First, a confession. This is not my original thought. It is a subject of those occasional exchanges with my uncle, a retiree whose patriotism is remarkable. Unlike many others, he still indulges in the luxury of buying daily at least two newspapers.
He called to find out how I was planning for a short break, which I had told him I would like to take. He was due to travel, but was worried about getting the forex to do this.
The discussion veered off into the state of the nation – the trouble with the naira, leadership, governance, the future and all that. He concluded that three professionals are behind the fate of this country, troubling it and tossing it up and down like a leaf that has fallen off a tree into a river, its future left to the waves.
“Who are they, sir?” I asked incredulously. He smiled derisively and replied: “Lawyers, journalists and economists.”
“How?”
“You don’t know? I will tell you. When people steal money, they run to lawyers, who defend them as if they did nothing wrong. And you journalists are not helping the government. I expect you to be less critical of this government because it is on a rescue mission. The mess is too much and can’t be cleared in a year. You know this but you churn out editorials that are so critical and I begin to wonder where you were two years ago. I don’t mean that all the newspapers are unsympathetic o”
“This is interesting, sir. So, how about the third professionals o?”
“Economists. They always talk theories that are far from reality. They are never realistic in their approach. Were they not part of the beginning of this crisis?”
For a moment, I was gripped by a tough bout of laughter. A few minutes after the exchange, I reflected on it all and agreed that he was damn right. But, I do not feel that only these three professionals, who are guilty as charged in my uncle’s court, are the only ones troubling this country, blessed by nature, but cursed by the very hands that should nurture and nourish it.
Lawyers defend blue murder. To them, the fountain of justice must soothe the throat of all – murderers, rapists and arsonists. All.
A man confesses to committing murder, but his lawyer urges the court to free him because “ he was extremely provoked” to pull the trigger. If he fails to persuade the judge, he pleads “for leniency”. When all that fails, the prosecution insists that justice be served and the judge agrees with him, the defence pleads for the “mitigation of sentence”.
Another confesses to robbing the state of cash, huge cash that is enough to build schools and hospitals, fight insurgents and pay our suffering workers. Lawyers – the ones called SAN; those are the best money can get, favourite of the rich and mighty because of their power to turn things around in a magical manner that keeps everyone exclaiming: ‘ah! Let’s fear God o’ – tell him to plead not guilty.
They will, with so much passion and incredible certitude, tell the judge they object to the charge. If he rejects the objection, they urge him to disqualify himself from the case because, they will state boldly, there is a likelihood of his being biased because his cousin’s son was a party to a matter in a court of coordinate jurisdiction about ten years ago.
If they see that this may not work, they will then ask the accused, the one who confessed to stealing but feels no sense of guilt, to surrender a negligible portion of what he has stolen. It is called plea bargain. No contrition. Nor remorse. He is left off the hook and he is told to go in peace and sin no more.
The lawyer’s dexterity at using his skills to avert justice and pervert the principles of jurisprudence is not helping, but the question remains: don’t judges have the final say?
Journalists don’t condone corruption and all the ills that ail Nigeria. No. The problem is that an average Nigerian loves the mob mentality. He would prefer that a thief gets jungle justice than being taken to court where he may get a slap on the wrist or be discharged for “lack of diligent prosecution”.
The President Muhammadu Buhari administration is lucky. The criticisms have not been coming in torrents. They are trickling in, like the morning showers that caress the body before drenching it. Besides, most of them seem to be in good faith. The scurrilous ones are understandable, coming from those who planned to rule for 60 years but lost steam in just 16 years of recklessness.They are entitled to their bitterness.
The simple message is that, in fighting corruption, we should not lose our sense of justice and humanity. Nobody is safe when the state succumbs to the push to embrace a mob action, fast as it may be. If a court says an accused should be on bail, he should be let off so as not to give those turning it all into a rights issue a horsewhip to lash the government and its agents.
Those crying that there is no economic direction should be more liberal in their criticism. The government has spoken about the past, where we are and where we are heading. Things are rough, for sure. But to say the government is unconcerned may not be right. Perhaps the treatment does not match the ailment, like pumping Panadol into a typhoid fever patient. He will never recover.
Economists are busy propounding esoteric theories that do not work here. There is no accurate data for anything. This makes development tough to measure. Cash is stuffed in private vaults on farms, not in banks. Huge funds are diverted to private pleasures.
In the immediate past administration, we had all manner of scatterbrained schemes and scams. You Win I Win, SURE-P and others that were founded on sheer expediency and never meant to endure, let alone boost the economy and better the lot of the citizenry.
After the collapse of those schemes, we embarked on a face saving voyage and – without any thought for the future and based on mere juggling of facts and figures – we proclaimed ours Africa’s biggest economy. Rebasing. It was as if we offended the gods. Ever since, the economy – and the people – have been writhing in pains. Rebasing has turned to “rebashing”.
Now, we are in a recession. They say the contraction won’t last for long. Really?
There is no need grabbing these three professionals by the throat for our situation. We are all guilty.
Consider the politicians who conceive policies for civil servants to implement. They make fanciful promises and paint the picture of an El Dorado, yet they deliver pains and misery.
Besides, they soon after getting into office begin to swim in corruption. It used to be millions. Nowadays we hear of billions being shared by people desperate to remain in power, which they see as an end in itself and not a means to an end -better service delivery, justice, equity and a good life for all.
Lawmakers are a wonderful lot. They get paid for sitting a few times in a year, but those who thought it was all about sitting allowances and influence peddling have now been proven wrong. Budget padding is here. When Buhari refused to sign this year’s budget, he was criticised as being stubborn. Now, our lawmakers are fighting over who injected extraneous financial matters into the all-important document. The new name is padding. Those who try to make it look innocent call it “insertion”, but the enlightened lot insist it is all a euphemism for corruption.
The accusations are neither here nor there, but the sickening scenario portrays them as people whose accounts have been overdrawn in the bank of credibility. They are in the red.
The upper chamber is hobbled by a corrosive test of integrity, its leadership accused of forging the rules that guided the controversial election that propelled them into their high offices.
Civil servants are believed to be the ones showing the politicians how to steal. Contracts are inflated. Workforce is inflated so that somebody can collect salaries for ghost workers and pension funds are looted. Shame.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has tried all the tricks in the book, yet the naira seems to be beyond redemption. The exchange rate is such that businesses that are import- dependent -many are – find it difficult to survive because they do not have the cash to bring in raw materials.
You visit the bank for forex, but you return empty handed. The roadside mallam will at any time meet your need. This is not right. The popular accusation is that the bankers supply the mallams the cash they hawk at their own rates, which the official market is struggling to force down. Market forces have refused to force the parallel market to fall in line. Market forces have jammed street forces. What a battle of forces.
We are all guilty. Every trade has its own bad guys. Musicians who deploy their creative skills to eulogise thieves are guilty as they celebrate rogues.
How about accountants who doctor the books? Isn’t it said that stealing is successful only when the accountant is either hand in glove with the thieves or has fallen asleep?
Auditors were there when fuel subsidy became a huge flea market of fraudsters, who drained the treasury of its blood, cash, and got us almost bankrupt until the government summoned – albeit belatedly – the courage to say “enough”.
Unfortunately, when a time calls for understanding and patriotism, we deploy politics. The problem is not that of the leadership; the followership is also at fault.
In other words, we are all guilty.
