Echoes of Corruption: UMYA calling a Spade a Spade
President Goerge Washington once said, “ …honour and shame from no
condition rise, act well your part, for there your honour lies…” Nigeria
as nation has been bedevilled with bad leadership and missed opportunities
since our independence in 1960. Successive governments have been insincere
with the management of our national resources and treasures in a manner
that has resulted in unthinkable colossal loss of lives, development and
socio-economic advancement.
The common denominator for this state of the nation has been grand scale
corruption. Up until recently, corruption has been clothed in stylish,
classic, flashy and elegant apparel and courted by many public servants
and politicians, so much that it is seen as means of operational tool of
governance. It has been christened and celebrated under different names by
all manners of title holders in Nigerian…we have had Professors, Generals,
Chiefs, Otunbas, Ambassadors, Architects, Doctors, Honourables etc within
the geographic space called Nigeria.
Without going into too many familiar details about the catalogue of
corrupt political dispensations, which the global community is well
awashed with boundless information, it appeared that with the current
leadership under President Umaru Yar A’dua (UMYA), Nigeria is beginning to
wake up to the challenges of re-christening the monolithic cancer of
corruption that has been the bane of our national emergence and
emancipation and pull out from the abyss of underdevelopment it has
positioned the nation over many decades.
The echoes of corruption are reverberating in this new dispensation.
Provided this is not a consequence of political vendetta akin to the state
of affair in the last dispensation, Professor Nike Grange, a
world-renowned professor of Maternal and Child Health, an accomplished
academic and technocrat has just been relieved of her post as the nation’s
Minister for health on account of graft. This is coming less than a year
after her appointment as the nations custodian of national health delivery
and services. She and her co-travellers in the Ministry of Health have
shamefully contracted the disease of corrupt practices, the morbidity of
odium and shame is inevitable.
But Why? The answer is not far fetched; the UMYA government has decided to
call a spade a spade, with decisive consequences. The trend is pointing
in the direction of public accountability in retrospective and prospective
manners. The Energy/Power sector and Health sector are cases in point
given the revealed deliberate and irresponsible abuse of billions of
dollars ($16 Billion). I have written in the past about the opportunity
cost of all these wasted resources, the forgone conclusions,
(www.nigeriansinamerica.com/authors/326/Olayiwola-Ajileye<
www.nigerianmuse.com/articles/?m=499, www.africanseer.com/articles) and
the simple economic analysis, the benefits Nigerians have been deprived of
by this criminal mismanagements of resources that could have moved the
nation forward in the direction of growth and developments, for the common
good of the citizenry and generations yet unborn.
In civilised economies, corruption is abominable, inexcusable and
punishable. Even it goes beyond financial corruption in some other
developed nations. Moral corruption has serious and damaging consequences
(Elliot Spitzer of New York, Profumo case in the UK), Lack of good
judgement in public life (executive mis-judgement) leading to pecuniary
gains has consequences (political donation and disclosure story in the UK,
Bribery of Food and Drug Regulator in China leading to his public
hanging), corporate corruption and mismanagement (Enron case, Conrad Black
case) has penalty and repercussions. This is so simply because in these
economies, corruption and corrupt endeavours have been well defined and
named; they have learnt to call a spade a spade. Hence, the hydra-headed
ability of corruption is tamed and the damaging consequences on national
development is well minimised.
The unquestionable and indivisible constant in respect of the success
achieve in these countries is consistency and equality before the law. No
Profs, Generals, Hons, Drs, Otunbas, Chiefs, is exempt from the
consequences of mismanagement in the affairs of public life.
For Nigeria to attain the ambition of achieving greatness, the bull of
corruption has to be tamed and taken head-on. Allocated resources has to
be subject to scrutiny of public accountability, awarded contracts has to
follow due diligence and process, national projects has to be monitored,
supervised, implemented and delivered for the benefit of Nigerians.
Services has to be rendered with a view to meet human needs and not for
selfish aggrandisement, disservice has to be investigated, questioned and
justice seen to be done appropriately without favour and in fairness and
oversight functions should be thorough.
These are the challenges the UMYA government faced, if he is not to be
casted in the light of our past leaderships. Corruption has no other name;
lets call a spade a spade.
By Dr. Olayiwola Ajileye
Dr Ajileye writes from Birmingham, United Kingdom
drajileye@hotmail.com