Dickson Igwe. Photo: Provided

Cartoon on corruption in Nigeria. Photo: Provided

Cartoon on corruption in Nigeria. Photo: Provided

A country’s values can be compared with the operating system of a computer. If the software of a computer is defective so is the computer. Values are the software of societies. Values that are defective and unwholesome produce societies and countries that are defective and unwholesome. Fix the value system and the county is fixed.

However, fixing a country’s values is a most difficult task. Good social values evolve over many generations. Like a well designed and complex office building, good values such as compassion, patience, goodness, and honesty, take effort to create. It takes just a few sticks of dynamite to destroy the building. So, good values are easily discarded and destroyed.  Establishing good and wholesome values means fixing how people think and behave, and that is not easily done.

In the latter half of 2015, Nigerians elected a new President and Government. There was great hope in the country. Nigerians are great optimists. The new President, Mohammad Buhari is a frugal and disciplined ex army general and military official. He once ruled Nigeria as a Military Dictator, when Nigeria was ruled by military juntas. He also has a reputation for honesty and integrity, coupled with absolute ruthlessness. “Buhari tonic” is very much what a corrupt, undisciplined, and hopelessly managed country required in 2015. Buhari promised a crackdown on corruption. Corruption and poor governance are at the root of Nigeria’s troubles. Both evils are driven by a Nigerian values system that is dysfunctional.

OK a year into Buhari’s rule and the recent fall in the oil price after decades of foolish profligacy, has placed Nigeria’s economy in a hole. Hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenues have been stolen and wasted over 4 decades. Nigeria should have been much further ahead today, even a developed state. Nearly 12 months into the New President’s Rule and President Buhari’s crackdown on corruption has not been enough to take the economy out the hole.

Nearly one year into Buhari’s rule, and many Nigerians blame President Mohammad Buhari for not coming through with his promise to improve the quality and standard of life of Nigerians. However, there are clear signs that Buhari has improved Nigeria’s security situation. There has been a significant decrease in terrorism in recent months. Another thing worth noting is that Nigerians forget that it took 40 years of corruption, mismanagement, and poor governance, to pull Nigeria into the ‘bottomless swamp’ it finds itself today. One term in office will not see Nigeria rescued from the quagmire it finds itself in, especially with revenues that have been cut by two thirds as a result of the collapse in the oil price.

Then the corrupt possess the power and resources to frustrate Buhari’s efforts at fighting the corruption monster. This is what is presently taking place.

The problem of Nigeria is not Buhari. It is not the current regime. It is with Nigerians themselves, and their personal values. If corruption is endemic in Nigeria it is because of a value system the Nigerian possesses that is twisted and upside down. It is a value system that deceives many Nigerians into thinking that there is no price to pay for fraud and dishonesty, or corruption and mismanagement.

It is a value system that states that the end justifies the means. It is a value system that says that anything and everything is permissible if one does not get caught; and it is a value system that views the honest and principled person as stupid, and destined for poverty. It is a value system that views kindness and gentleness as weakness, but one that adores the aggressive and unscrupulous Alpha male. Nigerian society today is patriarchal, callous, and self-destructive.

The corrupt and fraudulent Nigerian forgets that there is always a day of reckoning, and a time the chicken must come home to roost. That time appears to have arrived for Nigeria.

Many of the world’s countries that started their national odysseys with Nigeria 50 to 60 years ago, but with none of Nigeria’s oil wealth, can provide their populations with the basics for “a good life”: good infrastructure, ample electricity and energy, fresh potable water, good sanitation and healthcare, good education, safety and security, social security. On the other hand oil has been a curse on Nigeria: a pox on its moral culture and social values. Oil is a liquid from the earth’s depths that has essentially destroyed the country. Oil has been the blood of Satan, transfused into the arteries and circulatory system of Nigeria.

The lack of social and physical infrastructure in Nigerian can be blamed on a value system driven by oil wealth that places the interests of one’s own family, relatives, village, town, and region, above the national interest. Then there is the top heavy bureaucracy of overpaid legislators, fraudulent federal government officials, and states that are in essence small countries, with bureaucracies they can ill afford.

The result is robbing Peter to pay Paul, Paul being Nigeria’s predatory and greedy elites, and Peter being teachers, essential public workers, medical professionals, small businesses, and the working and middle class: the foundation of a country’s economy and governance.

Corruption remains all pervasive in Nigeria because it is part of the value system. It is systemic. Many Nigerians who complain about corruption would do the same if they were in a position to steal.

From the street cop to the immigration official, and from the passport office manager to the vehicle licensing officer, most are on the take. The result is a country living on fool’s gold, and well above its means.

Now many countries live above their means: the USA swiftly comes to mind. However, these countries possess the economic and social infrastructure to drag themselves out of the debt and recessionary morass. Nigeria is different. Nigeria has been living above its means for decades.

Nigerian officials have robbed the treasury blind, year after year, ever since oil revenues began to flow into the national account. Nigeria has been cannibalised by its short sighted elite. The result is a country with skeletal infrastructure. Imagine a country that has relied on oil for decades, and that cannot even refine its own oil: a country that still imports most everyday products.

Ostentation has been the Nigerian way: spend now, tomorrow may never appear. It has been the country’s undoing. Nigerian looters will spend a million dollars on a wedding, when back in their villages and towns, people eke out a most wretched existence. Ostentation in a poor country is insanity. The “High Life” must be backed up by something. It must be paid for. It must sit on a platform of productivity and real wealth generation. Nigeria’s ostentation sits on a stool with two legs. Nigeria is a society and economy built on sand.

And now Nigerians wonder why the country is in a deep hole.

There is a new world out there. Oil is no longer the ubiquitous fluid worth its weight in gold. The new world is one where innovation and science reign. The new world is a world of clean energy and smart technology. Saudi Arabia plans to move from a fossil fuel based economy to one built on clean fuel in ten years. The Saudis, the world’s largest oil producers, can already smell the coffee; that the world is moving away from oil as a core source of energy.

The USA has become oil and energy sufficient. China is at the forefront of clean and renewable energy. Nigeria remains engrossed in its passion with fossil fuels.

The US is furthermore becoming nationalist and isolationist. The world may be heading for a protectionist future with fortified regions. Europe is shutting shop as many whites in Europe see migrants as the source of all evil.

Westerners are angry at their leaders. The western middle class continues to decline. China and Asia are no longer the economic generators they were just 5 years ago. Countries are shutting their doors to others who they deem do not have much to offer. It is a new world that is becoming a much more terrible place: a world that will no longer suffer fools gladly.

Nigeria is caught in this new world. It is a land with its pants down and buttock exposed. Today Nigeria is lamenting. It is wailing that things are so bad. It is blaming the present regime for the failings in the system. The country is perplexed. Why is the Naira- Nigeria’s currency- falling? Why after all these years are things so terrible? Why! Why! Why!

There are scores of articles in the Nigerian press offering various economic remedies to fix the present predicament.

But the solution is actually very simple. The transformation of Nigeria will only take place with a transformation of the Nigerian heart, mind, and soul. Only when a critical mass of Nigerians value compassion, honesty and integrity, above greed, power, and selfishness, then and only then, will Nigeria even begin to change.

Nigerians need to value the things that truly matter in life, such as truth, humility, patience, honesty, tolerance, gentleness, kindness, and concern for others. These are the things that transform communities and societies, not the blind pursuit of wealth, power, and lust.

The best thing President Mohammad Buhari can accomplish, with the help of Nigeria’s Legislature, Judiciary, and suffering population, is establish a Values, Integrity, and Truth Commission. This should be a powerful body of men and women of unquestionable moral conduct and character, advising the President, Senate, Congress, and judiciary, and tasked with rebuilding the country’s value system, on a foundation of honesty, integrity, and morality.

A Truth and Integrity Commission must possess real teeth. It should influence all aspects of Nigerian social and economic policy. It should be nuanced enough to bring about real change. It should possess the judicial powers required to impact the country positively. It must be steered by the President himself, guiding the fight against corruption, mismanagement, and nepotism. It should be a bulldog with very sharp teeth, and a beast that will put a strong and unerring morality back into Nigeria’s DNA. It must impact every Nigerian Institution.

Above all a Truth Commission must be accepted as the solution to the country’s ills by all Nigerians. In other words, it must be credible. And it must be above reproach: a very tall order indeed.

Nigeria is facing its last chance to get things right. 

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