Nigerians are not corrupt (1)

When Malcolm was sent to prison earlier in his life for thieving and burglary, a certain inmate approached him and introduced Islam to him.  As a strong-headed person and an outlaw, Malcolm resisted, but the persistent stranger one day invited him to the library to come and read what being ‘black’ means in the Webster’s Dictionary.  ‘Black’, the colour with which we as a people remain defined, is described as ‘devoid of light’, ‘thoroughly sinister and evil’, ‘illegal’, ‘perverted’, ‘dodgy’, ‘unreliable’, ‘invoking evil supernatural powers’, ‘very sad and gloomy’, ‘marked by disaster’, ‘characterised by hostility and discontent’ .  It is important to put ourselves in the minds of other people, in understanding what this life is all about.  One of the greatest defects we have as a people, is the tendency to be carried away so easily, to be easily influenced and programmed by those who pull our strings, to believe all that we see on TV and read in the newspapers.  But except we take a deeper approach to issues that confront us, we are doomed to the ninth generation.

Why would we believe that ‘Black’ is just a colour, or that yes, some of us are really dark-skinned and tend towards that colour?  Why would we not see also, that each time the word ‘black’ is uttered, somewhere in the mind of the most decent ‘white’ person, or any other person for that matter, the other words that define ‘black’ also cross their minds.  But before you think that I am just in one of my extreme leftist moods, in the same movie, the Muslim man, asked Malcolm X, to turn the dictionary and see what ‘white’ means.  White means, ‘innocent’, ‘trust-worthy’, ‘good’, ‘open-minded’, ‘heavenly’, ‘progressive’, ‘fortunate’, ‘free from blemish’, square-dealing’, ‘honest’ etc.  Any wonder then why the fates of these two people, have emerged in different directions.  Since we live in a world totally defined by the ‘white’ man; in a world defined in his language, we have ended up calling ourselves ‘evil’, ‘retrogressive’, ‘un-trustworthy’, ‘dodgy’, ‘backward’, and so we have seen the result of such self-description.  There is indeed a lot to a name.

What do we do about this?  Do we stop calling ourselves ‘black’, a nomenclature reminiscent of other evils, like ‘blackmail’, ‘blackguard’, ‘blackball’, ‘black day’, ‘black list’, ‘black market’, ‘black hole’ and so on, or do we accept that labeling on the surface and so try to make the most of our reality?  Will it be possible to now escape such labeling?  And are we aware of the fact that our circumstances confer on us double the responsibility compared to other races?  It is a fact that the ‘black’ man has to run twice as fast to catch up with other races, has to be twice as clean and of integrity, has to conduct himself and his affairs twice as transparently, in order to even be admitted to the comity of nations, by those who are much more innately worse than he is.  It is a fact that, despite the role of TV and mass media in general, in promoting amnesia around the world, ‘white’ people seem to have committed more atrocities in this world, compared to ‘blacks’.  Defining themselves in such flowery words as ‘innocent’, ‘square-dealing’, ‘pure of heart’, ‘fair’, ‘honest’, ‘free from blemish’, ‘favourable’, ‘fortunate’, while labeling us as the devil himself, is indeed a great pointer to the fraud that this world has been built upon.

What is more, most of us ‘black’ people  are more like brown or dark brown, and most of them ‘white’, are more like pink, or cream.  In the Malcolm X movie, the members of the Nation of Islam, led by the Honorable Elijah Mohammed, had serious issues with the way God himself has been depicted as a white man, and of course, the devil himself, as a black.  I recently saw a church pamphlet given to my children, and on the cover, a white Angel Michael – all blond and blue eyes –  stood over a black man with kinky hair and two horns; the devil himself.  The devil according to today’s knowledge being promoted by all-knowing whites, could be any Nigerian man.  Just stick two horns on his head and slap a tail behind his back.

But what relevance does this story of Malcolm X, black and white man and all the deception have to do with Nigerians and corruption?  I was once approached by journalists after a certain Transparency International report was released, and they expected me to whine on and on about how corrupt Nigerians were as a people. The answer they got threw them back, as it did my interviewer on AIT just a week ago.  NIGERIANS ARE NOT CORRUPT, and nobody should call us corrupt!  Yes we have problems and issues, but no one should tag us ‘corrupt’, which is just another bad label – given to a dog as an excuse to kill it.  Just like the word ‘black’, saying one is ‘corrupt’ conjures more than one image.  It is not just about who takes bribes and who doesn’t.  Africans, and Nigerians especially must learn to be deep, and to consider the implications of our present actions and inactions, what we accept and what we reject, on our future and the future of our children unborn.  Just as we accepted the toga ‘black’, with all its evil and terrible connotations, and it has held us down ever since, so also are we accepting the toga of ‘corruption’.

According to the Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary, to be Corrupt means to be ‘rotten’, ‘depraved’, ‘perverted’, ‘debased’, ‘bad in morals, manners or action’, ‘tainted’, ‘spoilt’, ‘irresponsible’, ‘bad’, ‘counterfeited’.  It is only a minute part of ‘corruption’ that is concerned with the receipt of bribes or the giving of it.  Why would we gladly put the entire burden of irresponsibility, depravity, perversion, immorality, and rottenness, on our already overburdened shoulders as ‘black’ (or evil, unfortunate, discontented, wicked, sinister, hostile, dodgy, counterfeit people?  Accepting the toga of corruption may indeed be the final nail on the coffin of our race.  It is noteworthy, that the antithesis of ‘corruption’, is innocence, fairness, purity, honesty, which as you can see above, also means WHITE!  ‘Black’ and ‘corruption’ go together, just as ‘white’ and honesty.

A more nuanced approach to the ‘anti-corruption’ campaign is needed.  The problem needs to be intellectualized, otherwise, those who claim to be fighting corruption are actually perpetrating a great disservice on our generation and our race.  I am not justifying corruption, but as we shall see next week, the problem we have are more like cultural and historical disconnects, timidity, egocentrism, narrow minds, and in some cases, total mental cases seizing the reins of power in Nigeria, in Africa.