Repeat after me, Nigerians are not corrupt II

Last Sunday May 29, 2016 was Nigeria’s Democracy Day and the first celebrated by President Muhammadu Buhari. Some of my readers may have noticed that I became a bit perplexed by the leadership style of Baba. But last Sunday, I only watched the broadcast by the president for a few minutes and changed my mind. […]

Last Sunday May 29, 2016 was Nigeria’s Democracy Day and the first celebrated by President Muhammadu Buhari. Some of my readers may have noticed that I became a bit perplexed by the leadership style of Baba. But last Sunday, I only watched the broadcast by the president for a few minutes and changed my mind. I cannot say that it was the best broadcast even by his own standards. But I saw that the job is taking a serious toll on him. He probably had a cold so his voice was also affected. Anyway, I swore to always support him for the rest of his tenure, for whatever my support is worth. In other words, there is no point criticizing and excoriating him. It is Buhari’s tenure, let him use his time as God directs him. That is that.
However, we should conclude this series about why the average Nigerian should not be tagged ‘corrupt’ and why we should never lay down for some racist people to trample on us. Last week we considered how sometimes figures are exaggerated to make African countries look bad. Many of those big figures are never recovered by the African countries, even though all the monies end up in western countries. But the African countries lose dignity that can never be recovered. With dignity intact, there is no amount of money one cannot make. Therefore one must protect one’s dignity and goodwill by every means. 
The more important fact here is that the Westerners are more corrupt than Africans could ever be. Their leaders are often some of the most terrible people. Also, these leaders of theirs do their own corruption to benefit big businesses, and sometimes, their countries and people benefit from the trickles of corruption after the conglomerates may have become gorged with African money. I am not talking about monies stolen from here and taken there by our ‘mumu’ politicians. The kind of things these western countries engage in can be quite sordid. Sometimes they feel no compunction in shedding the blood of millions to achieve their own corruption. How can we then go to such people so that they can wash themselves clean, call us corrupt and give us their bathe water to drink?  For what? I remember what the Brits – under Cameron – did in Libya, and how his Minister for Foreign Affairs at that time told British businessmen to ‘pack their suitcases’ and head to Libya for business because Gaddafi had been killed. It was all about business. Part of that business, and the fall of Libya, led to Boko Haram in Nigeria and thousands of deaths among women, children and the old and frail here in Nigeria. Hilary Clinton said plainly that Iraq was seen as a business by the USA even as almost a million people were displaced and killed.  Are these the type of people we submit ourselves to for scrutiny?
Barack Obama, president of the USA and leader of the world just returned from a visit to Vietnam and Japan, where he visited Hiroshima and other sites of the World War madness. In Vietnam, he is reported to have commiserated with them over the one-sided Vietnam chemical war in which the US received a bloody nose. He allegedly also offered to sell Vietnam some weapons to fight China. It’s all about the money!
Let us not even go into history to find the bottom of the ‘wealth’ of these countries. From the looting of Africa and despoliation of our land, to forced labour which results in festering racism in parts of Europe and the United States till today. In the year 2010, the family of Lt. Galway wanted to sell a Queen Idia mask that he looted from Oba’s Palace in Benin City, for 4.5 million pounds sterling at an auction house called Sotheby’s in London. Only the uproar of a lot of informed Nigerians stopped them. That is one mask, for over N2 billion in today’s money. Who knows what precious material the mask is made of? Why aren’t they returning what they stole from us and let us start afresh? In University of Oxford, there is a statue of a Cockerel generating controversy as well. It was taken from Nigeria.
I was encouraged to take this position when I saw what Jeffrey Sachs, Harvard Professor has to say about his own people’s hypocrisy. In an article titled ‘To End Corruption, Start with the UK and the US, They Allow it in Broad Daylight’, dated 12th May, 2016 – and in response to Cameron, this is what he had to say;
The tentacles of corruption reach deep into the UK (and US) financial systems. Banks in the City of London and Wall Street have paid tens of billions of dollars of fines for insider trading, financial fraud, price rigging and other financial crimes in recent years. Yet almost no leading bankers have taken a hit for their organization’s malfeasance. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the major financial firms are part of a global network of organized financial crime… The UK and the US are at center of the system of global abuse. Britain created the modern world of global finance in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and Wall Street became co-leader with the City of London after the second world war. In both countries, hundreds of thousands of lawyers, bankers, hedge fund operators, politicians, accountants and regulators have consciously built a system of global tax havens of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich that now hosts more than $20tn (yes, trillion) of funds hiding from taxes, law authorities, environmental regulation and accountability…Good that the UK is hosting the Anti-Corruption Summit. But let’s be clear. As serious and tragic as is the corruption in Nigeria, Afghanistan and elsewhere, it has long been facilitated by the UK itself (including through Royal Dutch Shell,not just tax havens).
So there you have it! Sachs is not unknown to them.  He has said what we should be saying. I personally don’t believe Nigerians are corrupt. Corruption oversimplifies what is amiss in our system. It puts everything in one pigeonhole. We have to get out of that pigeonhole. We have to know ourselves and analyse our problems ourselves if we want a solution. What is wrong with many of our political leaders who steal so much money and hide abroad resembles mental/psychotic issues (mixed with egocentrism, megalomania and so on). It cannot be adequately described as corruption.
Nigerians are extremely hardworking, smart, industrious, ingenious. An amazing lot. That is the only story we should tell the world while we truly try and deal with this problem. It is the story Uhuru Kenyatta told them even though Nigerians – in everyone’s opinion – are more hardworking and accommodating than Kenyans. Nigerians are excellent everywhere they go. The academia in every country knows us. Thankfully, the Archbishop of Canterbury later said the exact same thing about Nigerians in a meeting he had to round up Baba’s visit to the UK. And our president changed his rhetoric in his Democracy Day speech to Nigerians. Way to go!