Corruption: A Product of Greed or Penury?

 In Nigeria, the saying the more you look the less you see seems not to apply especially as regarding the numbers of startling information about the animistic stolen of our collective wealth by those who are supposed to be protector of our common heritage. How on earth will a normal human being buried over $1.5 billion in a farmland in a country where some people go to bed without food? It can only happen in Nigeria under the watched of a careless President.

Unfortunately, those who should be mourning and challenging the status quo are polarized along parties and religious lines, so the status quo remain unchallenged and the looting continues resulting in mounting unemployment rate, povertous lifestyle, decadence infrastructure facilities, and moribund institutions.

As I write this piece, I remembered my undergraduate thesis: Anti-corruption Crusade in Nigeria: An Appraisal of EFCC, 2004 -2007 in which during the research, I discovered to my disbelieved the heinous crimes perpetrated by public officials. Like a prophet, Mr Nuhu Ribadu, the then anti-corruption czar said when you fight corruption, corruption will fight back, and that if care is not taken the forces of evil will overcome the forces of good. The rest is history today.

As bad as it was then, it was not as worse at it is today. So what is the root cause of corruption in Nigeria? Is it poverty or greed? I think the answer is both but mostly of the latter. The truth so many Nigerians who rose from poverty to opulence do not want to experience poverty again and that include their descendants forgotten that 'ile ti aba fi ito mo, irin lo ma wo' (meaning wealth gotten in illegal means hardly last).

Greed however account for the primitive drive for accumulation of wealth at the

expense of others. It is greed that will make a man to divert money meant purchase of ammunition for personal and primordial use while thousands of people die daily. It is greed that will make a man to bury billions of naira on the ground while a thousand of souls go about begging on the street. It is greed and sheer wickedness that will make man to divert money meant for hospitals and health facilities while patients languish on hospital beds without drug.


The question here is what is the way out? To me, we may have to go the China way, otherwise, corruption may remain a continuous feature of our country. Unfortunately, who will make such law?