A Blueprint on fighting corruption successfully
KAYODE KETEFE
The news of the ordeal of a Police Sergeant, Chris Omeleze, attached to the Lagos State Command Motor Traffic Division (State MTD), who was recently caught on video demanding for bribe from a motorist did not come as a surprise since such incidents are reality which majority of Nigerians live with everyday. Hardly would a day pass without news of police extortion or criminality in one form or the other. What may come as a mild surprise however is the prompt reaction of the police authorities to the scandal?
With the speed of lightning, the erring officer was identified, arrested, made to face orderly room trial and sacked from the police force, all in matters of days. In spite of this apparently commendable reaction by the police authorities, one still feels perplexed with the question that inexorably props up –If the leadership of the force had this remarkable level of intolerance for corruption, why is graft culture so engrossed in our law enforcement institution to such a level we have today? The tragedy of the people like the Omeleze who is produced by a system that is now eager to sacrifice him is that they are just the scapegoats of a pervert system which is analogous to a river whose poisonous spring is left unattended to while some of the tributaries are being cleansed and purified.
The development does not translate to any authentic advancement in our quest to remove corruption as it represents mere pruning of the branches of the corruption tree while the stem and roots are being hypocritically nurtured with fertilizer!
If anybody scoffs at the efforts of the Federal Government in fighting corruption, the person, from the government's perspective, must have been an uncharitable critic who refuses to appreciate "monumental" efforts being made to extirpate the scourge. But is the Nigerian government fighting corruption? Hardly! If the truth must be told, all the efforts of the successive governments made so far amounted to nothing beyond scratching the surface of the problem. The strong foundations for removing corruption or even reducing it has never being laid.
To make any battle against corruption winnable, let us first of all remove corruption from the top. Accordingly, I would propose as a start that the executives should be banned from awarding contracts directly. Government should not deal directly with disbursement of public funds in contract awards for goods and services. This function of award of contract must be taken over by registered and reputable procurement agencies from the private sector. If the government's role is limited to policy formulation and provision of framework for projects execution, a lot of politicians who want to go into government with intention to loot would be discouraged as there would be no money to steal.
Secondly, the criminal justice system must be beefed up to ensure certainty of detection of fraud while government itself must muster the political will to prosecute all corrupt public officials and their cohorts no matter their status and affiliations. All the lacunas in the criminal law must be cleared and loopholes plugged to ensure no flimsiness in prosecution ensues, like in a case when somebody stole N34 billion and asked by the court to pay a meager N750, 000, to be set at liberty.
If we are really serious, we should reserve very severe punishments for corrupt people to serve as deterrent to others. While one may not advocate capital punishment meted out to offences of official corruption in a country like China, still draconian measures must be taken against corrupt officials. Not only must all the stolen assets be taken away from them, all those convicted must be banned from holding offices for life and their names entered in the National Dishonourable People List.
Profligacy of government and official wastefulness must also stop; is it not sheer incongruity for a nation to have the highest-paid (or at least one of the highest-paid) legislators in the world in a country where 70 per cent of the people live below the poverty line of £1.29 a day? Is that not itself a corruption? An authorised one! Shouldn't the entitlements and emoluments payable to public office holders reflect the level of our socio-economic development? I can never understand why a nation that pays N18, 000 monthly minimum wages for productive working class would callously maintain a class of aristocrats who rank among the highest paid in the world.
As long as the leaders of the country live in extravagance and opulence in poverty-stricken country like ours, they would not have the moral voice to demand honesty and patriotism from the followers, nor would they get any if they do.
The leaders must set the moral example, accordingly, government must not be seen to be reducing its self-professed war to utter ridicule by reeling out presidential pardons to those who have sinned against law of the land and had been duly convicted of their crime, even after expiation of the crime through punitive incarceration. The convicts, must the made to carry the stigma for life to serve as terrifying warnings to all those similarly inclined to subvert the interest of the nation for narrow selfish interests. To fight corruption, concrete revolutionary measures must be taken, so let us stop deceiving ourselves.
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