By Ibrahim Mohammed Funsho
Harry Truman once said, “You can’t get rich in politics until you are a crook.” In contemporary Nigerian society, aside being a successful multinational businessman, to get stinkingly rich, you either launch a foray into politics, belong to Music Industry or better still, become internet fraud lord (Yahoo-yahoo).
A quick survey on most Nigerian political personalities had accentuated the fact that a reasonable percentage of them are corralled in the web of Harry Truman’s assertion.
It is a tremendous disservice to any nation of the world to have crooks and rogues at the helm. A quick analysis of Nigerian political write down, one would be left with multifarious rotten realities that the country has been dealing huge blows from colonial time.
It will be an assessment laced with feet of clay to ever contrive that corruption is a new invention in the country- it has been on active mode before and in the days of our acclaimed past heroes.
In the colonial time, to tell you how long this contagious malaise has been plaguing the ‘Niger Area,’ several panels instituted to wade in the issue of corruption had indicted the Warrant Chiefs, describing them as “rotten to core.” This debilitating baton of corruption was passed to the post colonial juntas as Nigeria’s first Minister of Finance, Chief Festus Okotie Eboh was described as a flamboyant and corrupt Itshekiri man- who was popular for elegant style of dressing-tying the ends of his bogus traditional wrappers to the neck of a man in display of brazen opulence.
Our dear nation has been so hapless within her sixty years of existence as an entity to have been churning out leaders who have turned corruption to a transgenerational corporate venture.
In 1954, Chief Nnamdi Azikwe was indicted by the Foster-sutton Tribunal for running the African Continental Back like his personal estate. Chief Oba Jeremiah Awolowo; Sir Ahmadu Bello’s activities were overtly or covertly shrouded in the mystery of corrupt practices – were they saints?
Jim Nwobodo; Adekunle Ajasin; K.O Mbadiwe; Dr. Olusola Saraki; Mr. Raymond O. Fermandes; Alhaji Umaru Dikko et al were proponents of sharp practices who tasted the bitter pills of penitentiary under the military junta of General Muhammadu Buhari.
In the first republic, phrases and words such as: lobbying; rigging, kick-backs; you scratch my back, I scratch your back; ten Percent and many more were on the front burner in the political circles that time.
No regime in the administrative history of Nigeria was immuned against the disastrous monster of corruption- the Shagari regime gained recognition for its high class corruption as it is on record the era witnessed massive oil boom with no commensurable infrastructures delivery to show for it. Buhari’s too, has its own. But corruption during the Military Junta of Ibrahim Babangida was given a open arm reception as it became an evident agenda of his regime-you can still remember the IMF and Structural Adjustment Programme. Babangida nailed the casket of Nigeria’s corruption. Abacha tenure would not be an exception.
Let us not mention Ernest Shonekan and General Abdussalam Abubakar’s regimes.
Obasanjo as well, was caught in the net.
Mr. Goodluck Jonathan was a carefree president whose self recrimination gave a sharp nod to authorised corruption-the nation had never witnessed before. In fact, Jonathan’s regime outdid Babangida’s
Our petroleum minister, Madam Alison Madueke was allowed to play a free role on the pitch of corruption- she was indeed, vice president putting Namadi Sambisa on passive mode. Our pseudo president, Jonathan was folding his arms as this super minster was wittily robbing the most endowed nation in the black world of her Godgiven fortunes. It is quite callous to acquire jewellery worth billions of naira, luxury property scattered across different parts of the world amounting to several millions of dollar.
Our dear coutry’s is on the precipice, our gluttonous leaders think of personal prosperity- not even posterity. All our National Institutions are lying in abject shambles.
I cry, when I see these marauders amassing more than they ever need. Just one man. Long time after his quietus we still recover billions of dollars he had stashed away in various faraway countries and Islands. We only talk about Abacha’s loot. What about other living legends of corruption whose dirty linens are shrouded in sheer obscurity.
We always believe education is the poor man hope, our parents hustles from coast to coast to see us through universities thinking after four years, we would become Obasanjo. But, alas! Our crooked leaders told us education is the Key, but they cast the padlock in the ocean.
I am of the firm opinion that Nigeria needs factory reset.
