On the damning world Bank's corruption report on Nigeria KAYODE KETEFE The report of a World Bank study released last Monday which alleges that that about 80 per cent of businesses in Nigeria paid bribes to government officials in 2011 to remain in business has become the latest of the damning reports in a flurry of "treatises" of international provenance that cast dark shadow of depression on Nigeria socio-economic climate. It will be recalled that credible organisations like the United States-based Human Rights Watch has over the years published unsavourry reports concerning deep-rooted, pernicious and all pervasive corruption that rocks numerous institutions in the country, which reports also indict a large chunk of our aristocrats. This latest World Bank reports which focused on investment climate in Nigeria stated that one-third of the country's micro-enterprises claimed that "informal payments/gifts to government officials" were common occurrences in 2011 and that they had to put up with this unethical graft civilisation to remain competitively in business. The report further stated that these customary, albeit informal payments/gifts approximated to 1.2 per cent of annual sales for all micro-enterprises in the year under review. The report was said to be compiled from empirical findings in the investigation conducted in 26 out of the 36 states of the federation. The states that reportedly furnished the damning statistics are Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Benue, Borno, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Gombe, Imo, Jigawa, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi and Kwara. The rest are Nassarawa, Niger, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Taraba, Yobe, and Zamfara. Although the so-called findings in the report would be no news to anyone already well-informed about Nigeria socio-economic and cultural dispensation, nonetheless it constitutes yet another depressing statement of fact about our dear country and a source of concern spawning a number of debilitating posers concerning the efficacy of our vaunted official counter-measures to stem the tide of corruption. Right from the inception of the hitherto enduring democratic civilisation in 1999, the establishment's aversion to corruption and its phenomenal showdown to the menace had all along been blared from the rooftops. President Olusegun Obasanjo remarkably vowed in his inaugural speech on that historic day on August 27, 1999, that he would fight corruption to a standstill and that "there would be no sacred cow." That promise had been consolidated upon by successive governments of Umar Yar'Adua, and the incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan. Now the posers? Why is it that 13 years after the first and the consequent serial "covenants" to root out corruption, the menace is still maximally alive, festering and breeding with unbridled fecundity? Why is it that no single sector has been cured of the chronic affliction? Why has Nigerian picture continued to remain blacker as we sink into the deeper morass of graft? Why have informed people, outside the aristocratic establishment, been disenchanted and in despair that the battle might never been won if Nigeria remains Nigeria? One could go on and on. Well if all the claims that had been made about fighting corruption are genuine, we are yet to see the palpable results! This is because corrupt practices are observable everywhere, thriving in all the institutions, classes and at personal level. The executive which is the primal institution breeds it, the Legislature, consolidates it, the Judiciary to some extent affirms it, and even the fourth estate of the realm, the Media, which is the proverbial watchdog, to some extent condones it! Whence the salvation will come? It is everywhere, take the first institution in the hierarchical structure of administration of justice for instance, the Nigerian Police Force – the corruption there has gone to such level that potential informant is afraid of disclosing vital information to the police for fear of in-house betrayal. This writer had once visited a police station where the cliché mantra "POLICE ARE YOUR FRIENDS" was supposedly hung on the wall. Whether it was out of mistake, illiteracy or whatever, the message was rendered as "POLICE ARE YOUR FIENDS" Wow! What a Freudian slip! Somebody must have noticed the error for the omitted letter "R" between letters "F" and "I" was, as an afterthought, illegibly inserted with pen. But I could not help but had a good laugh for this involuntary self-confession! Many Nigerians would agree that the members of the Nigerian Police could really be our fiends. If they are not demanding and collecting bribe left right, right and centre, they would be making victims of innocent Nigerians through their infamous accidental discharge. This is not to talk of substituting torture for thorough investigation and forensic research, to elicit confessions under duress. Furthermore, our once hallowed Judiciary has now been reduced, from local perspective, to a moribund institution, and from international reckoning, to a joke! You remember Justice Isa Salami (rtd) and Justice Iyorgeher Katsina-Alu (rtd) saga and the former Governor James Ibori's paradox - the infamous "freed at home and jailed abroad" conundrum? The private sector is also putrefying with fat maggots of corruption dancing gleefully all over the socio-economic space. The scandals in private cum official sector are too numerous to be enumerated! Remember the Halliburton, the Willbros and the recent oil subsidy scam debacle. Well, unless we just manage to find solution to the problem of corruption, other associated problems like insecurity and social upheaval would continue to haunt us. |
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