Corruption; here we go again. No Nigerian political journal, blog, website or book is complete without writing about corruption. It is the nemesis of a great nation like Nigeria, the indelible mark that has left us broken, the fiery sea with waves that gets stronger, the genesis of every single problem in Nigeria. Corruption; We talk about it every day, we see it on the TV, at work, in the court house, on the streets, everywhere in this country we see corruption. The corruption I am talking about here is political corruption which Wikipedia.org describes as the use of power by government officials for illegitimate private gain. The key word here is underlined.
Forms of corruption vary, but include bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, graft, and embezzlement. Corruption may facilitate criminal enterprise such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and human trafficking, though is not restricted to these activities. The activities that constitute illegal corruption differ depending on the country or jurisdiction. For instance, some political funding practices that are legal in one place may be illegal in another. In some cases, government officials have broad or ill-defined powers, which make it difficult to distinguish between legal and illegal actions. Worldwide, bribery alone is estimated to involve over 1 trillion US dollars annually.[1]A state of unrestrained political corruption is known as a kleptocracy, literally meaning "rule by thieves". ( en.wikipedia.org)
If you remotely have anything to do with Nigeria then you will understand how aptly this statement describes the type of political corruption we experience in Nigeria, it is so severe that Wikipedia had to devote a whole page to write on corruption in Nigeria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Nigeria). The bad roads that kill people everyday can be traced back to the funds that are not released on time and when they are released they are cut down from the top such that by the time it reaches the hands of those who are supposed to execute the projects there is almost nothing left. Infrastructural facilities that are lacking, decay in the educational system, a horrible judiciary system that is almost non-existent and back dated in its process of interpretation, poverty, unemployment, polio, malaria, Boko Haram, crisis in the Niger Delta, an almost non-existent security system, a police unit that is not well trained and doesn’t know the meaning of civil rights, collapsed buildings, flooding that goes unchecked, plane crashed that are not well investigated, frustration with electricity, bad governance, maladministration of public funds, red tapism, misplaced priorities in the law making organs of government, death of check and balance and the heroism of the political criminal. The list is endless, every frustration experienced by a Nigerian is rooted in corruption. From pre-independence times when oil was discovered we have had problems of corruption, some of the protagonist of independence were in fact driven by their greed and selfish interest. Corruption has only gotten worse as technology and globalization has advanced. We write books on it; we cry about it, we criticize those who are in power because they are automatically associated with it. Corruption erodes the importance of democracy; which is supposed to be the fundamental base of the new Nigerian society; everyone who receives bribe during an election, everyone who gives bribe, the thugs, those who turn a blind eye, the security officials looking for the highest bidder to sell their conscience to; we the voters who vote blindly, without proper information on candidates, and for short term benefits. The Boko Haram menace which I believe is inherent on the poor educational system found in the north. Too many people do not have primary school education, ignorance is the greatest and most dangerous tool that can harm a society and an uneducated populace is a gullible one. Every body wants to eat from government allocations. The president, the minister, the perm sec, the governor, the commissioner, the local government chairman. Its impossible to see any meaningful growth in a system that answers to nobody and where kleptocracy is an accepted norm.
How many public office holders have been tried and jailed for corrupt practices? The list can be complied on a single piece of paper. If we dig deeper, we will find that these people went to jail because someone wanted them to, not because they were found guilty. There are too many public office holders who are not accountable to anyone that convert public funds to their personal funds. They take bribe at will and at the end of a four year tenure record zero developmental changes in the society.
The lawmakers have misplaced priorities; there are some lawmakers in the national assembly whose names I do not know because they are inactive, ineffective and in a seat of power they shouldn’t be occupying in the first place.
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| James Ibori |
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| Farouk Lawan |
Ibrahim babginda, Sani abacha, Shehu Shagari, Olusegun Obasanjo, Atiku Abubakar, Patricia Etteh, Bode George, Farouk Lawal, Dieprey Alamieyeseigha, James Ibori, etc. How many of them have been tried? How many them of are convicted? Being caught red handed doesn’t get you in jail, video tape evidence and recorded conversations and thrown under the rug and labeled as tampered evidence. Yet we send them birthday greetings in the newspaper and media outlets, we congratulate them when they are offered national honours, we sing their praises like heroes when they die, we name streets and public edifices after them in recognition of their mediocrity. This is who we are, this what we have become, but the solution is not to kill them.
The death penalty option was raised by the Arewa Conservative Forum; The northern umbrella body, ACF, while recommending capital punishment for corruption in its proposal on constitution review submitted to the National Assembly, said: “One crime that has proved capable of gravely harming or killing its victim, Nigeria, is corruption.
"Sadly, our laws have not recognized corruption for what it is. ACF recommends that corruption be recognized as a capital offense and made to carry capital punishment,” ACF said in its proposal, a copy of which was obtained by The PUNCH on Tuesday.
Our lives are not our own, we become debased if we carry out the death sentence on corrupt leaders, it is even more suspicious when evidences are not what they seem to be. What happens if it is later proven that a person is innocent and he is already dead 6 foot under feet. The only language the government seems to understand is violence and revolution and this is not farfetched if a solution is not quickly sought out. It could be life in prison without option of parole, stringent checks and balance, objectivity, a verified system of accountability, fillings loopholes in government with capable hands, removing bad eggs from government, a sensitized electorate, anything that doesn’t involve death. Death does not bring back all that we lost, it only brings satisfaction that is temporary, and death is too quick for the type of punishment these evil men deserve. Our political corrupt leaders are hateful, spiteful, disgruntled, dissatisfied, hypocritical, self acclaimed righteous beings who not deserve to die by a quick death. Maybe we should let our comical lawmakers make the decisions on that should be done.
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