Bashir Kabir
Expert of corruption fight the world over share the opinion that it is a tricky ground often shrouded in mysteries that makes it very hard to perceive what exactly is going on and who is what.
Hampering the occurrence of corruption targets at creating a more just society which can be perceived in the fairness and equality of individualistic rights as well as uniform distribution of opportunities. Corruption always favors a selected few in terms of fairness of justice, service delivery, access to opportunities, better choices of life including nutrition, housing, healthcare, education, and security.
While corruption and corrupt practices are clearly defined among others as bribery, cronyism, extortion, gratification, tempering with policies, bypassing regulations, embezzlement, abuse of discretionary power, withholding of information, et cetra, a lot can happen between the thin lines of what is allowed and what is not to satisfy personal need.
The federal government’s war drums against corruption were loud enough they could be heard from the other edge of the world. The waged battle was basically in the prosecution sense where past corruptors were to be sourced and grilled for dinner. it was hoped that many of the corruption consequences deeply felt would be alleviated as the scourge is tamed down. How did that work? Not so very good. Up till this moment, there aren’t enough prosecutions to cause significant deterrence. Where are all the corruptors past, and present? where are all the proceeds of billions of naira of corruption activities?
The way corruption is best understood to be tackled on the global perception is in its prevention. The sluggish and overcrowded judiciary systems cannot handle the load and that is in addition to the cost of the process of prosecution. The system on its own has many corruption tendencies and hence not supposed to be the only way to go about it.
The latest prosecution of a corrupt act perpetrated by the former member house of representatives, Mal. Farouk Lawan, with the sentence of seven years imprisonment, is one of those rare bleeps that happened not quite often to indicate that effort is made in regards to the corruption fight in the country. How much this is impacting the the general process is entirely a different story.
.
The negativity of presenting evidential proof of corruption intended to arrive at prosecution is blackmail. A holistic anti-corruption crusade with the intention of wiping corruption would never allow for conflict of interest to prevails. The whole point of fighting corruption is missed and not useful in any way whatsoever in the case where the intention is to attain a personal goal or simply to bring someone down.
If a larger percentage of the corruption fight efforts in Nigeria focuses on prevention rather than prosecution the country’s recent Corruption Perception Index (CPI) might have seen improvement. But instead, the rating is still where it is at if not slightly worse. The effect can be experienced in regards to the prevalence of corrupt practices such as favours in getting jobs, project funds diversion for personal use, bastardization of procurement procedures , poor transparency and accountability, constriction of access to information et cetra
It might be that it takes just a few steps to rate the situation regarding an institutional weakness and determine how to go about remedying it to prevent corruption which can save a lot of time, energy and resources to prosecute it after it might have happened. It might not be complex to any extent to learn that an unchecked discretionary power can and will always lead to corruption tendencies. The personal perception of right and wrong and professional ethics will go a long way to put someone on the track of rightousness.
It was shocking to see a question ‘ is corruption a crime in Nigeria’ asked on the Google search engine. A good indicator that the people of Nigeria have entirely different perception of whether or not it is acceptable to be corrupt. A good majority would think being crooked corrupt equals being smart. Think of the widespread scamming on and offline, public fund stealing, unexplained lavish lifestyle to prove a point and more. This all amounts to ‘knowing your onions’ in the parlance of the ‘smart’.
Personal integrity is always the checker of whether a corrupt act is perpetrated or not. As the saying goes, Integrity is the choice between what is convenient and what is right.
