Date Published: 06/29/09
Leading a Happy Corruption-Free Life: A Psycho-philosophical way out
By
DEBO ADENIRAN
The Humanity Centre: 610, Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, Ijaye Bus stop, Ijaye-Ojokoro.
P.O. Box 1592 , Agege, Lagos, Nigeria. Tel: 01-4736534, 08023226276, 08037194969
www.thehumanitycentre.org E-mail: debo@thehumanitycentre.org, dadnig@yahoo.com
Man created His own God, made His own World, invented His own Trouble
When I was verbally informed by the President of this Association, Mr Gbenga Williams, that the event of Banker’s Week will hold and I was invited as a speaker, I giggled. Not because of cynicism or derision but because I thought it was going to be a usual jamboree lacking in reason or reasoning that has characterized such student and youth events these days.
When, however, I got home a day later and I was informed that the gentleman left a letter for me. I knew the letter was an expression of some seriousness the Association attached to the event but didn’t think it would be as serious as including an intellectual discourse as I discovered I was asked to come and lead. On reading the content of the letter inviting me as a “Guest Speaker” at the ‘“Banker’s Week tagged “5th Year of NABAFS”’ and I was given the vista to “choose a topic of discussion which would inspire the students”, my interest was set aglow. I was excited not only because for decades I have enjoyed speaking to the young and mentoring them to become responsible adults as future leaders but because of the need to inspire the budding bankers to reverse the current degeneracy into a state of anomie of the Nigerian finance industry, especially banks. I believe this is an auspicious opportunity to do just that.
It is on this note that I promise to present here, not an academic but a plain and down-to-earth discussion paper that is explicable to all and sundry. The discussion will focus on need to develop appropriate psycho-moral capacity to resist the allure and temptation of joining corrupt bandwagon because of the seeming difficulty in beating them. The discussion is aimed at exposing the evil of corruption and the futility of engaging in fraudulent accumulation of material wealth at the expense of the honest members of the society.
Why do people steal?
Corruption is any act of dishonesty perpetrated to attract underserved favour or benefit to oneself. Stealing is the most prevalent type of corruption and thieves are capable of stealing just anything. But why? You may ask. Most thieves don’t define their goals of stealing because they don’t know. It goes on to show that most don’t steal out of need or want but out of sheer greed and fear of the unnecessary - shame. Shame pushes thieves to reject their deserved status but engage in shameful acts of stealing and shame is what they get in return. If someone steals food, it is usually not because of hunger, it is neither because he can not engage in honest work to get food nor could it be because no one with food was ready to share with him.
Africans don’t consider it stealing if one does not take more than can only pass for a meal. Most hungry people are so because they assume a lifestyle that their honest earnings cannot earn them. Their taste and appetite are so high and ferocious beyond their socio-economic status. They long for goods and services that are higher than their socio-economic stature. They therefore steal to enhance the socio-economic status and stature. However, everyday is for the thief and one day is for the owner. No thief can get away with his trade for ever; he would be caught one day - dead or alive! If dead his memory would be a shameful cross to bear for his progeny. If alive the long arm of the law will deal a shameful blow that will linger for ever on him.
Socio - economic status is like a tree to be climbed. The richer you are the lighter your weight and the higher you can climb. If people that are burdened by low financial capacity try to climb as high as those whose burden are lightened by their higher net worth they are likely to fall with great thud and, like the fabled Humpty-dumpty, it may be difficult to put them together again! It is therefore advisable that people should rather climb below their economic strata so per adventure they fall; they will not be badly injured. It is sheer greed and arrogance that makes people aspires for what their SES cannot procure and therefore engage in stealing to meet such aspirations.
Like we described earlier, just anything - material and non-material possessions can be stolen. Stealable items range from food, money, movable or landed properties to human beings and even their corpses in whole or parts. Others are ideas, power, influence, opportunity, image, habit, even sex, emotions, name and time, and of course certificated or non-certificated qualifications. The latter are manifest in examination malpractices through manipulation of the process, intimidation of colleagues, harassment; cajoling, blackmailing and coercing lecturers to give underserved marks etc.
Result of Stealing
The result of the above-stated culture of corruption is a vicious circle of moral degeneracy within the socio-political environment. A government that steals its way to power through electoral malpractice will only work with corruptible allies and produce likes as successors. Such a government is not likely to provide necessary social infrastructures needed for the well being of the honest citizenry. Working class parents are not likely to be well paid for their jobs as employees, or their good and services as independent workers. Badly remunerated parents would be unable to provide the necessities for their families. Their children will be afflicted by developmental diseases owning to inadequate nutrition, social and health care facilities. Both their physical, social and intellectual growth would be stunted. They will therefore be lacking in initiatives that will enhance their academic and creative capacity and capability.
Such children will find it difficult to cope successfully with the rigours of schooling or trade training. They will therefore drop out of school or trade centre, or if powerful and influential, manipulate their ways out with indefensible merits. Of course the resultant certificate from such school or training would be worthless in honest labour market. Owning to inadequate education and training, there will be dearth of skilled man power. This will result into institutional failure as will be witnessed in political and corporate governance. This will lead to degeneracy in public and private economic activities. It will equally lead to systemic failure as evident in energy, power and capital epilepsy. This in turn will be injurious to all facets of national life health, education, economy, security etc, which will fall into comatose or total collapse.
If this happens, political leaders and the affluent will no longer rely on goods and services that the country can offer. They will travel abroad at every slight excuse for such at the expense of tax payers’ conveniences. The rest that cannot afford such luxury will stay back on local alternative with little or nil efficacious remedies. Most peasants then die of preventable diseases likes poverty, ignorance and stupidity. This is the situation we find ourselves in Nigeria today. And this must change while all of us will serve as agents of that desirable change.
When children of the fraudsters manipulate their way into getting jobs in positions they don’t merit. They force their stay therein and make their offspring join them in the field of the malfeasance. They thus perpetuate their lording it over the children of the humble peasants who remain their servants. The latter who naturally fail to make an in-route into the world of work but are greedy go into criminal and immoral activities of all descriptions like Obtaining Under False Pretences alias Yahoo, Yahoo; Advanced Fee Fraud, alias 419, drug pushing and peddling, armed or non-armed robberies, prostitution, political thuggery, assassination, kidnapping etc.
Such contradiction therefore takes root and perpetuates itself for as long as they are tolerated by its victims. When the system that allows the contradiction is rejected and replaced with a new system that guarantees equality before the law and children of both the affluent and peasants enjoy rights to equal pay for equal labour then we have a revolution. The principle of “the more you work the less you earn” will be replaced with the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. And that is what Socialism preaches.
Against short-cut to success
The antidote to ignorance is knowledge. Knowledge is also the antidote to joblessness. A job is an antidote to poverty – “labour creates wealth”. Wealth in economy and intellect is the antidote to stupidity. Therefore, there is the need to avoid stupidity that makes people engage in the worship of wealth which in turn makes them ashamed of their honest socio-economic status and stature. Therefore in order to rise above the shame that lures people to engage in stealing one must engage in ventures that will fetch him honest means of livelihood - jobs. To get good jobs, one must acquire sound knowledge which will break shackles of ignorance.
I must specially warn against relying too much on religious prayers, occultism or luck for success. No God or gods has/have any new role to play in the struggle to invent a new society. Forget the allegories contrived into various religious books or doctrines. The creator has ended his/her/its assignment as soon as all what we humans need to live forever were created and our habitat within a geographic expression later variously named was invented.
The being(?) never at any time, even by the account of those religious books, created religion. If we require worship or prayers to survive or live freely and happily we would not have been able to do without it like, air, water, warmth, food, excreting and sex! This is why one believes that it is man, who made his own God in his own image according to his perception, rather than God or gods doing it in its esoteric and scary forms and formats. Man made his own God, created his own world and invented his own problems by himself, for himself, and among himself and his likes. The creator must have reasoned wisely that we have no business being elsewhere but this part of black world.
Equally taking free underserved marks for tests and examinations can only worsen one’s ignorance. Honest knowledge is borne out of hard, unsparing study which makes its products useable in and out of employments. No knowledge stolen or contrived can be useful. Equally deceptive and mere conjectural knowledge cannot be useful except leading to life of criminality. A student is destroyed by the margin of unearned marks he receives. This means he pretends or is deceived into believing he knows what he does not know and at critical moments, lose what he desires but requires sound knowledge to acquire. It is better to have sound knowledge than to a bouquet of certificates that cannot be defended. It is also those who have sound knowledge in their field of endeavour that earn good economic returns which take them out of poverty. They also remain humble within their convenience. This makes them stay out of trouble and shameful acts.
What is to be done
It is we, the stakeholders in our socio-political project that need to pull all our resources - human, material and spiritual(?) arsenals together, first to salvage our mentality, natural endowments and emotions from the stronghold of neo-colonialists and modern-day imperialists elements masquerading as socio-political leaders; second, free ourselves from the political profiteers masquerading as genuine politicians; and then sit together in a conference that will hold water, to determine the terms of our association, whether we want to live together as one unitary republican country (never one nation), cooperate as a federation, or collaborate as confederates. Until then neither power of prayers, sacrifices nor taking oaths of secrecy or loyalty will force us to live successfully together.
As emerging bankers, I would urge you all to aspire to be the best in your chosen career rather than bank on fraudulent short cut to success. There would be a lot of temptation on your way while practicing your trade; you need to develop a strong principle against stealing. You may try anything out of curiosity but bear in mind that “curiosity kills the cat”. Karl Marx once said, “Nothing human is alien to me”. I say to you, indulge in everything - wine, weed, women (and men) - but don’t allow anything to enslave you as they may ensnare you into stealing. Resist peer and all other social pressures to steal. Happiness is not a relative term only individual minds determine his. Nobody or situation can make another sad without permission. Granted there are trial periods for all humans but all problems are imaginary and we can condition our minds to see them as none. No problem is insolvable; we only need courage to carry us on. Whatever problem we think we have has a solution lurking somewhere. Only a little more effort will seek them out.
It is not a true that nobody resists stealing in a lonely treasury”. Believe in the maximum that “nobody gets away from a crime forever” this is borne out of the principle of “indestructibility of crime”. This is also accentuated by religionists who say “If you fire an arrow sky wards and duck under a mortar, if mortal gods don’t find you out, the spiritual one will”. The worth of any achievement lies in the legitimacy of the process of its attainment. Every criminal is first, a suspect of his own conscience. This is what pushes him to become legal suspect and ultimately, convict of the law. Every body needs choose not to be a convict since once a convict remains a convict forever, neither amnesty nor pardon removes the eternal shame on him.
Thank you for listening.
Being the text of a Lecture at the forum organized by the Association of Banking and Finance Students (NABAFS) of the Lagos State Polytechnic, Ikeja Campus on the occasion of its 5th Anniversary Celebration on Saturday, June 27, 2009 at Lafrograms, Ifako, Agge, Lagos.
