A Heist at the Hajj Commission, by Ike Willie-Nwobu

Nigeria’s tightly wound religious veneer stretches and slips but always manages to hold firm in a country where hypocrisy is a national heirloom.

To serve is to steal in Nigeria and with each stench of rot that wafts into the public nose, there appears to be no end to the predation of those who pilfer the public purse.

About two years ago, Nigeria lost its accountant general, Ahmed Idris, to a corruption investigation. According to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), about one hundred and nine billion Naira had disappeared from the national treasury through his office. Nigerians immediately aggregated a question: If the accountant general could not account for public funds in his possession, who indeed could?

If Nigerians had long suspected an outbreak of the disease that is a lack of accountability and transparency in public office, it was doubtful they knew how widely it had spread.

According to the EFCC, the sum of ninety billion Naira allocated as subsidy for the 2024 Hajj, has vanished from the coffers of the Nigerian Hajj Commission(NAHCON). Jalal Arabi, who was the head of the commission when the money disappeared has been fired by President Tinubu and investigations are ongoing. But in a country where corruption in public office is an heirloom with investigations always running into impregnable stonewalls, what hope is there that Nigerians, stolen blind by the rampaging greed of a few will find any sort of justice?

In a country that wields religion as a sword rather than a shield, there is also hardly a better time to question the prudence and propriety of sponsoring citizens to religious pilgrimages using public funds.

In a country swarmed by a legion of soluble problems, money is predictably tight. Is it then prudent for scarce resources to be apportioned for religious pilgrimages in what is supposed to be a secular state, and in a manner that end up benefiting only the privileged? It doesn’t make sense.
Nigeria remains a secular state and salutarily so. The greater number of Nigerians prefer it this way and have no aspirations to live under a religious state and its fanatical and hypocritical hordes. Pilgrimages are private matters of personal faith that should be left to individual choices. The Nigerian state has no business getting involved.
Resources are scarce in Nigeria. What is left after public officers steal to their satisfaction is hardly enough to service the other sectors of the economy like health and education not to talk of the luxury of expensive pilgrimages to other countries.
The Nigerian factor also ensures the slots for state-sponsored pilgrimages only falls to privileged citizens who can otherwise sponsor themselves to the pilgrimages but prefer to deprive others of the opportunity.

The Nigerian state continues to tragically assume the role of a meddlesome interloper, dabbling into issues it has no business with. Now that one of those issues has been exposed for what it is—a front for fraud—it must be scrapped. Nigeria should wash its hands off it. Having overstayed its welcome, the welcome mat must now be forced to wriggle away from it. Having proven to be an unconscionable and questionable drainpipe on Nigeria’s scarce resources, it is time to bin it.

The heist at the Hajj Commission also begs the question of what other bogus state-sponsored schemes exist in Nigeria with little more than the aim of deluding Nigerians and siphoning public funds. Which other government bodies are hiding the thieves plundering Nigeria’s resources?
The Tinubu administration must unravel and uncover them or risk further catastrophic loss of credibility.

Nigeria’s much heralded return to democracy continues to overshadow the fact that successive governments have been insensitively expensive. While Nigerians have become poorer, government officials have continued to increase the cost of maintaining themselves and their offices. The result is a government disconnected from the people, and mind-boggling corruption.

The fight against corruption in the country has also served to distract Nigerians from other pressing issues. Nigerians have been roundly and repeatedly deceived by deceitful politicians who tout dubious anti-corruption wars to divert attention from their incompetence and ineptitude.

Nigerians need to confront the systems and structures that enable corruption in the country. The mentality and culture of corruption embarrassingly embedded into every aspect of life in Nigeria must now be dislodged. This is easier said than done as corruption permeates every aspect of Nigerian life.

The government official who sits in his expensively appointed office in Abuja has little qualms about signing off public funds to his private accounts or those of his cronies; the mobile security personnel manning checkpoints menacingly demands that his palms be greased literally and repeatedly by motorists; even the lowly desk officer in a government ministry wants their palms lubricated by weary citizens before they do their jobs.

As gleaned from chilling revelations concerning the Hajj Commission, in Nigeria, even the dictates of religion do little to discourage the corrupt mind. If religion was a strong factor, those who embezzled the money would have refrained given that the funds were appropriated for a spiritual exercise.

Nigerians know why the leaks in their country have defied plugging to leave them in such a mess. The battle against insidious corruption cannot be won by the state alone acting through suspect agencies. It would require a seismic shift in mentality and culture. With the way things are going, that shift is a bridge too far for Nigerians.

Ike Willie-Nwobu,
Ikewilly9@gmail.com