Nigeria’s Silent Tragedy Is The Vicious Circle of Corruption, by Richard Odusanya

Nigeria’s system rewards crooks and condemns the saints. That’s part of the reason for the impunity we all witness today. Profligacy, political instability, citizen alienation, terrorism, and violence define the Nigerian crime scene. Unarguably, Nigeria is a crime scene. Nigeria is a criminal enterprise for those in power and their friends in the corridors of power. But like the Evil Forest in Chinua Achebe’s magnum opus,  Things Fall Apart, the Nigerian criminal enterprise kills a man on the day that his life is sweetest to him.

Nigeria’s political landscape, from the Federal to the local levels, presents a reward system that appears to encourage profligacy recklessness, and thieving by public officeholders. For example, the “temporary” forfeitures of various assets by the former Central Bank Governor Godwin Emeifele and of course the $153 million looted by the former minister of petroleum, Diezani Allison-Madueke to the Nigerian government, and many other criminalities of public officers, once again point to the mindset of terrorists in our beloved country Nigeria. 

Furthermore, criminality has become the norm everywhere, aided firmly by the crooked systems embedded in the skewed and iniquitous unitary constitution running the amorphous political structures of Nigeria. It is such that only very few people still believe in building a nation where good legacies are feasible for all of us to see. 

Unfortunately, Nigeria, as constituted, can’t even be described as a Nation that could earn the loyalties of the citizens and various groups and therefore everyone harbors the mindset to steal from the system. The greater shame is that even women are now very much involved in this monumental heist and crime against humanity. The very recent case of Betta Edu, which may have been “swept under the carpet” and many more is very disheartening, to say the least. In addition, Nigeria’s financial system is not only corrupt in practice, it is also deeply entrenched in corruption by design as stated earlier above.

Following from the above, it is pertinent to mention that, the tragedy of Nigeria today is Corruption. I have written extensively about corruption, profligacy, recklessness, and thieving by public officers with the intention of checkmating these tendencies. For example, I wrote several articles including #CurrencySwap: Emeifele And The Burden Of History Published by Sahara reporters and many other media organizations.

Additionally, some other articles are: #Mockery of Religion: Emeifele in Many of Us #Emeifele/Malami: Public Servants With The Mindsets Of Terrorists. Published while they were still in office. These are just two out of the numerous times that I wrote on the subject of promoting decency in our system. At this point, I would like to share with my readers one of the many feedback from one of my readers:

“There is no sound reason for anyone who considers himself or herself educated to continue to antagonize Emefiele and completely and thoroughly absolve his boss, Buhari. And as it is, Buhari himself has not condemned Emefiele, bearing witness to the fact that Emefiele has his boss’ blessings. To continue to single out Emefiele for the failure or success of the #NairaSwap is nothing but malicious.”

In light of many of the feedback, I wish to conclude this contribution about Nigeria’s Silent Tragedy/The Vicious Circle of Corruption with an African proverb that goes thus: To circumcise a leopard is not the thing, the thing is: Who will hold him down? Meaning: that sometimes the biggest challenge lies not in the task itself but in the associated risks and obstacles. 

Finally, I will recommend or suggest a comprehensive restructuring of the very system operating in Nigeria in such a way that we can build INSTITUTIONS that will be self-regulating and immune to the manipulations, whims, and caprices of the very few amongst us who suffer the diseases of excessive greed, selfishness, covetousness, and kleptomania.

Fundamentally, it is pure madness to think a corrupt system will birth good governance. A bad system will beat a good person anytime, anywhere. When we were reading about the concept of “primitive accumulation” by heartlessly corrupt people in books, majority of us wouldn’t have understood it, except now that we are seeing and feeling it! EFCC recover estate in Abuja measuring 150,500 square metres and containing 753 Units of duplexes and other apartments. This is the single largest asset recovery by the EFCC. The Estate rests on Plot 109 Cadastral Zone C09, Lokogoma District, Abuja.

Maybe, just maybe, we might get a more decent management structure in which we put all of us in check because, in the final analysis, all men are unruly creatures and only strong systems and structures keep us in the best of manners. This is evidence of a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, owns the large estate in Abuja with 753 duplexes forfeited to the Nigerian government through the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), in a court ruling on Monday. 

Human rights activist and convener of the #RevolutionNow Movement, Omoyele Sowore, confirmed the development in a post on his Twitter.

Richard Odusanya

odusanyagold@gmail.com