Sunday, December 12, 2010

How To End Corruption In Nigeria

The other day, I was watching a programme on a Nigerian television station, the name of the programme is the "Eagle". It is sponsored by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, the official anti corruption agency. I work as a media consultant to a few organizations, so I have a rough idea of how much such an episode costs. And in Nigeria, that is a lot of money.


It was quite interesting to watch them trumpet their achievements; they secured the conviction of a young man, who had taken a jerry can to siphon petroleum products from a pipeline! Commendable!


They also showed two scruffy, barely literate, miscreants; their crime was to an attempt to shake down a local government official. They had gone to the official claiming that they were agents of the EFCC, and had demanded a bribe of Two million naira, the equivalent of $13,000.00!




These do not even scratch the whale in the room, that corruption has become Nigerian by birth!. We have the Siemens, and Halliburton, lists detailing the creme de la creme of Nigeria, collecting various amounts in millions from these companies as bribes! The list is a veritable who is who in Nigeria. At least four former heads of state are on the list. No action, worthy of note, has been taken to prosecute the exalted individuals!


And what was the EFCC's solution, like Don Quixiote, they have left the Nigerians,resident in the country,who are within reach,but deemed untouchable, and gone after the one person they can never convict, America's former Vice President, Dick Chaney! If the almighty America has not been able to charge Dick Chaney for corruption, why does the robustly inefficient, and imaginatively clueless,  EFCC think it can succeed! It is all a smoke screen, and bluster! They want us to believe they are working! Someone should tell the EFCC, that charity still begins at home! They should stop patronizing us, and do the right thing!


I have state in one of my previous articles on this platform, that corruption is a class war! It is a war between those who have taken the resources of the state captive, by devious means, and the rest of us! 


Nigeria will not solve the problem of corruption through the legal means! I believe that we cannot legislate corruption out of existence. It is so well entrenched,that we require out of the box solutions.Do we need a solution similar to the French Revolution model, or a Robin Hood kind of solution?


Do we need to physically drag people with unaccounted wealth to the streets, to account for them?Maybe!


It sounds like an endorsement of mob action. It might just be the only way! The people we are talking about, are in government, and they are rich and powerful.They control the courts, they own the police. They will befuddle any administrative contraption  set up to deal with them. If we say let us declare an amnesty for corrupt people, offering them immunity from trial if they return stolen monies,we would be getting very little of our money back! In asking them to end corruption,we are asking them to commit class suicide! 


We are asking them to end "the old boy" network that has made them rich!


Government cannot do it! It is not in their interest, it should be a citizen's initiative! A vigilante solution? Maybe! If we do not, we will never see the end of corruption in Nigeria. We need to strike fear in every corrupt individual, we need to make them afraid to walk the streets freely!


I have arrived at this solution,because the current solutions do not work! And the cancer is spreading, and morphing into new forms of malignancy!


MAY GOD BLESS NIGERIA, OUR BELOVED NIGERIA, FOREVER!




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