ColumnsDon OkoloNigeriaOpinionCould the “China Strategy” save Nigeria’s Intractable Corrupt Culture?

“Those of us living in the trenches of this Heartbreak Alley are faced with one undeniable fact: More than ninety percent of Nigerians are corrupt.”

―Don Okolo

Maybe there is a redeeming feature about arresting two men and summarily executing them for bribery. I thought a long prison sentence would have been enough.

But the Chinese are a different breed; the court went through the rigors to find out that these two men accused of a version of bleeding corruption were as guilty as sin. And according to the Chinese court, the irrefutable nature of the guilt of these men demanded that the people of China understood one thing, and one thing only: If you played by your own rules, and you threw caution to the wind, and you used your power/position as bait to line your pocket, and you were caught, you would be tried first, and then killed. Those are the non-negotiable parameters…the guardrails, if you will, to dissuade anyone from those searing attributes of larceny you may have picked up sitting on an ivory tower.

The two Chinese men could not have been sentenced to death if they had committed any other form of crime short of treason. You should know that the Chinese are intolerant, bigoted to a higher degree, in their loathing of treason, they would most likely have you singed (burned) alive, and not beheaded. Bribery is a close second.

I am contending that the richest thieves in the world are Nigerians.

The accused men had schemed off between them, less than fifty million dollars. Put that on the Richter scale of all stolen funds, and you would not find a heartbeat to compare it to the kind of public funds stolen by Nigerian politicians in the last forty years. I am contending that the richest thieves in the world are Nigerians. These men have numbered accounts, in the low twenties, in billions of dollars, stashed away in foreign money houses.

Their collective loot would not threaten much, but would leave a scar tissue, a dent, that is, to cause the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, if he were alive, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffet, to take a second look at who it is that is seeking up on them.

If Obasanjo, Babangida, Abdulsalam, Jonathan, Abacha, Buhari were Chinese natives, the funds each had stolen would amount to a treasonous act.

If Obasanjo, Babangida, Abdulsalam, Jonathan, Abacha, Buhari were Chinese natives, the funds each had stolen would amount to a treasonous act. The sheer magnitude of  monies siphoned by these heartless six would be enough to rewrite the scorching misfortunes Nigerians wear like a dashiki, or that long, sari-like cut of a gown that bemoans the lack of that one, supreme virtue we call ‘Accountability’.

We know that these men are thieves. But we venerate them…and supremely, of course, on the off chance the crumbs falling off their tables would drop before us to kick-start that feeding frenzy-like struggle reserved for sharks. We have, inadvertently, made these guys untouchables. They live among us. They spend their stolen billions among us. Fifty years from today, we would be talking about these kinds of malfeasance (corruption).

It brings to mind that Wole Soyinka’s vintage; a tiger would always speak in tigritude, and a negro, in negritude. Meaning that we are bent and sculpted firmly in the curves and grips of abject despondency. Our struggle is eternal. We are damned and would forever hopelessly hope that Providence would lend us a hand. If every tribe were to crawl their way out of this quagmire, catch a bus out of town…well, go figure.

Any which way you slice this pie, the careening aspects of it are begging to be turned loose. Don’t you wish for that poetic justice to visit with the likes of the most notorious thieves? Wouldn’t that be a great starting point? Let me tell you why all our good wishes are meaningless: We are not the same people. Period. Our culture and traditions are different. Our belief systems are varied…and the most compelling quotient outside of the differences in language, which on its own, should have trumped all others, is the God we worship…and how we worship Him. I have said this before in my earlier opinion write-ups. But I guess it is worth an extra time to see if anyone would get it and begin to undo the shackles and fetters holding us together in this macabre dance.

Back to the Chinese and her swift cut of justice: Her brand of impartiality and fairness is like the guillotine blade coming down at two hundred miles an hour, on a neck on its path. It is always morbidly clean in its cut…as in precision. The severed person never realizes that his head is no longer attached to the rest of him…until he tries to hold together a coherent thought. That is when he feels the vacuum. The vision before him mellows out, before it turns into absolute, mind-numbing obscurity. On the day(s) these men would die their natural deaths, the money they stashed in these far-out locales would slip back to the country that granted them refuge. It is all part of the numbered account gimmick; you die, we keep it. That has always been the incentive…why nations like Switzerland, the Cayman Island, Bahamas and the newly sprouting green, money-pit bastions in the Caribbean, would jump onto the bandwagon of moral decadence…to hold, close to their vests, these ill-gotten monies, hoping that you, the depositor, would hurry up and die.

Here is an example why nothing good would ever come out of Nigeria. (Look, I am not a happy camper. I would love to see the country broken up) Remember Umaru Dikko? At one time in the eighties, this man openly celebrated, in Britain, that he was Africa’s richest man. In his bank account at the time, was two billion Sterling pounds (Four billion dollars, then) …he himself declared. It was that classic in-your-face-screw-you-Nigeria venom he spat into the country’s face that forced an administration, led by General Muhammadu Buhari to mount an abduction, reminiscent of the Israeli commando rescue of her citizens from that beleaguered Ugandan airport. This administration, with their own dirtier hands, had Umaru Dikko kidnapped, and under the guise of a diplomatic pouch, had him boxed to be flown back to Nigeria. But the British Secret Service got wind of it and freed him.

Umaru Dikko eventually waltzed into Nigeria a free man. He ran for a political office.

Here is the gist of that story: Umaru Dikko eventually waltzed into Nigeria a free man. He ran for a political office. (Don’t remember if he won) You should ask yourselves how that could have been. You should know Umaru Dikko paid through his teeth to buy back his freedom. You should know that a good chunk of that two billion pounds was deposited in General Sani Abacha’s account. Abacha was a Nigerian dictator (1993 -1998), classified as the most corrupt .You must therefore conclude; it was the only way he could have returned to Nigeria unscathed. Hello?

And so, it is with Obasanjo, Babangida, Abdul Salam, Jonathan, Sani Abacha and the current resident ghost in Aso Rock, Buhari. With these men, Nigerians lost more than two hundred and fifty billion dollars…guess estimated. Look fellows, Goodluck Jonathan is not a fool. How could he have allowed Buhari into Aso Rock in an election he could have declared himself the winner? How could Buhari have won the election fairly? Clearly, he did not. With enough money stashed away, and with a promise he would not be probed, Jonathan walked away. I would. That is the game. It is wicked, as it is soulless and cut-throat. It was Jonathan’s best chance at living out the rest of his life blowing bubbles and drinking, devilishly good cocktails out of the king’s winery.

The vacancy, and the hole in the soul of the country has long permeated the fabric of the private sector too; the biggest beneficiaries on this sphere could be Dangote, and to an extent, Madam Allakija, and all the other recipients of that vapid, horrendous nomenclature…that Satan-inspired terminology, known as ‘Oil Block’…the carving out of tracts of crude-padded swamplands to hand-picked citizens. I am lost there.

With Dangote, he passes as the sole prince…the first and only son of the nation. Wasn’t that why he was bequeathed with huge slabs of the lucrative markets in gold and silver (as in cement, sugar etc.) where no one else could compete against him? Those of us living in the trenches of this Heartbreak Alley are faced with one undeniable fact: More than ninety percent of Nigerians are corrupt.

We are already on that plateau, nestled deep inside her rock crevices, we would never find our way out of it…

From the roadside hawker to your Congress person, Senators, Ministers with portfolios, State governors, to the man on the pulpit, all the way to the Head of State are bereft of the principles of morality and ethics. Your local politicians…the town’s mayors, you should know, are not exempt. The vicious circle would continue…ad infinitum. (forever)

Sleight-of-hand is an art form, and would most likely gather speed, propagated, and finessed, for continued impregnation of the body polity. Before long, we would be inundated with the tenets of finer, craftier nuances of larceny to numb us, to keep you and me in that awkward posture and haze, where we would not be able to tell brown/black shoe polish from human feces. We are already on that plateau, nestled deep inside her rock crevices, we would never find our way out of it…nor would we see straight and clear enough to launch a counterattack to stop the brutal, spiteful walloping we are receiving. For those of you who love Nigeria…well, love on. For those of us who despise who she is…yes, we want out.

♦ Don Okolo, Professor and filmmaker, is on the Editorial Board of the West African Pilot News. He is the author of many books.

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