The currency of corruption is death. Death just like darkness does not have what it takes to sustain itself. It does however interfere with and interrupt the lives of men. It takes lives because of its ferocious appetite for human sacrifice. Such is the demand of corruption that it requires blood sacrifices to sustain its brief interregnum in the affairs of men.
In Nigeria, this phenomenon had been plucking the plumage of the proverbial chicken one feather at a time. In the last 10 years, Nigerian political leaders finally led the Nigerian masses into penury. It is like dropping a frog in a cold pot while gently heating up the water. The frog continuously adjusts to the heath that will eventually kill it without offering any resistance.
After the last presidential election, the masses are closer to gasping for their last breathe. In every election cycle, these ‘“leaders” pretentiously present themselves as benevolent patriots, whereas they are indeed despots trampling on the yoke: of a new Nigeria, of law and order, of equity, of integrity, of freedom and finally of ethics and morality. They are comforted by their stomach infrastructure rather than our communal good. For such souls, there are no minimum requirements, no value system and no pedagogy of life but vain pocket interest.
In 2011 when subsidy was removed, all opposition political leaders rejected it, claimed subsidy was the only solution for Nigeria. They subsequently acknowledged that subsidy was a scam yet they went on to scam Nigerians for yet another eight years. It is true the then president lacked courage for the fight and subsequently his presidency was a failure. Then came Buhari under false pretences who lacked vision, plan and courage.
In the twelve years that followed that subsidy removal, we borrowed more than was spent in building the Dangote refinery and filtered all into a corruption soaked subsidy regime, into political pockets that only produced $billionaires without benefits to ordinary Nigerians. Money talks, it is self-comfort first even at an age when most of them can afford not to need material additions. However, contentment being the wealth of the wise mind is denied those vain ignoramuses parading themselves as leaders of Nigeria. At that same time the subsidy removal was vehemently opposed by the leading opposition politicians, the setting up of excess crude account in that period of plenty was opposed by majority of the governors. The rest of the political class, from the then ruling party to the leadership of the opposition rejected the proposal opting instead for the excess to be poured out on the table, shared and squandered.
Ever wondered what happens when you “accidentally” come in contact with money without enterprise, not having owned a single factory or written a best seller? All that is required is the discharge of Nigerian financial asset into pockets due mainly to kleptocracy in a “Kakistocratic Nigeria” (The News-Chronicle, 2020). The beneficiaries end up competing in incompetence. Puzzling is the impossible trilogy of blindness, myopia, and ignorance (The Blind Myopia of Ignorance, The News-Chronicle 2022); an improbable fiction pervades the Nigeria landscape. Any individual weighted down with this impossible trilogy is dead as a duck and does not deserve any oxygen for political leadership.
There is this new prevailing Question in Nigeria: Should the justice system cut off the head of the Nigerian crime organisation or leave it, challenge the statutory institutions deployed and their non-state actor cohorts; or continue chasing the petit criminal trainees within the emerging Nigerian criminal enterprise?
Let no one fool Nigerians and divert our attention. We must focus on the real problems draining our pockets: a brain damaged mafia mob took over the reins of the most beautiful, most diverse, most endowed and the happiest people on earth and gradually bleed the entire ecosystem into a desolate land; difficult even for animals to inhabit. We rejected civilisation, turned our backs to progress and indulged in communal self-mutilation. We refuse to self-organise ourselves. We reject the concept of law and order and accept the self-imposed selection of the most lawless to the highest office in our land. We project our vision based on emotion. We reject the highest common denominator of all progressively organised cultures.
Throughout Africa, we are desperately in search of people of different colour to colonise us. We hate and disrespect the value of time and the value of each other. Hence 49 heads of governments from Africa will go shopping from Washington to London, From Europe to Beijing and to Moscow. Now we have even stretched our colonial shopping list from India to Turkey.
The African continent has what it takes to: dignify humanity, feed and accommodate half the world population. We cannot continue to throw oxygen lifeline to the dead to resuscitate them. To Repair, Reposition and Reinvest in Nigeria: we must dive deep down the dark satanic jaws of these brutish political beasts to rescue our justice system? Without a new Nigeria, a new Africa is impossible. Alas, the dignity of man remains trampled if we continue pushing a rope.
Chidi Okemadu M.Sc. (Arch); M.Sc. (Mangt. & Fin.); M.A. (Ed) CeFA, MCIM, MCIOB
