Corruption: Disease called bodelitis

“I want a society where all of us will frown against people who come up with what they are not supposed to have…. To bring corruption down in Nigeria is not just blaming government or police but all individuals must frown at people who have what they are not supposed to have, who live in […]

“I want a society where all of us will frown against people who come up with what they are not supposed to have…. To bring corruption down in Nigeria is not just blaming government or police but all individuals must frown at people who have what they are not supposed to have, who live in houses they are not  supposed to live and who drive cars that they are not supposed to drive.”
The president has a point there. Our society is corrupt. But that is one of the problems we elected Jonathan to tackle. He cannot pass the buck. And it doesn’t help matters when celebrated convicts of international notoriety are routinely granted presidential pardon and politically rehabilitated by the same president who wants plebeians like us to fight corruption. What society needs in the anti-corruption crusade is leadership from ‘Oga at the top’.
Since independence, but espe-cially since the military incursion into governance, corruption has been intricately woven into the national fabric from the lowest to the highest levels that it has almost become part of the Nigerian character. We confront the monster every day – on the highway, at the petrol station, at the gates of public establishments, at car parks, in government ministries, indeed everywhere. Nigerians have been emboldened by the accompanying culture of impunity which makes criminals go unpunished. In the few cases where criminals are given a slap on the wrist, they are quickly re-introduced into supposedly decent society as if in compensation for serving time in gaol on behalf of so many others still on the prowl.
Things have got so bad now that a London-based organization, Chatham House, recently disclosed that thieves steal an estimated average of 100,000 barrels of crude oil per day, “working in elaborate networks and protected by corrupted security officials”. According to the well-researched report, the criminals tap into the huge and isolated network of pipes that crisscross the country’s swampy southern Niger Delta region. The loss to the nation is staggering: “The price of oil fluctuates, but a hypothetical per-barrel price of $100 would mean an annual loss of $3.65 billion.”
Truth be told, we have reached the stage where government (or the people acting in concert) must declare a state of emergency on corruption. I don’t mean the empty official rituals meant to hoodwink the public. I mean we must start punishing crime expeditiously; otherwise the well-connected criminals in the land will soon pilfer the country out of existence.
Nothing is more symptomatic of the newfound confidence of corrupt politicians than the temerity of Olabode George, graduate of a federal jailhouse, to lecture us on the state of the nation and sundry matters. We are not just beginning to find out that some Nigerian politicians are shameless; what rankles is when the shameless man now wants to indict the rest of us for his crime and subsequent conviction. It must be true that some people were not at home on the day that God distributed honour and shame. Bode George is now inflicting himself on the public because those in government have allowed him to sneak back into presidential functions where he robes himself in voluminous apparel and shares banters with fellow exponents of our politricks.
George’s shamelessness is well advertised in his recent interview with the Punch newspaper where he indicted all those involved in his prosecution and sentencing and declared that he has never stolen Nigeria’s money. He delved into a puerile explanation that no kobo was found missing from the coffers of the Nigerian Ports Authority and that the contract-splitting crime for which he was convicted never benefitted him directly.  
He reserved the most acerbic of his comments for the pastor (who he described as a boy) who officiated at his thanksgiving service after he completed his two-year jail term. The pastor’s crime was that he had said, “Go and sin no more”.
This is how Bode couched the salvo: That young boy that said it… He was in Form Four when I was Governor of Ondo State. I was livid but I was in church. This young man would not derail my thanksgiving to God Almighty; the crowd was unprecedented. Sin against who? I went the following morning to challenge the provost; they said ‘no, that’s not what he meant.’ I said ‘you don’t know this boy, he is an apologist to Bola Tinubu and co.’ another bishop came to church and said he was shocked when he watched it. He said that man should go on the altar and ask for forgiveness from God because he does not know who Bode George was…  So when this young man was talking garbage there, you know, you can’t respond there. I went to the provost; this was an anomaly, a misnomer, absolute rubbish, I didn’t come here for this boy, of course, nemesis caught up with him too. They’ve taken him out to a smaller church, that’s where he deserves…
If what you have just read shocked your sensibilities then you don’t know the symptoms of the new disease called bodelitis: playing Santa Claus with public funds and suffering bouts of delusions of grandeur. It is an extreme form of its twin disease called corruption but this one is too far gone to be responsive to known cure. The sufferer actually deludes himself that he still has the reputation he has lost.
Hear Bode: “I don’t believe I lost anything. The convoluted conspirators played their role but they didn’t hit me one second. … These jokers cannot pull me down”.
Well, you have met the disease, its symptoms and a prime sufferer. Did I hear you say, some countries do have them?