The immediate response of the Federal
Government, through Mr. Labaran Maku, the Minister of Information and National
Orientation, to the latest ranking of the country as the 35th most corrupt
nation in the world by the Transparency International leaves much to be
desired. His instantaneous advice that Nigerians should not blame President
Goodluck Jonathan for this global ridicule, while surreptitiously insinuating
that the 2012 Corruption Perception Index placement is mistaken having been,
according to him, based on the comments of Nigerians who are always eager to
tell the world how bad Nigeria is, ranks highest in the hierarchy of violence
done to the already bruised souls. Rather than mourn with conscientious
Nigerians, or, at least, feign some outward depression and remorse over what is
apparently a bad and distasteful piece, although not in the least surprising,
those we have saddled with the responsibility of reshaping our destiny have
swiftly absolved themselves of complicity on matters relating to our evidently
backward-flowing rivers.
Maku was also fast in giving an
alternative rating to the TI’s, an on-the-spot self-assessment report that
scored the Jonathan’s government high as espoused in the minister’s acclaimed
efforts already put in place by his principal to fight corruption, which,
according to him, the latest TI’s report failed to take note of.
Maku is not alone; he has a usual
company in Dr. Doyin Okupe, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on
Public Affairs, who minced no words in carpeting the critics of Jonathan on
corruption issues, as he aimed a fatal shot at the TI’s report no sooner than
it landed. In fact, the international community that has always placed a high
premium on the annual score sheet from the TI received a likewise fatal blow
from Okupe when he implicitly labelled the globally-revered anti-corruption
organisation, whose annual verdict is usually eagerly expected by officials of
government in saner countries, as a tool of mirroring their progress, from the
angle of public perception. For Okupe, the latest ranking has just exposed TI
as a grossly ‘incompetent’ organisation for awarding failure to the government
of a President that has ‘indeed’ displayed a heart of stone to corruption by
“…unearthing corruption and releasing figures as it was never done in the
past”.
However, the outburst of the Nigerian
government on the issue at stake is, to me, a blessing rather than a curse. It
is coming to solve a persistent puzzle that had, for long, beaten the
brilliance of Nigerian and global analysts in their spirited sleepless search
for the actual disease responsible for the stunted growth of a supposedly-giant
Nigeria that is presently a global dwarf.
What Maku and Okupe have just done is
to open our eyes to the fact that perception problem is that ailment that
afflicts Nigeria through its leadership. It is now obvious that Nigerian
leaders have not been on the same page with Nigerians and the rest of the world
in terms of how they perceive and evaluate issues and actions.
Let no one attempt to trivialise issues
relating to perception. The varying perceptual ability of human beings
determines everything about them: their worldview, sentiments, beliefs, personal
idiosyncrasies, attitudes, behaviour, sense of judgment and all other personal
traits that condition their performances in any context. In fact, the universal
application of such ethical concepts as good and bad, right and wrong, in a
manner that suggests communal pre-consensus or, at near-consensus, is the
live-wire of value systems universally regarded as the single most important
determinant of the success or otherwise of civil unions of rational beings.
Shared values are, thus, a derivative of communal perception – what the people
perceive as good or bad, right or wrong, or simply, the societal sense of
judgment that determines its norms and standards.
It appears that, as a nation, we have
yet to develop shared ideals and values, since we still lack necessary
‘sameness of mouth’ on what is good and what is bad for us. Thus, I suspect
that since Nigerians have never, for once, had a genuine opportunity of
congregating to achieve ethical consensus amongst the various components as
well as between the leadership and the led, mutual distrust between the
constituents and dual-character leadership which have always abided with us may
continue to be our bane.
Yes indeed! It is nothing but
dual-character leadership that both Maku and Okupe want the Transparency
International to applaud through an undeserved high rating for the country.
This twosome is but a victim of the perception bug that pierces deep into the
blood of the commonplace member of the Nigerian leadership class, a disease
that makes our officials to see virtue in the act of saying something and doing
something else. This is why the duo lambasted that anti-corruption body
for failing to strictly take into account the official hype about the various
reform programmes of the administration in different sectors; for failing to
reckon with the cosmetic dramas of transparency that have characterised these
reforms; for daring to take into account the views of the Nigerian people and
their media as well as the global perception to compose a list that is strictly
a perception based assessment.
Obviously, people in government see
nothing wrong in the widespread rot which the whole world, including the
Nigerian citizenry, resent.
The truth is that this administration
has ever persisted in perversion, as evident in its all-round behaviour that is
succinctly and aptly captured by that influential and respected British weekly,
The Economist, in a recent article on Nigeria, at page 18 of its edition of May
28 – June 3, in its observation that ‘Nigerian leaders are so greedy that they
have subverted the entire machinery of the state to serve their needs. Every
policy is a scam, every regulation a source of rent”.
A few examples would vindicate this
damning observation. The Halliburton scam. The deliberate lethargy of the
Nigerian government has ensured that while those Nigerians, indicted alongside
some foreign nationals, including some top aides of our penultimate President,
freely enjoy their loot, their foreign accomplices, individual and corporate,
have not only been tried, they have been variously convicted and duly penalised
by their home governments.
Power sector privatisation. The recent
sale of the country’s major power generating companies and distribution
companies to different companies tied to certain former military rulers and
some serving political office-holders is an official vindication of the local
and global perception of the nation as a haven of institutionalised corruption.
$12m oil windfall. Rather than ask our
past leaders probing questions about their stupendous wealth, the Jonathan
government not only celebrates, it also defends them in law court. The role
played by the Attorney-General of the Federation in shielding former military
President, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, just last November, in court over oil
windfall allegedly squandered by his administration is awfully shocking.
Non altruistic corruption war. Even the
current trial of Wale Babalakin of Bi Courtney over money laundering charges is
suspect, due to its striking co-incidence with the revocation of his company’s
Lagos-Ibadan Expressway concession contract by the Federal Government. Not a
few perceive it as a ploy to distract him from pursuing legal redress over the
current concession palaver.
My final words, however, for our
leaders is that they should desist from struggling to fully explore their
present mandate which they obviously see as their own time to feast on the
national cake and so must be ever alert to manipulate global perception as to
make colour black seem white, so that the looting tradition they inherited can
continue unabated. What they need realise is that the level of Nigerian
political awareness has reached an all-high that the agelong looting through
the annual budget, hitherto un-minded by the masses, now agitates the minds of
even Nigerians who cannot read and write, let alone deliberately buy
newspapers, now awash with daily headlines of gigantic but frivolous budgetary
allocations. Thus, I feel it’s better to conduct a needful surgery on the
ailing Nigerian body before it crashes totally.
Culled from PUNCH newspaper, December
19, 2012.
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