By Adeola Aderounmu
If I had any doubts before, it’s all gone now. It doesn’t matter that I have stated this fact before-that Nigeria is (probably) the most corrupt country in the world.
I don’t care what the Transparency International rating of Nigeria says. I am too convinced in my heart and soul that Nigeria is the MOST CORRUPT COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.
In that country Nigeria, many known thieves (popularly called politicians) are parading the landscape free. What is agonizing about the Nigerian situation is that the thieves, criminals and looters are known. They are popular among Nigerians. It is not as if money went missing and they are trying to trace the money. The point is Nigerians know who has stolen the money but they do nothing to bring about any form of justifiable prosecution.
There are uncountable number of probes in Nigeria that are under the carpets. There are uncountable number of government agencies and committees doing ABSOLUTELY nothing but stealing and looting.
This is the greatest tragedy of the Nigerian society-that it is profitable and honorary to be a thief. In fact if a Nigerian politician is not a thief, he is regarded as a fool by his family and friends. I know people who are preparing for the 2015 elections because they want to reap from the Nigerian treasury, not because they really want to serve. Who serves in Nigeria?
Farouk Lawan will get away with the criminal charges around his neck. He will not be the first and he is not going to be the last unless a revolution happens in Nigeria tonight.
Mrs. Goodluck Jonathan got away with her loots. She and her husband have been siphoning Nigeria’s money long before the days of Aso Rock. Ask Mr. Jonathan what has happened to Nigeria’s external reserves since he assumed the position of the chief looter of Nigeria. The answers you get may turn you insane.
Obasanjo and the police funds, Nigerians have forgotten and forgiven. Babangida and 12 billion dollars, Nigerians have forgotten and forgiven. All the revelations made about how Atiku and Obasanjo wasted Nigeria’s money, all in vain.
You can count from now to eternity how Nigerian thieves (popular called Nigerian politicians) have stolen monies that Nigerians know about. But Nigerians do nothing to fight back or send these popular thieves to jail.
In Nigeria it is business as usual.
But they want us to write about the good things from Nigeria. Well, let those who have the feelings for that do so.
I don’t.
I see a country I left behind populated by some of the poorest people in the world. Nigeria is more than upside down. Tropical gangsterism is the norm. People do as they want and how they like and get away with political murders, theft in government offices across the country.
With Boko Haram and uncountable types of accidents life is very meaningless in Nigeria. Insecurity was redefined under the corrupt government of Goodluck Jonathan.
I don’t understand why thieves (popularly called politicians) cannot be apprehended, prosecuted and serve punishments. Oh, I do know. The Nigerian judiciary is so corrupt and morally blind you could almost want to scrap the Nigerian Law school and law faculties across the country.
There are many reasons why Nigerian Universities are not rated or seriously given a punch when rated. What are the roles of the products of the tertiary institutions when Nigeria is ruled by criminals in Aso rock and overlooked by the judiciary? The police are worse than legless animals. The political system in Nigeria makes a complete mess and mockery of the other (parasitic) institutions.
The police cannot arrest politicians because the politicians feed them. Nigeria is not a normal country. The judiciary cannot do a thing because it survives on bribes and kickbacks.
Our indigenous manufacturing industries are dead. Unemployment is all time high and it is almost hopeless to be a graduate without a line of connection that will open up job opportunities.
It is hard to create your own job or business since the government does not think it is its duty to provide electricity. The government of Jonathan is full of fools. Otherwise they should know that it is wrong to increase the cost of what is not yet available.
On June the 1st 2012 the cost of electricity was increased despite the fact that Nigeria has no electricity. It is now morally wrong to call what is produced in Nigeria electricity. It is not electricity or power supply because almost all Nigerian families have generators or power plants.
The environment is seriously polluted and combined with the almost useless public health facilities; life expectancy in Nigeria is hardly 40 years!
So, you see why corruption in Nigeria is the worst in the world. The implication of corruption in Nigeria is one of the greatest tragedies in the world since 1978-the year I started primary 1 as a 6 year old.
There will be no justification for the scenario that allowed criminals to rule Nigeria. It cannot even be blamed on the fact that they grounded public education.
To what extent will the thieves (popular called Nigerian politicians) go before the poor, oppressed and resilient people of Nigeria fight back?
Jonathan who vowed and promised to serve (and loot) for one term is now scheming for a second term. Nigerian rulers definitely are not only idiots; they are the greatest deceivers the world has seen since Judas.
Waiting for 2015 is like waiting for an Obituary. Who knows? By that time Boko Haram may have taken Arewa Republic and possibly Abuja.
The aggregation of people in Nigeria should seek the independence of their regions and tackle corruption before or after that.
At some point the indigenous populations need to take control of their own lives and determine the lives they want to live and the legacies they want to pass to their unborn generations. Present day Nigeria is a monumental waste and tragedy!
A View From The Scandinavian 
I am a Nigerian and I share these pain and angony, but I want us to do somrthing about these problems, we are tired of talking. Let do wat Jerry Rowlins did in Ghana then we can be sanitized of this corruption
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wen d king of the people is blind wat then do u expect, graduate have become drivers, truck pushers, bread huckers, vendors, picking puckets and many more, while our ogas ar just busy building there purse, oh nigeria who will deliver u frm this enemy called polititians? Imagin to get police job u must pay 130k na wa o
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What is the 130k for? Police form or entry exam?
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It may not be the most corrupt in the world. However it belongs to the group where the comparisons are no longer important for example comparing infinity and twice that!
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Infact,i doff my cap for you.this is the first time somebody will speak my mind.pls more on the socalled PHCN who collect money for what they fail to give the mass.KIndly assist me to pray for revolution in these country.now Bread has been inreased GEJ want us to eat cassava bread,is he and his families and sibling eating cassava bread?pls more about our socalled house of robber called senators and rep.More grease to your elbows.
Remain Blessed.
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i have given up on Nigeria. The whole world know that the wife of GEJ is an illiterate, she is a source of fun on youtube, recently we were mada to know that she hold a bachelor degree from a big University in Nigeria. I am yet to recover from this rude shock. That does not only discredit the name of the university that gave her the degree, it also cast aspersion on our university system. This is the greatest disaster that has ever befallen the nation.
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What baffles me is that despite what the Nigerian populace are passing through they seems not to bother but believes and have faith in God that one day it will be better. They’re totally blinded to the fact that their destiny and that of the children is in their hands.
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A friend shared the following with me on facebook. Please, read patiently:
The generation that left town.
By Pat Utomi
DO you know of the generation Y concept? Do not feel bad if you do not. I did not myself until recently. Among other things this generation of Nigerians born from between the late 1970s and the 1990s is angry with the generations before them in Nigeria. Maybe they deserve to be. But it had never quite been framed before me as it was recently.
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At a recent conference on education, I provided a bit of a summary history of the rise and fall of education in Nigeria, referring generously to Eric Ashby’s work and the Ashby commission’s very kind remarks about the state of higher education in Nigeria at independence. I noted also sir Ashby’s regrets about how the dream had gone sour, in remarks just before his demise.
One of the participants came forward with this stunner of a question. If higher education was as good in those days as she keeps hearing, she queried, how come it produced leaders that have managed to, and continue to make so big a mess of the country. For some amazing reason, I was able to come back on the shotgun, quick on the draw on that very fundamental question. My generation, I said, was not responsible for the mess because it left town but they probably deserve blame as good, if not worse, for not having the character to challenge and stop the rot. So how and when did my generation leave town?
I began with remarks made at the presentation, a few weeks ago, of a book on achievers, by Fola Adeola. Said the founding Chief Executive of GTBank, “Thirty years ago I was referred to as a young man, today they are still referring to me as a young man.” For me, the point Fola was really making was that the men who ran Nigeria 40 years ago as twenty something and thirty something year old without the benefits of the education Ashby felt so proud of, still run Nigeria as seventy something year olds and still call those 10 years younger young men, just as they did 40 years ago. Hold it there. I know you will look at the thirty something year olds who dominate states Houses of Assembly, National Assembly and even one or two Y generation governors and cabinet ministers.
The truth for me is that my generation, which enjoyed that high quality education found there was little space to add the value they could, and in the main, walked. They are the champions of the brain drain. I remember when I returned in 1982 after my PhD. A group of us used to get together around the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs because there was a core of the group that worked as Research Fellows at NIIA. They included Femi Aribisala, Olisa Agbakoba, Babajimi Peters, Mohammed Garba, Henri Yondowei, and Emeka Aniagolu. When Emeka Kalu Ezera, myself and a few others from outside arrived, almost on a daily basis and the big arguments on policy, nation building and serving the common good started, you could almost feel the walls respond to the passion.
Out of all that came a current affairs journal called Spectrum, engagement with the intelligentsia of the generation before and policy thinkers like Izoma Philip Asiodu and his peers. Then many lost heart. One by one, even that group, which came to define my generation, headed North and West. They left the country to positions in Europe and North America. I still recall an opinion essay by someone who wondered why I was still in Nigeria. And the person was not being nasty. He was actually very kind to me but concluded Nigeria had no room for people of talent. He was more or less reflecting the view of what was considered the appropriate thing to do by those who could in my generation, leave town.
Of our group all that is left in Nigeria besides me, are Femi Aribisala and Olisa Agbakoba. Dr Aribisala, one of the finest political economists of his time, educated at Europe and American’s finest universities, long became a pastor, a wonderful thing to serve God, but a huge loss nonetheless to a discipline in which he was one of the very best.
Emblematic of how my generation left town was a story told by an expatriate CEO of a pharmaceutical firm about their frustration in testing the efficacy of new drugs in the 1990s. They would start with a group of professors of medicine at UCH, and six months later all would have left for Saudi Arabia, then they would turn to another group only for exit to happen three months later.
So who was left to lead and how did Nigeria lose the benefit of the quality education of the 1960s, ’70s and early 1980s. I think the thirty something year olds who took power in the 1960s have generally stayed in power. In many cases they have cloned themselves in the new young men in power who had to worship at their altar and sometimes sacrifice their souls to be let in. They also incorporated a few that got that education the questioner was wondering about. To deal with why those with quality education they have brought in is to understand two phenomena. One is the corporatist state in post-colonial Africa and the other is the idea of being in office but not in power.
The corporatist state sought to suck in certain elements that seemed able to threaten the system. So the Bar Association president was appointed Attorney-General and put in a position to thwart the rule of law to show loyalty to the incorporators, and the medical association president became minister of health etc. In a variant of this process the incorporated is initiated into a new paganism, money worship. The new idolatry makes all human relative in value to what they own or how much can be squeezed out of them. So people forget how to speak truth to power and say to the ruler who is clueless: You are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Sycophancy becomes a high art until the beneficiary falls from power and becomes object of the scorn of these sycophants as they move on to the new men in power. The other crippler of the educated that is brought into office is lack of real influence. At a CVL yearly lecture a few years ago, the guest speaker, Prof. Ibrahim Gambari of the United Nations, when he was challenged about performance of people like himself when they are in government, Gambari’s retort was that there is a difference between being in office and being in power. Many incorporated ministers are in office but not in power. Their real influence, if we were to be honest was marginal.
My generation, left town or was ignored, except for those who turned to people, power with mortgaged consciences and money worship, a faith that somehow sucks the finishing of good education from human consciousness such that all that is seen is how “my Mercedes is bigger than yours”. It also sets adherences on a path of reckless abuse of the commonwealth to get money not earned so as to buy things not needed in other to impress people they do not really like.
Professor Wole Soyinka may see his generation as “a wasted generation”; mine simply left town and became useful to other societies. The trouble is that many of us got the education we are taking elsewhere at little or no cost, thanks to the taxpayers of Nigeria. This is why I get into trouble with my many Nigerian physician friends who now live in the U.S., when I tell them that while their American colleagues were borrowing a fortune to pay their way through medical school they were taking freely received training to the U.S. from where they harass me about how come we cannot fix Nigeria.
The guilt of my generation is a big one. It is not the misleading of Nigeria. They were not around to do that. The guilt of my generation is that education did not give us enough character to stay and fight those who did not realise that the duty of every generation is to make its shoulders available so the generation next can better see tomorrow to make it better than yesterday. Instead of fighting off those who took power in the 1960s at age 30 so we can make ready a better place for the generation Y to build on with their ICT know-how and technology savvy disposition, we simply said these guys don’t take prisoners and left town.
* Prof. Utomi is the founder of Centre for Values in Leadership.
My views succinctly expressed there by Pat utomi. That is why i eschew those who extol Buhari as a candidate 4 president 30years after he failed to effectively run and hold a military dictatorial regime. And i have always argued that among the presidential candidates in the recent elections, he is the one i would vote for as a matter of principle. Except that if he wins, he will likely be in office and not in power as he just admitted in this write-up.
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My views succinctly expressed there by Pat utomi. That is why i eschew those who extol Buhari as a candidate 4 president 30years after he failed to effectively run and hold a military dictatorial regime. And i have always argued that among the presidential candidates in the recent elections, Pat Utomi is the one i would vote for as a matter of principle. Except that if he wins, he will likely be in office and not in power as he just admitted in this write-up above.
The truth is running away to safe havens in Europe and American and criticizing from there is a disservice to generation next. And it high time learned Nigerians put their integrity and life at stake in a concerted revolutionary movement to regain Nigeria back from these emperors. Otherwise, the lamentation about Nigeria is just beginning.
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Reblogged this on Wíseåb thoughts in colloquy.! and commented:
The truth is running away to safe havens in Europe and American and criticizing from there is a disservice to generation next. And it high time learned Nigerians put their integrity and life at stake in a concerted revolutionary movement to regain Nigeria back from these emperors. Otherwise, the lamentation about Nigeria is just beginning.
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The truth is that the spiritual pawer they are useing to rules this country we fail then one day.because that is peaple hardly fight against them,but i we continue to pray for revelution in nigeria
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my name is oshilonya joshua am born nigerian and am based in the united state of america, all i can say about nigeria is dat nigeria is a blessed country nd am proud of them, their my best among the rest in africa….thanks
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Pingback: To Bribe or Not to Bribe – Reportage in Nigeria | The 15th International Anti-Corruption Conference, Brazil, 7-10 November 2012
Corruption is becoming a global disaster here in Kenya traffic police officers must receive ‘something small’ to give you way lest you are alleged falsily to court rooms,in public offices you need to dish the same thing to get a quick response…i think we are nurturing heartless generation that might end up pouncing on as as the political regime there in Nigeria is doing you that disfavour…i wish to do more of a comparative case study from what you have linked as with here directly from the citizen than in the moderated open mediass. …
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@Adeola Aderounmu @Dr.Abraham Idokoko
thank you for you mind provoking artricle from this (corner of the world) we feel we have a duty to undertake as a young generation I am at my late 20’s and the only way that can lead us out of this muddy situation (as i have been seing) is by enabling our people financially so that they can educate our generation for educated one can bring a revolution once they are suppresed ,they can cry ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. At the moment i am leading an irrigation project (from)for wealth creation among our people unfortunately this is a campaign year where some politician are using it to extend their political mileage as they give empty promises to my dream… so things are not only going wrong there here too they are not good.you as experienced one need to guide us to better this Africa.i had also attempted to bring youths in my country together so that we can extend these kinds of dreams where young ones can end leading poverty eradication projects but they arent fully committed as they ask me how they are to benefit individually.i just stared at them as i had forwarned them of such egocentrism.my dream was to extend this allover Africa as i sincerely want to see its prosperity…(response can be sent to: williamwamb08@gmail.com send me yours;Adeola and Dr.Idokoko)
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why are upcoming generatn of Nigerian ar dis colosal,i av been online 4 d last 8month,wat am seeing are bad and stupid write ups like calling our nation a hopeless nation, a sinking ship,a lost land even a foreigner 4rm d worstest part of d world calling us names, i am born,breed n study in Nigeria but i av nt seen d poverty u ar shouting abt. A Nigerian man will define poverty as in ability to buy car or build house,i av nt met an hungry nigerian man unless d 1 dat doesnt want to work and it same everywie even in America. No work no chop. Dont criticize let build dis nation togeda. Am seeing a nation d Americans will soon envy. I see myself as d hope of Nigeria, bastard Nigerians go ahead an critisize without action. My blogger go ahead an make Nigerian more corupt and unpatriotic with ur write ups. Ok
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D fact dat Nigeria has bad n corrupt leaders, incidence of boko haram does not make us d most corrupt. A documentary about d 9 11 incidence released on line show d cooperation of both corrupt leaders n terrorists in d western world. Dey did dis at d detriment of others, d killing of so many innocent people in freetown, children, mothers n fathers all bcos of diamond by children who were forced 2 get cruel n heartless. U dnt make judgement witout facts. U r lucky 2 be in Nigeria. Many in some oda countries will love 2 trade life n places wit u. Be proud of wat u ve n dnt document wateva cos u r a writer. Am sorry if i offend anyone with my reply.
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I dnt know d wife of our president n i ve no relationship wit her except dat i share by virtue of her bin a Nigerian. U r d one actin lyk an illiterate here. No educated individual looks down on dose wit poor educational status. She is d first lady cos she is married 2 d president not cos she was elected d first lady. Stop all dese n 4 once support a positive course 4 our nation. If u feel dis country is not gud enough 4 u n u ve no rsn 2 contribute 2 a better nation, leave her alone
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the leaders let go off poverty and corruption, whot a bad recomendation in the whole country. i still remaine 08160659121
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I agreed that nigeria is the worst and most corrupt in d world,nigeria is ment to be a great country but is very unfortunate that nigeria has been sold to the kingdoom of hell by so called our leader,many nigerians are now into secret cult
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