CORRUPTION AND THE SOUL OF NIGERIA BEING TEXT OF SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE LATTER RAIN ASSEMBLY BY PASTOR TUNDE BAKARE.
ON SUNDAY, THE 13TH DAY OF JANUARY, 2013 IN PREPARATION FOR
THE 1ST ANNIVERSARY OF THE "OCCUPY NIGERIA" PROTEST.
Concerned citizens of Nigeria, please lend me your ears. I am here this
morning to blow the trumpet once more in the hope that our sinking
nation can be rescued before it drowns. And just before I am labeled a
doomsday prophet by those banqueting inside this titanic of a nation,
allow me to speak on the theme:
CORRUPTION AND THE SOUL OF NIGERIA
Scriptural Texts:
i. Isaiah 58:1
"Cry aloud, spare not; Lift up your voice like a trumpet; Tell My
people their transgression, And the house of Jacob their sins."
ii. Jeremiah 17:1-11
1 "The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron; With the point of a
diamond it is engraved On the tablet of their heart, And on the horns of
your altars,
2 While their children remember Their altars and their wooden images By the green trees on the high hills.
3 O My mountain in the field, I will give as plunder your wealth, all
your treasures, And your high places of sin within all your borders.
4 And you, even yourself, Shall let go of your heritage which I gave
you; And I will cause you to serve your enemies In the land which you do
not know; For you have kindled a fire in My anger which shall burn
forever."
5 Thus says the LORD: "Cursed is the man who trusts in man And makes flesh his strength, Whose heart departs from the LORD.
6 For he shall be like a shrub in the desert, And shall not see when
good comes, But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, In a
salt land which is not inhabited.
7 "Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, And whose hope is the LORD.
8 For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, Which spreads out
its roots by the river, And will not fear when heat comes; But its leaf
will be green, And will not be anxious in the year of drought, Nor will
cease from yielding fruit.
9 "The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?
10 I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every
man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings.
11
"As a partridge that broods but does not hatch, So is he who gets
riches, but not by right; It will leave him in the midst of his days,
And at his end he will be a fool." (AMEN)
Sometime in 1922,
G.K. Chesterton, in a book on his travels to America, remarked that the
United States is a nation with the soul of a church. It is a loaded
comment, not quite as self-explanatory as it may seem, and therefore
open to multiple interpretations. The church and the nation are two
separate entities. They are similar in a number of respects but are
dissimilar in various other ways, too. If the church in Chesterton’s
statement is taken literally, then I wonder: How can a nation have the
soul of a church and, come to think of it, how might a church have the
soul of a nation? One way to unpack Chesterton’s statement is to regard
it as a praise of America’s morals. It could mean that as a nation,
their motivating virtues are religion-inspired, and they have a
Christian slant to their national conduct. Since it is a country that
started out with a significant measure of religious fervor, Chesterton’s
observations could have a historical basis.
Chesterton was
touched by the democratic spirit of America and its commitment to fair
play and equality - the fact that the US was a place of opportunity for
everyone regardless of who they are or where they come from, and this
was reflected in his essays/travelogues. But, considering that the
United States was rife with racial segregation in 1922, Chesterton might
not have been as enthusiastic about the US as a place with religious
character as many Americans might have read into his statement. His
could have been a backhanded comment, which offers another possible
interpretation of Chesterton’s observation - that the country is like a
church and her citizens have a religious devotion to their country and
her founding creed. A compliment, if you ask me.
Either way,
one thing is unequivocally certain from Chesterton’s observation: The US
has a soul. The soul of the country, to sum it up, constitutes its
complete national vision, its ideals, ethics, rectitude and overall
character. The soul of a country is reflected in its national
disposition such that even a child, as long as he/she is the citizen of
that country, mentally subscribes to that soul and enacts it throughout
his/her life. The soul of a nation is informed by knowledge, definition
and re-definition which shape its guiding philosophy. Where necessary,
it serves as a reference for re-fashioning and re-negotiating its
virtues. The constituent parts of a nation’s soul are not written in its
constitution as a code of conduct everybody must subscribe to, neither
are they necessarily decreed nor even enforced – they are, for the most
part, intangible. Nevertheless, the citizens of a nation are aware of
their existence at a subliminal level at least and are guided by their
ideals. They live and act them; they protect, sustain and nurture them,
and the ideals in turn energize them. The soul of a nation defines the
people; the people define the soul of a nation. One acts on the other
because both are essentially the same.
Let me at this point
also assert that every country, for good or bad, positive or negative,
whether it is obvious or sublime, animated or repressed, active or
passive, whatever the case – every country possesses a soul. If we can
take a country’s constellation of its ideas, ideals, identity,
philosophy, principles, heroes, culture, moral standards, make up,
mystique, founding visions, the general moral consensus, etc. and how
all these are hinted at in their various modes of expression, ranging
from the country’s national anthem to individual expressions of
citizenship, we can deduce what I am driving at here. If we conflate all
these attributes in one mixing bowl and thoroughly whisk them together,
what we get will give us an idea of what the soul of a nation is and
how it makes a country stand out and gives it its individuality in the
assembly of nations. Also, if a country lacks all the aforementioned
social and moral artefacts, or has them in anaemic proportions, it still
does not take away the fact that it has a soul, albeit an impoverished
one.
I want to bring this closer home by focusing on Nigeria
in particular. If someone were to make a journey similar to Chesterton’s
to this country and travel either through its entire geographical
expression or maybe even stop only at those states for which travel
warnings have not been issued by some countries, how would he or she
describe the soul of Nigeria? Let’s say the person’s impressions start
forming at the gateway into the nation, the Murtala Muhammed
International Airport, and the person witnesses ineptitude,
inefficiency, and an unabashed display of wanton corruption that ranges
from airport staff begging for money from visitors to a total systemic
dysfunctionality, how would our report card read?
Let’s say
the person is a business person who has come to survey the terrain to
determine whether it is a fruitful place to invest but finds every step
of the way that, while Nigerians are enterprising, warm and even very
generous, hardly any fruitful, reasonable business activity can be done
without a wetting of the ground with compromise because one has to pay a
bribe here and there. If the person realizes that Nigeria has been
structurally conditioned to largely function only when its wheels are
oiled with acts of corruption, and one has to bend one’s principles,
shift one’s morals, panel beat one’s conscience, and rationalize these
things just to achieve anything at all, how might such a person
characterize Nigeria’s soul? Or let’s just imagine this visitor is
simply a tourist who has come to see this great country that is home to
the largest population of Black people in the world and is dubbed the
Giant of Africa. Suppose this person has come with an open mind, a
tabula rasa, having never heard any of Nigeria’s ills, how might the
essential character of our nation shape the person’s perception of who
we are as a people?
When the person sees all the energy and
drive Nigerians invest daily to make something of their lives and how
they are rewarded with the reality of truncated opportunities engendered
by the culture of corruption, what does it translate to? If, for
instance, on a given day, the person picks up a newspaper and sees
reports on how the EFCC arrested a certain lawmaker and, after a pretend
trial, the person is back to his ‘Honourable’ position and walks about
freely without fear or shame; if the person reads of how many billions
of dollars have been misappropriated through a sham fuel subsidy
program, or how a certain minister has been accused of involvement in
massive corruption to the tune of billions, and this minister remains
unshaken and still presides over the affairs of the ministry he/she
heads; if this visitor reads about the barefaced ease and recklessness
with which Nigeria’s leaders steal from the treasury and still strut in
public to the soundtrack of ‘Ranka dede, Baba kepe’ that has been
engrafted into our public morality, how would such a person characterize
Nigeria?
Now suppose the person is not even a foreigner gazing into
the country with a burning intensity so as to capture Nigeria’s
essence, but is instead a fellow Nigerian who wants to know what the
country stands for. Let’s say the person is even you, a member of this
distinguished audience. What would you see or say about your own
country, putting all the aforementioned into consideration?
I do not
find it necessary to highlight in numerical details the countless
corrupt practices that have found a home in Nigeria, nor do I even want
to attempt to capture their effects. They are all around us, clear as a
sun-filled sky. From infrastructural deficits to a social collapse; from
a lack of ambition to a collective sense of despondency, to a
lackadaisical attitude and a general inuredness that makes us all look
away from even the most outrageously corrupt acts, we are no longer
strangers to the results of corruption, even though it is doubtful that
we will fully comprehend its entire effect on our country for a long
time to come.
Beyond the tangible and sublime effects, corruption
has demolished our cultural and symbolic capital such that whenever we
are ranked alongside other countries, Nigeria always manages to retain
her space, almost incontestably, at the nethermost rung of the ladder.
Recently, Nigeria was ranked the 20th saddest country on the Legatum
Prosperity Index. This is one curious rating, considering that not too
long ago we were rated the world’s happiest people - a rating which I do
not recall hearing any state official reject with their usual
vociferous denials. But, then, even if we quarrel with this latest
ranking that qualifies us as one of the saddest people on earth, at
least we cannot honestly disagree with the woeful indices used to
adjudge us a miserable country.
The rating was conducted
alongside 141 countries and computed with indicators such as economy,
governance, education, health, entrepreneurship and opportunity, safety
and security, personal freedom, and social capital. In all these,
Nigeria performed abysmally low relative to her strength and potential.
She could only be considered a champion when compared with struggling
nations, unendowed with natural resources, and war ravaged countries.
Otherwise, Nigeria lagged far behind those who ought to be her peers.
Our country was a letdown in virtually all ramifications. Not quite long
ago, too, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation released a report card on African
countries and where they presently stand. Nigeria was ranked among the
worst governed countries in Africa. Our dear country was pushed to the
same undistinguished corner as some African countries that should be
looking up to her for sustenance and inspiration. We have so badly
regressed that we can only shine, albeit with a dull glitter, when we
stand among failed and failing countries. It was just last month we were
ranked the 35th most corrupt country in the world. Shortly before that,
KPMG said we are the most corrupt country in Africa. If we consider
that, within the past month, we have also been ranked the 7th most
terrorized country in the world, and we sit at the bottom of the
Positive Peace Index, keeping countries like Iraq, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, India, Yemen and even Somalia company, the picture is as
gloomy as it can possibly be. As if those verdicts are not enough,
Nigeria was also ranked the worst place to be born in 2013. Can we
quickly, at this point, pause and wonder: What has corruption done to us
such that we are always at the top of the list when negative factors
are analyzed and at the bottom of the list when positive attributes are
ranked?
This is one of the biggest causes of concern: to say
corruption is a bad thing in the life of a country would almost be
trivializing a serious and complex problem. Corruption has been
debilitating for Nigeria and this can hardly be denied. Corruption
paralyzes a country’s soul such that the best she ever exudes is a
warped sense of self. It cripples a nation’s character and drains her of
substance. When we are confronted daily with news and reports of
executive corruption in high places, assaulted with a legal system that
has long lost respect for the sacredness of justice and resorted to
worshipping and preserving certain sacred cows and even their sires;
when we have a social system that makes a mockery of a country and her
feeble efforts at self-reclamation to the end that even her entire
existence becomes a running joke; when we have all these comprising the
leitmotif of our daily existence, we should know that we are dealing
with a country whose soul is being daily starved of the right nutrients
and stuffed instead with frequent doses of junk. Gradually, we become
morbidly obese with still-born chances, flatulent with disorder and,
right before our eyes, we will continually see our country’s soul yield
to the vagaries of ill health and maybe even social death.
This is not mere alarmism. Our country has long been distorted by
corruption and corruption has progressively eroded her strength and
undermined her potentials; corruption asphyxiates initiative and all
good ideas wilt and die under its crippling presence. Corruption
corrodes a nation’s soul, makes the people superficial - a nation full
of religion, lacking in principles, short on scruples and totally devoid
of a social conscience. To borrow the words of Apostle Peter, “…the
people are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be
caught and destroyed, and like beasts of the field, will eventually
perish.” (I Peter 2:12) The evidence that we are perishing people can no
longer be ignored. We are citizens of a country that marks time on an
inglorious spot. We make a lot of hot air motion without actually taking
more than a few unsure tottering baby steps forward. And those steps
are quickly countered by those times when we take huge strides
backwards.
Tomorrow, we will gather again at the Sheraton
Hotel, Ikeja, to cast a retrospective glance on the road we have trod
for the past year since the Occupy Nigeria protests took place - that
rally that shook everywhere when Nigerians uncharacteristically fought
against the civilian regime that keeps pushing them beyond the endurance
limit of their longsuffering souls. They not only actively resisted the
bloodsucking agents of state; they planted a flag of resolve on the
soil of weariness. It was unprecedented that Nigerians across the
country, irrespective of religion and ethnic identification, would
massively resist and on such a scale. From a little band of people who
began to protest and clamour that Nigeria must be occupied, it steadily
grew into a mammoth movement as each one told his neighbor that this was
a chance to snatch our country back. While it lasted, people were
energized. They wanted to question the answers they already had on the
state of affairs in the country, and they also confirmed what they had
always known. Yes, they saw that the country was hemorrhaging from every
vein and artery. But more than that, the Occupy protests were a battle
-- a battle to retrieve the soul of Nigeria and set her back on a better
path. Everyone was fed up with the state of the nation unless of course
one was in cahoots with the vagabonds in power. Nigerians wanted a
better Nigeria. We wanted a chance to start all over again.
We
lost that chance in 1999 when former president Olusegun Obasanjo
assumed office. Today, the old man (‘Ebora Owu’) conveniently assumes
the stance of a statesman. He goes up and down telling everybody Nigeria
will go up in flames; that the man he planted in power has allowed
corruption to go unchecked under his clueless watch. What he expediently
forgets is his role in facilitating our arrival at the sticky junction
we presently find ourselves. Obasanjo was one person who derailed
Nigeria at a critical juncture in her life. In 1999, Nigerians were full
of enthusiasm as they watched the military return to the barracks. We
were excited because it was the dawn of a new beginning. We wanted a
different and better country, one with a defined national character and
with the possibility of creating a sense of self-pride we so badly
needed after so many traumatizing years under the military. It never
happened. Obasanjo squandered that enthusiasm and returned the country
to a path of corruption, prebendalism, primordial sentiments and even
administrative bullying. The Occupy Nigeria protests revived that
enthusiasm in Nigerians and showed us that when we are ready, we can
always have our country back. For now, we appear to be more of a
makeshift country simply existing without ideas, vision and goals. Our
ideas of planning for the future have never quite exceeded the annual
budget. Well, maybe once in a while, we talk about Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) and a certain Vision 20:2020 which even its own
proponents know is just mere flightiness; something successive
governments have been good at peddling to unsuspecting citizens. That
might explain the average Nigerian attitude to this country: People seem
aware that the country has no clearly defined future and, therefore, a
sense of patriotism or identifying with the country is at an all-time
low.
We seem to have stronger ethnic identities than a
national one, and there seems to be increasingly little motivation or
galvanizing energy to spur us on to be a people with a national
character. This is one of the factors that enable corruption to thrive.
When a people who have learnt to recede into their regional shells
develop an attitude of double consciousness that makes them fiercely
loyal to ethnic ties over nationhood, there is a problem. This sense of
this-country-is-nobody’s-Fatherland
allows corruption to thrive. Where we are supposed to be jointly
vigilant, we look away. And that is another remarkable thing about the
Occupy Protests: People protested without regard for ethnicity and
showed that it is possible for us to cooperate along factional lines if
we are determined; if we can articulate the kind of country we want to
build.
Right now, Nigeria can be said to be far from having a
properly defined national character that guides and mediates her overall
behavior. We seem to just exist, floating in a terrestrial space and
hoping that if we continue to string things along anyhow, we will get
there, somehow - wherever ‘there’ is located. This is one of the major
problems I see with the whole national expression called Nigeria. We
have continually failed to situate our national desires and aspiration
within the scaffold of self-fashioning. Instead of just trying to be, we
should first stop and ask: Who are we, where are we coming from and
where do we want to go from here? How do we create this persona we
aspire to? Please note that I started this address by talking about the
soul of the American nation. In case somebody is planning to ask, should
Nigeria aspire to be a nation with the soul of a church, too? My answer
is no, not at all. There is no point imitating the essence of another
country when your founding principles, or lack thereof, are radically
different. There is no point going to another country and coming back
with a sketch of their latest banquet hall or the outline of their VP’s
residence to inspire your own. You will not only fail to reproduce the
same effect, it will also be an outright misfit. Let’s go to the land of
Judah, the homestead of Ahaz the king of ‘copy and paste’, the
progenitor of all clueless executives - II Kings 16:1-20. The end
product of such copycatism is futility or dying without any significant
accomplishments at best. A Yoruba proverb captures it well. It says,
“Sokoto agba wo, bi o fun ni lese, a so ni nitan”, meaning a borrowed
pair of trousers hardly fits properly.
In closing, let me go
back to the road where we started this walk together. As Nigerians,
let’s ask ourselves, beyond posturing and defensive patriotism, how do
we define our own country and how does this country in turn define us?
How do we live out this interplay in our daily existence? If we are
asked to encapsulate the country’s character either in one pithy
sentence or a grandiose speech, what are the things we would say about
our Nigeria? And not to be neglected in this is the critical question:
How will the corruption that has become a main construct of our cultural
constitution play into this introspection? From both an outsider and
insider’s perspective, how has informal and institutionalized corruption
at micro and macro levels impacted our total national persona? What
effect does it have on our national and individual conscience and
general consciousness? Do we in our daily conduct instinctively limp to
the beat of this national character, a people disabled and diminished by
corruption?
Let’s still put one thing into perspective.
Majority of us in this auditorium are adults. We have witnessed many
seasons of Nigeria’s existence, many of which were not pleasant. The
answers we are likely to come up with cannot but be tainted with our
disappointments, frustrations and maybe even despair. Naturally, that
should be expected. But, then, what if we not only look backwards and
begin to look forward? What if we ask, if a child were born today,
Sunday, the 13th of January, 2013, what would Nigeria mean to him/her?
How would Nigeria as it is presently composed shape his/her outlook on
life such that in the next ten to twenty years, such a child will evince
the country’s character in words and deeds? These are all questions and
issues we have to bear in mind when we address issues bordering on the
toll corruption has exerted on our country. What kind of country are we
living in and what kind of country are we creating for our children? Let
us, for a moment, suspend talks of our own generation’s loss and
instead focus proactively on the coming generation. What kind of country
are the thousands of children being born daily coming into and how will
the quintessence of Nigeria define their lives from cradle to grave? As
we deliberate on the one year anniversary of the Occupy Protests
tomorrow, it is important that we not only lament corruption but also
remember two things: One is that what we saw last year during the mass
protest is a bunch of possibilities; Nigerians want their country back
and they want it now. And if we join hands together, it is possible to
reclaim the country. It is possible to ennoble the soul of our nation
such that as we become Nigeria, Nigeria becomes us.
Thank you
for listening. May the good Lord remember those who are good for good
and repay every one working for the ruin of this nation consciously or
unconsciously in their own coin. Amen.
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