Above all, we must strive to be a nation where consequences for bad behaviour and criminal action are a real thing, not just unenforced constitutional provisions.
The troubling and precarious situation that Nigeria finds itself in today has often been attributed to two things: a lack of consequences for actions and a lack of political will to do the right thing. This is not the conclusion of some disgruntled cynics who see no good in the country. It’s not a viewpoint hinged on a few inconsequential events and actions of powerful individuals but an assertion rooted in years of blatant abuse of power and brazen impunity by those who find themselves in the position of power. This behaviour has become so prevalent and deep-seated that it is now seen as a national norm and characteristic. This has not only stunted our growth but also destroyed our social fabric as a nation.
It’s why the reports of politicians and public office holders stealing billions of public funds hardly spark outrage among the citizens these days because such reprehensible and abhorrent acts have become a norm rather than an exception, hence a critical mass of the citizenry, including educated and learned ones, have become desensitised to them. The ability of our ruling class to get away with anything, including murder, has invariably impacted the quality of governance and delivery of democratic dividends to the people. Well, why should they go through the trouble of doing the job they are elected to do when they can just steal and loot the treasury? What this also means is that the rule of law is scoffed at as people who seek to expose these dysfunctions and incompetence are either ostracised or arrested and silenced. Accountability is trampled upon and transparency becomes an afterthought.
Take this, a journalist, Hassan Mai-Waya Kangiwa, is currently in detention not for committing a crime but for exposing the government’s incompetence. The journalist was arrested and incarcerated for reporting and exposing the deplorable and abysmal condition of Kangiwa General Hospital. in Birnin Kebbi, the Kebbi State capital. In a viral video of the hospital, the entire hospital was flooded, including wards where patients are being treated, prompting patients and their families to raise their legs. The patients were seen lying on a thin, threadbare and worn-out mattress placed on an old, rusty and creaky iron bed frame. One would have thought the governor of the state would appreciate the journalist for calling his attention to the sorry state of the hospital and swiftly initiate a move to address the problems facing the hospital, but he did the opposite. He got the journalist arrested and locked up.
What happened to Kangiwa is a practice that has become a convention of some sort. Ignore the message and go after the messenger. Similarly, a journalist working for the foundation of investigative journalism, Sodeeq Atanda, was detained for eleven hours after he wrote about attempts by Abayomi Sunday Fasina, Vice Chancellor, Federal University Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), to sleep with a married female staff member of the university against her will. After the report was published, Fasina leveraged his cordial relationship with Ekiti State Commissioner of Police Joseph Eribo to instigate the detention of the journalist by the police in Ado-Ekiti.
Early this year, a whistleblower was arrested by the police. The whistleblower, Ganiyu Olamiji Oyebanjo, was the Special Adviser on Boundary Matters for Kosofe Local Government in Lagos State. He was apprehended and arrested by the Nigerian police officers from Zone 2 in Lagos. Oyebanjo had submitted a petition to the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), accusing the council chairman, Moyosore Adedoyin Ogunlewe and certain council supervisors of misappropriating billions of naira through corruption, embezzlement, and contract inflation. And instead of inviting the council chairman for questioning and investigating the allegations against him, the police arrested the whistleblower.
The aforementioned occurrences are few in the long list of blatant displays of impunity, betrayal of public trust and brazen abuse of power among the Nigerian elites, political and ruling class. It is the normalisation of a trend that is gravely inimical to our nation. It is what happens when the long arm of the law is forbidden from catching and bringing certain characters to justice, no matter the severity and enormity of their crimes. Needless to say, a nation that derides honesty, frowns at accountability and punishes integrity can never amount to any significant.
If we still hope and pray to become a inex that is the envy of other nations, we must deviate from the pernicious paths we are currently on and chart a new course, one where public offices will not be seen as an avenue to acquire inexplicable and questionable wealth through the mismanagement and embezzlement of public funds. Above all, we must strive to be a nation where consequences for bad behaviour and criminal action are a real thing, not just unenforced constitutional provisions.