A “corrupt” official is either sent to jail for a few hours or sent home to enjoy the loots and he or she lives to loot again.
When corruption destroys an airline for example, the government withdraws the license after a gory accident and then re-
issues the license with an upgrade after the dust and noise seem to have settled down on the outrage. To label anyone
corrupt in Nigeria today spurs an award-winning, honor-bestowing wining- and- dining event.
There is uncanny incarceration of the guy who stole 100 naira, while the “oga at the top”, the untouchable ogre who
scooped in billons is slumbering easy in his state-of-the-art mansion. Back in the day when you heard screams of
“thieves” on any Nigerian street, justice immediately rolled down like waters. Many of our leaders are THIEVES! Who said
they are corrupt? A former governor who stole 55 million dollars while in office is corrupt? Another ex-governor who
siphoned an estimated US$250million of state funds is corrupt? Secretary of Police Pension Funds who stole over
5billion Naira and you label him, “corrupt”? Nigerian civil servants who President Jonathan said not too long ago “own
more houses than Dangote” are not corrupt. The malodorous mire and madness is not corruption. These people are
THIEVES, and they are ruining us all!
They are profusely profligate perfectionists of pilferage who persistently pound their chests in a disgraceful dare of the
people. “What are they going to do”? They seem to tell us. They are elite members of certified criminal country-clubs of
the Mephistopheles. They control the levers of who-and-who gets immunity from the impunity. While the people are
crying, they are laughing, while the people are agonizing, they are aggrandizing. While the people are in pain, they are
painting the whole world red with parties and festivities from Paris to Puerto Rico, Bahrain to the Bahamas, Denver to
Dubai. When their children are getting married, money is wasted like water, and many lives to whom the frittered money
belong in Nigeria are dying daily from hunger and hopelessness on the streets of the “giant of Africa”. The fungus among
us has become a calcified bone in the spine of the Nigerian nation, and it seems as if these people are not going
anywhere, and with stern obduracy they are not changing habits.
Into corruption, they are giving birth to triplets; in thievery they are raising them. And the offspring don’t know any
better but what Daddy and Mummy have taught them, so corruption becomes a baton that is passed from one generation
to the other. They live in mansions and palaces built with sand of thieving and gravel of deceiving. But houses built on
sand cannot stand. One day, and not too long, they will groan over their grabs and choke on their grubs. Could they
deceive God as they deceive a mere mortal? The answer is No! Those who plow evil and those who sow trouble do reap
it. Be not deceived God is not mocked; whatsoever a man sows, that he shall reap.
I don’t know when, and I don’t know how, but all I know is that this craze will soon stop in Nigeria! The minority cannot
muzzle the majority for too long, and thank God we are more than them. We will wriggle, thread and tread through the
knotty, corrosive and catatonic crinkum-crankum that has been our story for a long time in Nigeria, and launch into an
autarky where all of our thirst will be quenched, our hungers satisfied, and the dreaded, slow-killer corruption confined
into the leper’s colony far away from us. And then, civility will reign.
From the presidential palace to the governor’s quarters civility will reign. From the senators’ mansion to the minister’s
drive, civility will reign. From the church to the mosque, from my house to yours, and then in all of our hearts, civility will
reign. Did I have some kind of Island of Patmos experience? No, I can just feel it inside of me, and I am not alone.
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