Corruption and Nigerian hypocrisy.

By Pini Jason
MANY times I have hinted at what I call the ambivalence of Nigerians about corruption. Indeed, what I mean is that we are all hypocritical about our concern over corruption.
Otherwise how is it that very often those who are ostensibly in pursuit of transparency or those fighting corruption are invariably caught in the very act of corruption? What I see most times are people who are incensed that someone else is doing the stealing, and not them.
Given half a chance, they out-steal the people they were criticising yesterday. Oh; the smart phrase nowadays is “the hunter becomes the hunted”! In other words, the thief and the “catcher” easily trade places!
The common axiom is that while you are pointing a finger at someone, three other fingers are pointed directly at you while one, the thumb points upwards in obvious non-commitment! Another way to put it is to call attention to the man in the mirror.
He may, in fact, be the very thief you are looking for. In one of my articles in the eighties I propounded a theory that the decibel of the noise of a Nigerian is directly proportional to his distance from an opportunity to steal. The nearer he gets to the opportunity, the less his noise.
When he finally arrives at the opportunity, he is dead silent! Until a man has been “politically exposed” (apologies to Mrs. Farida Waziri, ex-EFCC boss) and comes out clean, I can never take him serious.
Assets declaration and the law
That brings me to the noise from the opposition since Sunday 24 June 2012 when President Jonathan insisted during the Presidential Media Chat, that there was nothing in the law that compelled him to declare his assets publicly.
First, how could we Nigerians have forgotten so soon that this matter was always hotly debated in various constitutional conferences and we were given cultural reasons why we would not allow it, including the ridiculous excuse that relations would prey on you if they know what you have? It was our choice that public declaration of assets was not necessary. And we have not changed the law.
Although during the media chat, the President kept saying that it was “a matter of principle”, I believe that he meant it was a matter of choice. Many people had run away with the wrong notion that the President refused to declare his assets. I believe that, as President, he had declared his assets as required by law. Declaration of assets is compulsorily done by a public officer latest within three weeks of taking office and after leaving office. In some cases even before you take the oath of the office. If a public officer wants to make his declaration public, that is his choice. Not making it public does not detract or conceal anything because the declarations are VERIFIED!
Making a declaration public should no longer be an issue to be politicised today given the Freedom of Information Act. Under the Act, anyone interested in assets declared by a public officer can apply to have them. It serves no useful purpose, even as mere symbolism, in our anti-corruption war except to satiate the pallet of a society with a huge pornographic appetite for salacious stories.
In my view a better  way to fight corruption is through tightening the loopholes within the system, tighter and more open budgeting system, strict enforcement of laws, effective tax system that retrieves what is stolen and jails the culprit for tax evasion if we can’t nail him  on graft and our society being more courageous in shunning unexplained sudden wealth, on the one hand. We can all see that the present catch am, catch am method of anti-corruption crusade is not working and can never work, no matter how many people symbolically declare their assets publicly.
Hypocritical opposition
On the other hand, I think the opposition that is railing at Jonathan is annoyingly hypocritical. The leaders of the opposition have held public offices. Some just left office.
I think a better way to pressure Jonathan to publicly declare his assets should have been for the opposition leaders to cast the first stone by declaring their own assets publicly. Some of the hypocritical opposition leaders are linked with assets they could never have acquired even if they were to earn a million Naira a month all their days in public office!
And why do Nigerians still think that it is only the President, Governors and Ministers that can be corrupt? Until recently, who would have believed that a director in the civil service could keep N2 billion cash in his house? Some of those civil servants with torn T-shirts and worn shoes have estates all over Abuja and mansions in their villages!
The so-called private sector may even be more corrupt than the public sector. After all, apart from direct filching of public funds, many instances of bribing are masterminded by the private sector. If we are going to be serious about the war against corruption in Nigeria we must first of all appreciate how pervasive it is and stop playing politics with its eradication.
NYSC and Boko Haram
AFTER the 2011 post presidential election violence, the Director General of  the NYSC promised that youth corps members would no longer be posted to states where they would be exposed to danger.
The killing of corpers has continued with the terrorism in some Northern states. Many parents are now worried that their wards are being posted to violence-prone states in the North where these corpers cannot go to church, market or even to their place of primary assignment without being killed, and at a time some state governments have sent buses to evacuate their students from those states! The NYSC should not expose graduates to avoidable harm!