By Abuchi Obiora
By several United Nations economic indices, Nigeria is presently one of the poverty capitals of the world with more than 133 million of her 240 million inhabitants comfortably, but most inappropriately, sitting below the multi-dimensional poverty line.
Why is it that Nigeria is pushing forward to overtake other less endowed countries around the world in the race for abject poverty and penury in spite of the immense human and natural resources of the country? My answer to the above question is ‘human factor’ captured in the conducts of the members of Nigerian political class who are the major drivers of Nigerian national affairs. Official corruption, which though, is an expression of varied wrong ways of doing things in private and public sectors of Nigerian economy, has always been here with us in Nigeria.
For the records, the seed of what is presently called official corruption in Nigeria (stealing while in government service) was sown in the country by the politicians of the First Republic. Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh (18th July 1912 – 15th January 1966) was a Nigerian politician and Finance Minister from 1957 to 1966 during the administration of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the Prime Minister. He was a flamboyant politician who easily stands as the first symbol of affluence and squander-mania amongst the Nigerian political elites.
Though a creative and effective government officer as his other records reveal, it is unfortunate that much of the reasons why he is presently remembered in the history of the country is for his flamboyance and inappropriate application of Nigeria’s commonwealth when he was in charge of the Ministry of Finance.
Thereafter, the rate of stealing while in government has increased with subsequent governments till it attracted the intellectual attention of Professor Chinua Achebe (16th November 1930 – 21st March 2013), a Nigerian novelist, poet and critic who was one of the originating central figures in African literature, and also regarded as ‘father of modern African Literature’. In his book “There was a Country”, (his personal account of the Nigerian civil war), Prof. Achebe observed that more of Nigeria’s resources are misplaced through corruption by political and government officers than are applied for developmental purposes in the country.
Fast forward to the year 2023 when the controversial government of Bola Ahmed Tinubu was sworn in and you will find out that flamboyance and squander-mania have been entrenched as an approved order of conduct by Nigerian politicians as they mess up the national treasury. Let us quickly look at a few recent incidences:
- The President of the Federal Republic was seen with a fleet of 120 posh cars as he was escorted to observe his prayers during the last Muslim festival in a Mosque, against the backing of a collapsing economy and an impoverished citizenry.
- Members of the tenth National Assembly under the leadership of the Senate President Godswill Akpabio has awarded itself a whopping sum of
N110b as allowances to procure their official cars. This includes what will come as wardrobe allowances (as if they have been going naked before); Sitting allowance (as if they do us favour in doing the work they campaigned for, for which they are paid); House allowance as if they have been homeless before); Furniture allowance, another whoppingN70b (as if they had been living in empty rooms); and wait for it…. an increased salary in a country where energy and commodity prices have become uncontrollably high!.
Insensitive to the plight of Nigerians, the Nigerian political class has become the proverbial house owner that chases rats as his house is on fire. To maintain their profligate life styles, members of the Nigerian political class have discovered that they must keep Nigerians continuously divided amongst all conceivable cleavages especially ethnicity and religion, as they busied themselves in pillaging the national treasury.
There is a striking correlation between religious and ethnic tensions in Nigeria and the insatiable appetite of the political class for excessive and unearned wealth. By this correlation, the members of the Nigerian political class have become impediments to integration amongst the constituting ethnic nationalities in Nigeria and the multiple religious groups within the country.
The absence of cohesion in public policies as a result of the induced distrust amongst members of different Nigerian ethnicities and religions has robed Nigeria the golden opportunity for developing at par with her immense human and natural resources. My first submission in this discourse as a result of the foregoing line of thought is that minus the present political class in Nigeria, the country will fare much, much better.
Like a people held in hypnotic trance in a circuit show of magic, Nigerians (dazed and chained with un-breaking and elastic poverty which has long been tacitly instituted as the politicians’ modern weapon of conquest of the citizens) have been shocked, bemused and helpless as they have also become apathetic waiting endlessly for deliverance by God. The greedy, rudderless, inept, mercantilist, cash-and-carry and ruthless members of the Nigerian political class have, in the manner of King Leopold II, the King of Belgium, who humiliated and murdered millions of pre-independence citizens of DRC Congo in order to pillage the country, have left Nigerians with only the after-life hope of a blissful sojourn in Heaven. Is there any surprise therefore, that religious belief has recently become the new-found passion of most citizens of Nigeria?
I have observed earlier that the desire of the present political class for corrupt enrichment is the major reason for ethnic and religious tensions. I also need to point out that the neglect of their responsibilities is the major reason for the increasing level of poverty amongst Nigerians with the consequence of increasing insecurity across the country.
Is it not clear that Nigerians must first deal with their politicians if they must get anything right thereafter? Nigerians must break the bounds of religious bigotry and ethnic jingoism in order to overpower the vicious cycle of recycling corrupt, inept and wicked politicians. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (26th April 121A.D – 17th March 180A.D), the Roman Emperor between 161 A.D to 180 A.D, and a stoic philosopher with immense gait and wisdom did say in his classical work, ‘Meditations’ that men should be moved with force if the overall interest of public good and order so demands, when all avenues of persuasion and peaceful resolution have been explored. I dare say that Nigerians have waited for donkey years since independence in 1960 to see their political class turn into a new leaf.
In response to the peoples’ wait, the political class gave Nigerians a civil war and a consistently sliding and depreciating economy that leaves Nigerians extremely impoverished and tattered. As the years go by, the Nigerian political class traditionally seen in the executive and the legislative arms of government has matured to operate with greater impunity. Over the years, it has moved on to infect the judiciary, the only professional arm in the executive presidential system, with its negativity and corrupt inclination.
Though the Armed Forces and the Military High Command will insist to the contrary, there is suspicion presently in Nigeria that even the Armed Forces, also visibly politicized, have been infiltrated by politicians who had long enlisted their sons, daughters and wards into those exclusive areas of national service. Everywhere is stinking.
The level of impunity by the Nigerian political class especially as reflected in the resolve of a section of it to continue to maintain a despicable status quo so that it can continue its business as usual, stinks to high heavens. This impunity was well manifested during the 2023 Presidential election against the wish of majority of Nigerians. Events during that election exposed the complicity of the security agencies comprising the Armed Forces in the final onslaught of the political class to destroy Nigeria. This much was attested to by the international observers to the election, including the European Union team of election observers.
As a social scientist versed with the knowledge of the behavioral tendencies of a soulless mob that may have metamorphosed from the recalcitrance of oppressed groups and/or clusters of disgruntled human elements, I understand that impunity as is widely and visibly displayed in Nigeria today by a section of the political class, may give rise to anarchy and anarchy may take any form, depending on the mood of the people and the immediate, propelling forces underneath for a mass, populist action. These forms of a mass, populist action may include a violent, bloody revolution.
Not to waste our time discussing what Nigeria may be heading towards, I am sure that the Nigerian military, being one of the most trained professionals in the country must have amongst its employ, seasoned social scientists who must be keeping the Military High Command abreast with the implications of the groundswell of opinion amongst majority of Nigerians, (especially the combined labour force, the academic elites, and the intelligentsia, whose combined interactions and political cleavages with the grassroots produced the trail-brazing results and upheavals of the 2023 general election), of not allowing and silencing the on-going quest for the reformation of the socio-political and economic formations of the country.
I am also sure that the Military High Command understands that there is a link between the elasticity of people’s patience and their bottled-up anger which may flare up and systematically metamorphose into an uncontrollable mob action that has the capacity to generate an inferno beyond the capacity of the joint actions of the Armed Forces to contain. It bothers me, for the sake of my country that nobody is observing the signs of a down pour in the manner that I do, with a palpable and overpowering humid cloud in the atmosphere.
The quintet, the Osmond Brothers, an American family music group from Ogden, Utah, U.S.A, who attained the height of their fame during our teenage years in the mid 1970’s sang a song that was passionate to the hearts of youths of our time. That song is titled “One bad apple spoils the whole bunch….” This Western traditional idea is also conveyed in the African proverb that the oil that wets one finger inevitably drips down to wet the other fingers.
Corruption is one of the most infectious vices in any human society because if feeds on the human pristine primitive instincts of selfishness and self-preservation. It is a surprise that consistent generations of Nigerians from the First Republic unto this day have allowed their government officials to be corrupt through nonchalance and ‘I-don’t-care’ attitude. It is also a surprise that no Nigerian leader has ever been able to muster courage to fight corruption amongst the political class. This failure on the part of Nigerian leaders is either an indictment of them being corrupt themselves, or a revelation of the fact that they all lacked the political will to fight corruption.
Now, corruption amongst the Nigerian political class and other government officials and public servants has become both threatening to the survival of the country, intractable, and almost invincible. How long can the country continue like this? It is therefore incumbent on Nigerians to pick up the gauntlet, move en mass to the homes of corruption and solve the problem themselves. It has become expedient that Nigerians should unite and excise the one bad apple that destroys the whole bunch as also in cleaning the oily finger that wets the other fingers.
As a matter of fact, the only potent way out of corruption amongst the political class presently is for Nigerians to sort the wheat from the chaff and do a surgical operation on the political body and entity called Nigeria to remove the cancerous tissue that threatens both the lives of Nigerians and the existence of the Nigerian entity.
To heal a wound, one must first pull out the rotten surface, clean the wound and then apply the healing balm. Nigerians are yet to solve the life-threatening problem of corruption in this manner. All the laws in the Nigerian status are either aiding or abetting corruption or they are ‘romancing’ it. Sorry to say this – the Jerry John Rawlings (22 June 1947 – 12 November 2020) formula of decapitation as he applied to strengthen the politics of Ghana is long overdue in Nigeria.
The general idea should be that even if I, the writer of this discourse, will be one of those to go if I am found wanting, so that Nigeria and Nigerians will be free at last, I should go. The underlining reason for this general idea is that no person or group of persons should be greater than all the millions of people who find themselves through the natural order of creation as Nigerians, and several other hundreds of millions of future generation Nigerians who will find this geographical space as homes when they arrived the earth.
Methinks it is high time Nigerians applied the sledgehammer style, the Rawlings method, to clean the Augean Stable of Nigerian politics. I have observed through human history, a common threat that binds all resilient social values that sustain the survival of human society and I found out that martyrdom, from the pristine time, has become the only and extreme price which human beings of all races honour and accord utmost respect. I can use ten thousand words to discuss these cases as happened in ancient and contemporary societies but for space in this medium. Martyrdom strengthens virtues in human societies and breathes life into them.
It doesn’t matter who becomes the martyr but the truth is that resilient human values are inevitably achieved through martyrdom, and they endure by the same reason of a possible and imminent reason of martyrdom as they also work as a deterrent for naughty people like some of the Nigerian political class who may be tempted to wind back the national clock of growth and social consciousness in the attunement and alignment of the two virtues which must work in favour of perfection of the conducts of man as these conducts affect man’s relationship with the larger society.
The above line of thought is one major reason why Ghana is presently stable today and growing in leaps and bounds in all development fronts. Not being a sadist, I have observed that people stubbornly make themselves subjects of martyrdom in a process they would ordinarily not have died for, if they have stayed away from obstructing the process.
Like the proverbial house owner who chases rats while his house is on fire and loses his life to the inferno, there are increasing possibilities, (as also in the case of a mad and dying dog that loses its auditory capabilities for the stench smell of excreta) that the thieving members of the Nigerian political class, their cronies and accomplices in other professions including the judiciary, may soon be consumed in the great inferno which they deliberately ignited and smothered to raze down the geographical and political edifice called Nigeria and all the inhabitants therein sojourned. When this happens, it will be a classic case of ‘back to sender’.
ABUCHI OBIORA
Global Upfront Newspapers
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