor sits with his key aides and commissioners (those superintending the motley ministries and key departments and agencies) to allocate resources. This is called the State Executive Council. Sometimes, the Executive Governor does not have the temperament to call for such meeting because he has weightier things to do. Certainly, the Executive Governor allocates a “fraction” of the state resources as his personal, unaccounted ‘security vote’ – never mind neither his person, his household and his people are secure.
By now, Nigerian citizens must have realised they have a presidential system that imbue the president with awesome powers of life and death. He dispenses blessing and cursing at his whim. As with the Governor, he sits with his ministers and key aides in a weekly Federal Executive Council ritual allocating resources and approving positions to another layer of lords. The president and his aides and ministers and crème de la crème of his bureaucracy; he and his bureaucrats make platitudes and flowery sentences about good governance, but does little or nothing to give such effect. They are contented with life in their cocoons where state resources nourish and revitalise their bodies – and that of their families and those on whose their benevolence would smile on.
Of course, just few notes of the billions and trillions of social safety net funds reach the poor as the bulk are disbursed into pockets of proxies, the rich. As with my backwater town of Umueshi so it is in Zungeru and Araromi, the rulers send a bag of rice and a carton of noodles for thousands of residents as palliative and strut as majesties and messiahs.
In Nigeria, the inept and worst of frauds are the most likely to ‘capture’ positions. Ascending the thrones, they don the garb of majesties and excellencies projecting non-existent integrity – and supporters hail. A scratch on the surface reveals bigoted worldview of both rulers and hailers. Every one of them, elected or selected, swears to anti-corruption disposition. To them allegiance to the state means allegiance to themselves or clan and never to all the people, the entire citizens which encapsulate the state.
There are pretenses to the contrary and certainly few exceptions, but public officials, from the cleaner to the person(s) at the top are only concerned about and preoccupied with their (families) welfare; other friends and highly placed members of the public use their reach to the corridors of power to win contracts and jobs for themselves and wards that they are certainly wont to execute nor they would ever won competitively. Close aides and those that work for the powerful pick the crumbs from the masters’ table and are contented. The same for the private sector lords and lucky employees in the ports, banking, oil and gas and telecommunications. Life’s good!
Nothing wrong with legitimate earnings, but everything is wrong with seeing no evil even enabling it in an infested environment. It is on account of these and many more that there is little or no basic quality infrastructure – roads, schools, hospitals, to mention three. The lords of the states make commissioning fanfare when a tar is poured on a road, an empty hospital is erected or a school block is constructed. The people clap and dance and praise the lords for their magnanimity as if they are philanthropists.
The law only takes a toll on the culprit who stole a tuber of yam and has no godfather to meet the judge than a high official of the state who carts away billions from the treasury, from our common patrimony through many avenues, including skimming budgets and padding of contracts. The courts become conclaves for injustice; and judgments go to the highest bidders. A fanfare is made of handful of scapegoats among themselves only for a brief moment; the people’s short memory kicks in to subdue their outrage as they move to other oddities; the thieves regroup for the next election, so-called.
The law assemblies are best known from every state capital to Abuja by their resounding “ayes” basically on things that polish and burnish their honourable and distinguished egos and “nays” to those that do not. Oversight functions become avenues for personal benefits and enrichment.
To a large extent, the Fourth Estate of the Realm purveys information, misinformation and disinformation as suits wielders of levers of power in public and private sectors. In many instances, the journalist becomes a pressman who ignores the tenets of his profession, the very moral responsibilities of his vocation and reports as his personal welfare is accommodated. And as we know, fake news only thrive in an environment of mistrust, official half-truths and outright lies by the leaders to the led. The civil society organisations spring up everyday to fight the ills, but get sucked-in, muddied as youth bodies, cultural and religious bodies are on hire.
The man on the street, the hawker, the vulcaniser, the butcher, the taximan, the student, the teacher, the petty trader, the importer, the business mogul and every one act in decided self-interest with little or regard to the public good. Moral idiocy takes centre stage and the contrast becomes the odd.
The customs man, policeman, uniformed agencies erect legal and illegal roadblocks to extort. The security organ becomes the cesspool of graft and unconscionable defenders of the ‘state’, or status quo rather than of the people. They make criminals of innocents and work in cohort with the vile thus making the poor and even the rich unsafe. It is a cycle and the list is endless. Every administration touts anti-corruption mantra as the core of its being yet progressively enabling the worst and manifest form of the disease.
Everyone seeks to cut corners and cites the obscenity in and of government and governance. Perhaps, after all, little should be expected of the tail if the head is rotten. Survival by whatever immoral means becomes the new norm; indeed, human society becomes a jungle where only the brutest and meanest survive.
All that is wrong with us in Nigeria as in other African nations is the inability to ensure and enforce consequences for bad behaviour. Any society that doesn’t do this has inexorably ensured a jungle – but even animals have codes.
Sociologically, it’s anticipated that humans would deviate from set norms hence punishment is an essential part of the law for deviants. And a society that has no set rules or different rules for different classes and more importantly lack enforcement of those rules no matter whose ox is gored sets itself in the path of self annihilation. Herein lies the difference between the developed nations of the West and the others especially in Africa where leaderships carry on as lords of the manor and rule with platitudes.
We oftentimes unwittingly accuse the insane road user of being the problem; we acknowledge how difficult it is to get everyone to act within bounds. But it is leadership’s responsibility to strengthen the institutions of state. This done, the functional institutions in turn ensure and enforce consequences for bad behaviour. The president does not need to personally enforce obedience to traffic rules neither does he need to arrest criminals. His agencies should! And the agencies apply the rules across the board whether against a vulcaniser or a CEO of a blue chip firm or a political stalwart or governor. When the leadership ensures this consistently then will followership take cue. This is what leadership is appointed to do.
Flowing from structured governance, the followership can hold leaders to account. This is the advanced citizenship that advances the culture of probity and accountability, individual and national security and prosperity; indeed, national interest.
Coronavirus pandemic and even plagues may come – remember history: Antoine Plague of the 165A.D. that claimed five million lives; the Plague of Justinia of 541A.D. with over 25 million casualties; The Flu Pandemic or Spanish Flu, 1918 – 1920 claimed reportedly 25 million in the first week; the Third Plague of 1855; the seven-year Black Death of 1346-1353 and less reported pandemics claimed millions of lives – but only leadership can ensure survival. Not forgetting recent and subsisting scourges such as human immuno-virus or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, HIV/AIDS as well Africa’s malaria pandemic. And, of course, the scourge of all scourges, poverty, are all made possible by bad leadership.
Good governance, leadership ensures cooperation and collaboration enabling human triumph over these pandemics and plagues. Sadly, the same human leaderships today in Africa especially in Nigeria ensure there is no enduring institutions to avert or even cope with littlest man-made or natural tragedies, including corruption.
It must be said that corruption itself is a man-made tragedy of monumental proportions and all the pandemics or plagues known to man pale in comparison to it. It is at the root of Africa’s blighted development and manifest as poverty, strife, disease and death. In Nigeria in particular, citizens are paying the price in untimely deaths and miserable existence even before Coronavirus arrived, and would continue to ravage even after Coronavirus has exited these shores. The famed resoluteness and resilience of Nigerians would not survive the marauding corruption. Check where we are in human development and existential index.
It must be said that bigoted, corrupt worldviews of national and regional leaderships don’t just threaten mutual coexistence predicated on justice, equity and fairness they make these eternal values impossible. This is so because in their quest for self-perpetuation, leadership or the elite, nurture and keep alive the flame of prejudices, false narratives and disinformation in themselves as they nurture same in their ordinary peoples, the harmless ‘talakawas’ and innocent hoi polloi who fight all shades of proxy wars. And as this continues, the elite on both sides keep reaping their political and economic benefits, fortunes – the advantages of evil consorts.
As is with Coronavirus, the greater malaise of corruption is both symptomatic and asymptomatic. The salient yet always avoidable question is, when will the Nigerian leaderships and the ‘zombied’ citizens really and truly acknowledge the deadly threat of corruption beyond the platitudes, beyond the commonplace personal and official lispings?
Perhaps, only then will corruption be treated as even a deadlier existential emergency for both the young and the old as well as for unborn generations. And the rich nations of the West, and subtle empire-building, neo-colonialist China who almost always enable or prop up these leaders can become a force for good – on the side of citizens through strengthening of the institutions; this is in their enlightened national interests as it is for the misruled Africans.
Easier said than done, but the leaderships in Africa, and most especially Nigeria at every level must save her citizens by self-isolating personal interests to serve the greater good, preserve and secure the future for all beyond this COVID-19 season.
Sad to report that records has already pronounced a verdict that this is mere pipedream since vying for elective and other public positions are essentially seen as investments and opportunities to secure personal futures. Truth be told, leaderships in Nigeria has no responsibility to the citizens beyond meaningless exhortations and platitudes.
If the leaderships can, literally and figuratively, lockdown the landscape of corruption, willfully and selflessly empower institutions of state in all its ramifications, the land and her peoples would be renewed. Citizens would need to hold their leaders to account, and the escape to other functional societies is just an option – it is immoral.
* Udeagwu writes from Umueshi, Nigeria