NIGERIA: LEADERS WHO STEALS – PSYCHIATRIST’S PERSPECTIVES (Part 1)
During one of my visits to Nigeria in late 2005, I was quietly waiting at
the Ibadan Airport lobby to board my plane to Abuja. Looking around me, I
found myself in the company of so many other co-travellers who were also
waiting for the same flight which was then delayed. This was shortly after
the tragic Sososliso flight that killed so many people in Port-Harcourt.
My anxiety was high but I managed to enjoy myself looking around pensively
waiting for what potentially could be my last journey on earth given the
recent happenings at time in the Aviation Industry in Nigeria.
I noticed that majority of my co-travellers happened to be very familiar
with one another, to them the wait was not unusual and indeed, it offered
them ample opportunities to interact, which I noticed they were doing
convivially. However, they did not fail to notice my very presence, I
later found out that they were surprised to see that another Nigerian was
waiting to board the same flight, but appeared not to be so keen to join
in their interaction or at least accord them the courtesy of paying their
presence some cognisance. I later found out that they have been murmuring
amongst them, asking each other…Who is this fellow? Where is he from?
Could he not see us here...?
They must have concluded that, he must be a ‘stuck up’ Nigerian or perhaps
a foreigner. But they did not fail to wonder…how come he is looking so
fresh and cool like us and yet he does not seem to want to, at least,
approach us for a chat. Well, some of them, I knew so well…they were
serving cabinet ministers, ex-ministers, former DG and Permanent
secretaries, Senators, serving Commissioners, and other Political office
holders, Special Advisers to Governments and top technocrats. But also,
amongst them was an academic, a Professor (I had earlier seen his name on
the boarding list and wondered if he was one of my lecturers during my
undergraduate days in the University). He was so at home with the rest,
fully interactive. I later found out that, indeed he was a new Vice
Chancellor of a University in the South-West of Nigeria. He must have
provided them with some analytical possibilities, theories and hypothesis
of who, perhaps, I could be and why my attitude appeared to be dismissive
of their hallowed presence.
Lest I be lost on the point of this discussion, Leaders Who Steal Public
Funds…Oxford dictionary definition of Stealing is “the act of taking
something from someone unlawfully without right or permission and avoiding
detection”.
Later, the delayed plane arrived and here we were as seemingly civil
Nigerians, gathered to form a line for the boarding protocols. I then
decided to do what I didn’t do earlier, stretched my hand out, introduced
myself to them…my name is Dr…, I was expectant that in return, I will get
to put names to their faces. To their surprise, something very much
unusual to them happened; I started asking for their names as I shook
their hands. I must say that some of them were already known to me by name
but out of courtesy to others, I thought I should get each one to do as I
did to them… One after the other they introduced themselves… I am Otunba…,
Mr…, Dr…, Senator…, Professor…, Hon…, and Chief… However, I did not fail
to notice that some of them did this albeit, very reluctantly and of
course with a tinge of disappointment on their faces.
Then the Professor curiously asked me loudly, where are you from? Don’t
you live here amongst us? I found the questions to be laden with palpable
undertone. To put them out of their obvious discomfort, I replied, I am
Dr…I live in the UK, just visiting my family and friends. He spontaneously
spurted out as if a bubble had just busted…Yes! I said it! I knew it! He
is looking so fresh like us! I couldn’t have been wrong… he said. Did I
not tell you? He asked his fellows. He then asked me…so what do you do in
the UK? I gladly told him, I am a Psychiatrist and Mental Health
Practitioner.
Again, he orgasmically retorted, really! We need you here…, you need to
come and open a ‘shop’ in Nigeria. I curiously but politely asked him, but
why? His reply was as poignant and direct as his questions. In a bid to
answer him, I was not prepared for the barrage of questions that followed
from him, as if he had waited for years to get them out of his chest.
He continued…Dr, how do you explain all these leaders, stealing billions
of dollars, millions of pounds, stacking billions of hard currencies meant
for national development in their bedrooms, in local and foreign personal
accounts? Don’t you think there must be something of an aberration in
their psychological and behavioural framework? How can one person own so
many properties secretly worth billions of Naira, majority of them
unoccupied and yet many suffers around them, homeless and they cannot bat
an eye lid about it? In the International media then was the story of a
Niger-Delta leader under investigation by the EFCC and the UK government…,
so I could relate with why he did not miss the chance to get his questions
out of his chest.
Don’t you think that our leaders who are doing this need to have formal
psychiatrist assessments? Can you not see that this behaviour is socially
inappropriate but it seems to be becoming culturally appropriate amongst
these leaders? Can you not detect some form of psychological deviance that
will explain this compulsive acquisitive vanity? We really need you to be
doing psychiatric and psychological assessments to profile people in
position of leadership and public trust in this country, with this kind of
pervasive tendency to steal bold-face and yet parade themselves with an
air of dignity, wearing cloaks of respectability.
That was when he told me that, he is a Vice Chancellor of one of our
Universities and he had wondered if infact, psychiatric profiling of
people he would appoint to positions of trust within the University
administration would help him to decipher their vulnerability to this kind
of maladaptive kleptocracy and inform his better judgement on who to give
what and what level of supervision would be necessary. I really found the
conversation very interesting from there, while our co-travellers look and
listen with rapt attention at our sudden copious level of rapport.
INCREASING AWARENESS OF PSYCHIATRIC ASSESSMENT
In recent times, this issue about psychiatric assessment of leaders and
people in position of public trust have re-surfaced and it has merited
duely, some degree of public discourse. Recently, the New EFCC Czar, Mrs
Farida Waziri (Ret AIG), wondered aloud why indeed psychiatric assessment
should not be a pre-condition for taking up public appointments, given the
level of economic recklessness and public stealing, that has become almost
a national embarrassment. Professor Wole Soyinka, sometime ago had also
queried, why not?
It has been observed recently by one of Nigeria’s foremost editors of a
daily Newspaper, Mr Simon Kolawole that probes at the National Assembly
have brought up a lot of revelations, but yet, no convictions. I also
remember being asked once in 2001, during one of my Postgraduate Lectures
in the School of Public Policy, UK, coinciding with front page news in the
UK Financial Times (Nigerian Leader found with a secret £4 billion account
in the UK bank). They asked me to explain, how can one person siphon £4
billion out of a state fund and yet there is no precipitant economic
meltdown? Then, I struggled to position a sensible answer to that pose.
Little did I know that, it was only an evolving sign and symptoms of many
worrying and disturbing economic crimes against our national development?
We have heard in recent times, how $16 billion NIPP power project and 300
billion naira allocation for roads is yet unaccounted for. It is well in
the public domain, how 50 billion naira PEF was mismanaged and yet the
gladiators are treated with kids gloves with a slap on the wrist, while, a
boy who stole 5,000 naira from his friend was jailed for 3 years with no
option of fine. We have seen the charge lists of Ex-Governors released by
the EFCC. The 19.5 billion naira of the Aviation Intervention Funds/Safe
Tower Project and £2.6 billion Oil block bidding revenue and so on and so
forth are still unsolved and the super-celebrities leaders, who mismanaged
the funds, are laughing at government efforts to get justice for teeming
number of Nigerians.
Given all this madness that has become an evolving trend in public funds
mismanagement and national betrayal of public trust, Will it not be right
then in agreeing with the Vice Chancellor and the New EFCC Czar, that
psychiatric assessment and profiling is needed as a tool of selecting our
leaders into positions of trust? This is not definitely an attempt to
medicalise what has now become a deeply ingrained, culturally appropriate
but morally and socially inappropriate public behaviour. But in doing this
psychiatric assessments, we, can have a baseline for all of them, at
least, certify them well or otherwise from mental health point of view
before they attain that position, so that when infact, they become
stealing leaders, with obsessively criminally acquisitive compulsive
behaviour, they can be made to take responsibility and criminal liability
for that and punitive consequences can be meted out as it is normally done
in other civilised societies, where equality before the law is paramount.
And, if for any reason, they are deemed normal psychologically before
public appointment and are then caught engaging in such maladaptive
criminal acquisitive behaviour, even if psychiatric illness is feigned or
appeared to be the cause, then appropriate mental health intervention can
be suggested, like treatment in a Mentally Disordered Offenders (MDO)
Low/Medium/High Secured Unit or Mental Asylum and therapeutic community.
Also, we may then be better informed of the possible causes or
precipitants to such deviant behaviour in an apparently previously normal
individual.
From the Psychiatrist’s perspectives, we can then begin to hypothesise
whether exposure of some individuals in Nigeria, to power, public funds,
public positions of authority and responsibility is aetiologically linked
to progressive deterioration in their mental health status or sudden
change is personality or rather, if there is infact, ab initio, an element
of deeply ingrained, enduring, pervasive, inflexible personality disorder
which manifest in multiple domains, particularly in situation where public
fund is being handled or over a broad range of personal, social and
occupational level of functioning. Then, should this be case, our
constitution and healthcare system should find a means of addressing such
kind of clinically significant phenomenology, given its prevalence, its
destructive and malignant effects on our national socio-economic
development.
In Part 2 – I will elaborate on Psychological and behavioural phenomenon
that could possibly explain some of this kind of stealing behaviour in
highly placed people. So, Watch Out!
By Dr Olayiwola Ajileye
drajileye@hotmail.com
Dr Ajileye is a Mental Health Specialist in the United Kingdom.