Are Nigerians Really As Corrupt As Everyone Says We Are?

I have always known that we are a very wealth driven society — I mean, some ethnic groups in Nigeria have more or less written wealth acquisition by any means necessary into their culture. If the controversial Bride Price app from last year didn’t say enough about this, I’m sure we have all listened to many comedians tell one joke or the other about how some Nigerian parents would celebrate their child’s wealth without pausing to enquire how he/she came about it. In fact, in some of the posts we have published here in the past, many have come out to say they’ve been in relationships in the past where they weren’t particularly sure of their partner’s source of income but they never bothered to push because, well, at the end of the day, they were benefiting from it.

In a society like ours where our leaders have failed us to the point where we are more or less our own government having to provide even basic utilities like power, water, roads and security for ourselves, it has become almost expected for the average young Nigerian to combine a ‘side hustle’ with a full time job. In the past, I have written about how this should be encouraged or almost insisted upon by most young people looking to go into long term relationships — well, except your partner works in certain high-end niche industries or they work in government.

Last year, as the political scene in the country continued to bubble, I’m sure even a blind man would be able to testify to the incredible inflow of funds into certain industries. Like I tweeted some time ago, the radio and TV station owners must have fasted and prayed for the elections to be postponed so they could continue feeding off the unimaginable radio campaign budget from the political parties. Printers are also not left out. One visit to the popular printing hub in the Somolu area of Lagos and you will understand just how good business has been for some printers. And the last group I’ll touch is of course our entertainers. The musicians and Nollywood actors who have benefited directly or indirectly through the endorsement of one candidate or the other or even through their performances during rallies, political events etc.

Also last year, President Goodluck Jonathan attended an event in Lagos during which he met with representatives of the Nigerian youth. Like many of such events, it had quite a lot of dignitaries in attendance. However, because it was targeted at the youth, it had a whole lot of entertainers, media and public figures present with each person participating in one way or the other. I’m not here to discuss what happened or what didn’t. I remember going on twitter to say something along the lines of — “it’s your hustle, I can’t knock it. Do what you have to do to get by”.

This got quite a lot of mixed reactions. Some retweeted in agreement, others thought I was encouraging people to sell out in their bid to make some change and of course the haters and trolls came at me saying I was only jealous because I wasn’t called. Now back to where we started. Let’s be real for a second, whether you are for the president or the opposition, if the other party came up to you to request for your professional services — not something dodgy — say your side hustle is printing and they want you to print posters, will you turn down the job out of principle?

Hold on, before you jump in on this, I’m not exactly here to justify this. We may have had democracy for 16 years now but our politics and in deed our political parties have not yet grown into institutions worthy of such level of commitment. And perhaps it is not their fault. As long as our society and our culture is wealth driven, our institutions are only a reflection of our society so how can they do better?

Like I said, I’m not here today to justify action of those picking their stomach over their brains because that still won’t convince people. Today, I want all of us to be real for a bit and come together to discuss just how wealth driven our society is. Our president has said corruption isn’t the same thing as stealing but from what I know, corruption exists in different forms. Nepotism (the practice among those with power or influence of favouring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs) is a practice very common in Nigeria which quite a lot of us are guilty of. A baby form of corruption right? How about those little white lies you tell at work, the time you travelled on a work trip, stayed with a friend but claimed your hotel bill? How about transport allowance, phone bills you didn’t exactly earn but you claimed. Or are we bold enough to discuss the extreme cases of bribery, forgery etc? I’m not here expecting an ex yahoo-yahoo boy to come forward today but if you have ever paid 25k or more instead of the official rate to get your international passport renewed, what is that? I want you to tell your corruption story today not because I want you exposed — of course you can comment anonymously, but I want to know if we can even identify what corruption is and if we can, together we can determine just how far it has gone in our country. Only then can we start looking for ways to solve the problem. Use the comment box to express you.