I do hope that the jailment of Bode George and his NPA crew would turn down the volume of endless singsong on climatic change by government officials and amplify the discussion on political corruption that has made Nigeria living dangerously on the edge. Our thoroughbred judge Joseph Olubunmi Oyewole has beckoned once more to officeholders in Nigeria that the hammer head of all problems bedevilling us since Independence lays in corruption and not global warming, as all cadre of government people have been mouthing and advertising lately to deceive Nigerians from the core issue.
With native intelligence every Nigerian alive is aware that the bane of corruption is more utmost than the fear of global climatic change. The last time corruption talk and awareness became hotshot and featured with lavish in our social menu was when the former EFCC Caesar, Mr. Ribadu, showed us in living colour on TV those high-privilege Nigerians moving and shaking corruption from pillar to post worldwide. It was an unforgettable day to see ex-governors and their sleazy co-persons live on Television weeping and cowering like sissies, coach potatoes and softies. Before then, there was the myth that our corruption heavies were Mafia extraordinary and untouchables par excellence. Some of the ex-governors loved that bad boy image of a Mafia boss like bread and butter.
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They wanted to be known as such, it made them scare the hell out of petty everyday people like you and I. Ribadu punctured the delusional perception of infallibility they constructed after themselves. With the solid as a rock image with which they advertised themselves, one had expected them to hold their strives with the bravery of a roughneck and die-hard street-smart. No! All of a sudden most of them became repentant whatever and were asking their Holly Writs be brought to them in detention: Bible and Koran became the choice of necessity to Ribadu´s high-priced convicts. With the charge and bail of Yar´Adua and Farida´s EFCC they were quickly out of jail only to revive their already battered image of the bosses of gangster paradise. As I’m writing now they’re back on the street, having thrown away their Holly Books since and resumed their pastimes as godfather of brazen criminality.
Gangster rappers like 50 Cent and co. would tell you that: those who live on the street die on the street. The Italian Mafia and all other Mafia worldwide sees imprisonment, death and the misfortune of living rough sometimes as part and parcel of being godfather to criminality and establishment. Only in Nigeria that self-announced ‘evil geniuses,’ Mafia kingpin and corruption linchpins love to keep the title and the powers of a Mafia boss without the corresponding harm’s way that such title brings. They’re like the pastors in Nigeria and other churchist who’d tell you that this world is a nasty place to live that it´d be better to be in heaven: but at each threat of death, they shout, the superstitious: ‘in Jesus name!’ to fend off untimely death. Everyone wants to go to heaven but none wants to die. Every self-professed Mafia kingpin in Nigeria wants to live by corruption and gun and not die by it. In their freedom time, they’ll tell you that boys don’t cry, while the slightest inconveniency of jail and arrest was enough to make them cower like motherless baby.
Just as the justice Joseph Olubunmi Oyewole has upped and illuminated the discussion on corruption’s badness in Nigeria presently, so did the-then Ribadu can-do behaviour to demystify and put our thieving politicians in jail. The disturbing hype by governors and co-officeholders on how much climate change is going to devastate and decimate humanity scatter is unacceptable. What has made Nigeria the weeping boy of international society is corruption. Corruption is what justice Oyewale and Ribadu want us to put our eyes on and that’s where the fuss is. We should announce it ho-ha to politicians that we’re tired of being taken on puppet show of climatic change and their other deceptive fancies.
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It’s somewhat interesting that only when the Europeans ask Nigerian government people to clean up their corruption and Nigeria’s electoral space that you hear them call Caucasian governments colonialists. Aside from that, they have no qualms in getting along with such issue as climate change. Nigerian politicians have no problem that their children are in ‘colonialist’ country that they, themselves, go there for medical treatment, to kill time and knockabout for nothing sake.
The Europeans have enough reasons to fear the warming pattern of our global world. Their living standard is enviable, their society orderly to a fault with social amenities brimming full to their every enjoyment. Their socio and political systems have the apt to churn enjoyment, happiness and rooftop life expectancy. You see why they have been sleeping with one eye wide open to fears that climatic change, would one day come to snatch these good things they’ve hustled for since man walked on this planet! Now, flip the coin to the other side, which is Nigeria, and tell me why any right-thinking person in Nigeria should preachment climatic change rather than corruption change? That has denied us the good things that First World countries are now dying to protect. Nigerians are most likely to get into harm’s way and die via corruption-induced death than from the fang of looming global climate change.
I’m not in anyway saying that global warming is not a threat to all. We’re all aware that many societies and civilisations have been obliterated because they refused to come together and solve their problems. For Nigerians, that menace is political corruption. ‘Tragedy of Commons’ is a dilemma that befalls a people who refused to take action to address their problems. Tragedy of commons would visit a people if for example a few cabals stole oil money that belongs to the masses instead of using it like Norway to invest to secure the future of their peoples. A time comes when the oil dries up and those who’re left out and made poor, starts a war like the Rwandan case where it was unequal distribution of wealth that sparked that war. We should fear most the downside that the evil of corruption might bring to bear heavily soon, on our togetherness and country rather than other far make-believes. There’s also the tragedy of environmental pollution to deal with. Let us defeat corruption before we delve into the arena of global warming. Indian and other developing countries are still doubting Thomases in that their developmental growth will be stunted if they gung-ho into fighting climatic change. The in-thing amid developing countries is to first develop your country like Europeans and later get involved.
The rational bad behaviour of politicians in Nigeria who do corruption because it favour them to the detriment of the have-nots and plus that they can get away with it, should be our focus. This must surpass all other items that Nigeria should concern itself with. Thanks to Modesty that like Ribadu before now and now justice Oyewale, has set the ball rolling once more to highlight the importance of focusing on fighting corruption. I now hope that the 7-point Agenda, 2020 roadmap, re-branding, climate change and the rest whatnots should be merged into the fight against corruption. Pastors, politicians, students, mothers and all should take up corruption fight and awareness from where our incorruptible justice Oyewale has left it with Bode George and his NPA bunch in jail.
Sunday Njokede writes from The European Union
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