Beasts of corruption

Afrobeat legend, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, could have seen it all with his commentary on Nigeria. His timeless social commentaries on our national pastimes are renowned.  However, even Fela couldn’t have predicted the current national denouement – a situation in which animals help their brother beasts to the national till. When Fela released Beast of No Nation, BNN, it was a sad commentary inspired by the inequality in governance of the apartheid era. His sequel could have been titled– Beasts of Corruption.

Fela lived in the burning and looting era in which everything likely to arouse suspicion somehow went up in flames. Those were the days when Nitel and CBN buildings burnt leading to endless enquiries. It was the era in which iconic buildings caught fire in a country where fire fighting is the least of anybody’s problems.

We have seen it all – corrupt politicians using their access to senior advocates, doctors and the system to create comic scenes in courts, to bogus fainting spells at public inquiries. As Nigerians, we make memes of these issues and move on. Nigerians are ingeniously inventive but our creativity is working against us locally and internationally.

A week ago, a public inquiry into probable corruption in the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund, NSITF, resulted in a new scene in the revelation that termites have eaten up documents relating to a 2018 Auditor-General’s reports into the agency. The amount in question runs into N17 billion. The money went missing in transit between different financial institutions landing into private accounts.

2018 was the year when animals became willing tools in the corruption chess game. It was the year that a snake swallowed N36 million at the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), office. Nigeria is yet to provide proof of what mystical specie of a serpent feeds exclusively on its naira notes. But for a people coached on stories that a serpent fed a mystic woman at a garden somewhere, we could believe anything.

A year before the mystery snake, President Muhammadu Buhari, a war-decorated general was prevented from returning to his office by some mysterious rats. We are yet to know how much it eventually cost the Presidential Villa to exterminate the rodents and get the president back to work. No need to inquire, it must be a highly guarded state secret. We are thankful that the infestation did not lead to a Lassa fever epidemic at the highly priced presidential kitchen. According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, nearly two-thirds of Nigeria’s states have recorded deaths from Lassa fever. It is not impossible that the presidential rodents were not safely released away from the homes of hapless citizens.

In the same year of wonders – 2018; a mysterious gorilla sneaked into the office of the director of the Kano Zoo and swallowed N6.8 million. Till date, no zoologist has explained how this happened. No samples were taken from the offending gorilla except that it has eaten into the prospects of future Kano children watching priced Nigerian animals in their captured habitat.

As it stood, what a gorilla could do, a monkey could do even better. As competitive as it is for humans to outdo each other at competitions, it must be the same in the animal kingdom. It was not long that we were regaled with the tale of a mystery monkey that swallowed N70 million given to a chieftain of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF).

These tales by moonlight would make anyone with blood in their veins pinch themselves but our notoriety at home has birthed the same odiousness abroad. In the burn-burn era of Fela’s songs, proceeds of sleaze usually ended up in western banks and real estate markets. Those were the days when anyone who could buy a ticket spent their weekend anywhere in Europe without the hassles of visas. Not for long as European nations soon tightened the noose on Nigerians travelling to their countries introducing strict visa regimes that have hurt ordinary citizens just seeking a break from the humdrum of living in Nigeria.

After the clampdown on these looters, they discovered an Eldorado in the UAE and shifted their attention and slush funds there. Everyone, from scam artistes to politicians and lootocrats, has had easy access to Dubai. They’d take off on Friday and return early enough on Monday to sign in to continue stealing. They ‘invested’ their sleaze into the bustling Dubai real estate sector.

The Arabians welcome them with open hands, accepting their funds without asking too many questions. Wherever Nigerians troop in, there must be business to be made because Nigerians are loud and lavish spenders with good reason – easy money, easy spend.

From a no-visa policy, Nigerians were soon introduced to visas. Lately, Nigeria’s favoured destination point attempted to bully our citizens with a reciprocal two-for-one flight policy in which Nigeria gets one flight for Dubai’s two or something to that effect. It failed following an uproar. Now, Dubai is cancelling flights to Nigeria because it’s been unable to retrieve its cash trapped in Nigerian banks. Other airlines and countries are threatening to do the same thing.

Yet, if Nigeria were to look at where all the mystery animals discharge their undigested naira – we have an idea where such monies would be. But do not say I told you so. Our comic strips at home has now made us a laughing stock everywhere. To those who remembered the time when the UCH in Ibadan was the destination point for wealthy Saudi monarchs, please be reminded how Nigeria sent an ailing there to die and flew him back with his last breath.

Everywhere the citizens turn, they are blocked by the shadows of the beasts of corruption. The only reason we are still here is to hear that earthworms have eaten up Nigeria’s foreign reserves. It would not be surprising for a country that is hooked on the story of a snake snatching the wife of the first man and weaned on motivational speeches. The beasts of corruption are inventive, powerful, unbeaten and unbeatable in their ingenuity. They fleece us because our nation is a joke and leadership is a comedy.

ASUU and government

In Nigeria, the more you know, the less you understand. About a month ago, the story was that Buhari has ordered an end to the strike with the exclusion of Chris Ngige from the negotiation process.

A section of the Nigerian media have keyed into a national need – whenever there is a need for action that is not forthcoming from those sleeping on duty – they invent it. The strategy sometimes works except that to the man on the street, the entire ASUU strike is about who pays lecturers, a system they trust or one imposed by the government.

The teachers insist it is more than that. Anyone who has passed through an edifice with a signboard proclaiming itself a federal institution knows it is a huge scam. From the signpost to the dilapidated building it showcases, its decayed library, oversized classrooms with no seats or public address system, overpopulated hostels with toilets worse than prison conveniences, these edifices are a shadow of their inherent glory. It calls for total overhaul.

Adamu Adamu’s leadership is incapable of delivering the overhaul. He is equally unwilling to resign, seek redeployment or resolve the thorny issues between his ministry and university teachers. He claims not to have received any presidential order to end the strike and obviously is not in any hurry to put an end to it. Who needs graduates when even priests could be impersonated?