By Val Amadi
There is enough to feed everyone but not enough to feed everyone’s greed. The problem with the elites in this country is often about the right sharing formulae (even our resource control was about the right sharing formulae).
Elections into offices is about the right sharing formulae as was evident in the last elections 2015-between the North and the South. Appointments in Nigeria are still about the right sharing formulae (federal character). We quibble about the right sharing formulae like a group of indigent kids eating communally from a try of rice in an obscure village; with a skewed ratio which does not ever favor the masses
The truth about it is that sharing formulae is at the bedrock of our corrupt nature.
Nigeria has become synonymous with the word – corruption (and this is not in any way disparaging the nation). I am as proud to be a Nigerian as anyone can be under the banner of any nation. If because you are with strangers and you decide to hide your phlegm, cough will kill you. If you lie to others, don’t lie to yourself.
So gentlemen and ladies, fellow Nigerians…our nation is sick. We are ailing from corruption as we continue searching for the sharing formulae in our nationhood.
Our acquisitive streak has run us all amok so that if we don’t kill corruption, corruption will kill us.
Every successive government (at least military) and very recently the President Muhammad Buhari regime has come to rule or govern on the platform of anti-corruption. We are all wiser today by benefit of hindsight.
Whilst there has been a lot of cry about the manner the battle of corruption has been prosecuted, be it selective, just or what have you, I really doubt we are fighting corruption (the right way).
I say this because as an apostle of details; of intangibles, the battle has not commenced as there are basic building blocks yet to be put in place.
The government can fight the small battles in police stations, airports, public offices generally and in deed by displaying its expenditure monthly down to the kobo – who got what and did what including how the decision was arrived at.
When the system is transparent, yardsticks for arriving at them clearly spelt out, followed and equal opportunities respected, our people will learn attitudinally to obey the trend. If the opportunity to follow the “short-cut” is gone, they will follow the trending “road”. If however, we decide to follow the loud, dramatic manner of harassing, headlining any public officer, we may not achieve the “change”-All we’d continue to do is grab headlines, and/or get even with some perceived enemies.
It is time to review our criminal justice system especially our economic crimes as the flaws in them are too glaring. Arguing otherwise is merely either playing the ostrich or being economical with the reality (truth inter alia). People cannot continue to simply scurry into public office, fill their pockets and waltz out without strict consequences.
We cannot afford to completely go mad; for yes – we have gone mad. We have lost our sense of right and wrong. As a society, we worship wealth, fame and vanity. So long as we continue on that path and fail to discover our humanity, we will live with the devil in poverty, deprivation, diseases and crime.
We cannot continue to lie to ourselves consistently with our mouths whilst our ears and eyes hear and see evil visited on fellow beings through poverty, deprivation et al with our noses filled with the putrid smell of death.
Enough!!!
Let us speak the truth.
Anyone who advocates that it is right to continue pouring public funds without plugging the leaking system has no business managing a “corner shop”.
Our fore-fathers did not teach us to fetch water with baskets.
This penchant to assume that it is one person’s task to fix Nigeria is akin to the age-old African penchant of idolizing “big-men” hence the concept. Our development has to be societal to happen and MUST be institutionalized to last beyond the energy of a man, group of people or a regime or government. The same way our present disposition and behaviour has taken root; same way the reverse will. If only we agree. The knee jerk reactions of the current government needs to end except if what we are seeing is the proverbial reach of the palm-wine tapper with his cudgel. In which case, when the curtain falls on the current drama, it will be business as usual.
I however have my own drama script:- imagine an airport without immigration people collecting returns (note that the cameras at the airport has not gotten any immigration or customs officer sacked for collecting money from travellers).
Imagine the border posts without customs officers querying why you bought so many books when you are not a student?
Imagine a police force where all personnel on duty interactions are recorded to aid identification of citizen harassment or otherwise. Where recordings can be used as evidence for immediate sanctions.
Heavens would not fall if instead of paying five thousand naira(N5,000) to unemployed people ,we can turn them to agents of good who report the wrongs (they see) with our society (no one is as bitter as this group so trust me, they will report all grievances) and government does the necessary. It is not rocket science!
The battle against corruption will not be won just by either the ICPC, the EFCC, Internal Affairs or by any political party.
It will be won by a social change where we all seek to take a stand for our common good and stop “sharing formulae” like thieves without honour.
By the way, what is government and what qualifies a government as successful or good?