Agenda For Peace With Hamzat: Corruption Can Be Used For Transformation (part 1)

Agenda For Peace With Hamzat: Corruption Can Be Used For Transformation

Written by Abdulrazaq O Hamzat (Mr Rights) ‘’We must understand the reality of today, that a war against corruption is a lost war and it has never been won by any nation. Even in China where death is the penalty for culprits, corruption still strives and flourish. ‘’ Going by definition, corruption is defined as a dishonest or illegal behavior especially of people in authority. However, I see it more as the bad habit of every individual. For example, if a political office holder deceitfully inflates the award of a contract, or he or she gives undue privileges to his or her friends and family to secure government contracts, that is corruption. If a market woman systematically reduced the congo of garri to make more gains at the detriment of her customers or a fraudulent banker deduct funds from customers account without their consent, that is another corruption. Or may be a motor mechanic deceives his clients to take money for a vehicle spare part he claimed to have bought without actually buying it, all of them are corruption and we must first understand it from that perspective. ‘’Corruption is not just about the actions of leaders or those in government, it is those bad habits exhibited by people of different strata in their everyday life activities.’’ Therefore, if law had been the strongest method of curbing evil practices such as corruption, internal and external terrorism, murder, robbery, rape, abortion and many more, heinous crimes would have been eradicated long ago. In the case of corruption, it is a self inflicted vice. Bad human traits are the cause behind corruption. This cannot be rectified by mere pressure or punishment, positive appeal and diplomacy must play critical role. In the case of pressure or punishment, one offender may be caught while the other one may be not, then the evil practice goes on. Provided one offender may escape justice, no judging body can ever eradicate this evil practice entirely. However, corruption don’t just occure, many factors aid its root. Every now and then, there is a rise in prices of commodities, but the question is how many times in a year have salaries increased? There is a huge gap between income and living index. It should be at par. Life has become miserable with the current inflation. Due to the need of money, many people fall prey to the cheap means of earning such as bribe. Government lacks the basic compassionate understanding towards its own people. The government does not control the fee hike of the private schools which is enormous. Same is with the private hospitals. Treatment is very expensive and government is not bothered to put a control over it. It seems life and quality education are only meant for the rich. For example,Lagos state government increased the University of Lagos (LASU) tuition fee from N25,000.00 to N250,000.00 and claimed it was done to provide quality education. Obafemi Awolowo university (OAU), University of Ibadan (UI) University of Portharcourt, National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) and many federal universities also increased their fees. This happens in a country which struggle to pay its worker N18,000 minimum wage. If workers of Lagos state government can’t afford to send their children to state owned university due to fee hike, where can such children acquire their education? It is tough to afford, but people strive for it by indulging in corruption. Who is mainly responsible? From Wikipedia, it is said that, corruption is in philosophical, theological, or moral perversion. Corruption is spiritual or moral impurity or deviation from the good ideal. In economy, corruption is payment for services or material which the recipient is not due under law. This may be called bribery, kickback, or, in the Middle East, baksheesh. In government, it is when an elected representative makes decisions that are influenced by vested interest rather than their own personal or party ideological beliefs for the good of the general society. It can also take the form of office holders maintaining themselves in office by purchasing votes. Systemic corruption is the complete subversion of a political or economic system. The word corrupt is from Latin corrupts, past participle of corrumpere, to abuse or destroy: com-, intensive pref. and rumpere, to break) when used as an adjective literally means "utterly broken". Governmental corruption of judiciary is broadly acknowledged in many transitional and developing countries because the budget is almost completely controlled by the executive. The latter undermines the separation of powers, as it creates a critical financial dependence of the judiciary. The proper national wealth distribution including government spending on the judiciary is subject of the constitutional economics. By the above submissions, it is crystal clear to every individual that corruption is not healthy or desirable in a progressive or aspiring progressive society. However, despite this clarity, many across the world are today corrupt in one way or the other due to the above submission. And if we truly want to prevent corruption as it is being widely said, we must correct all identifiable anomaly to make any progressive headway. Limiting our discussion to political corruption which has been described as the abuse of public power, office, or resources by elected government officials for personal gains, e.g. by extortion, soliciting or offering bribes, etc. Corruption they say destroys a nation, but I say if properly understood, can be used for transformation, at least as a temporal measure. Evidences had shown that, government’s effort to arrest the menace of corruption in our society have proven not functional, especially in a world were democracy is regarded as the most acceptable form of government. The same democracy has proven in most cases, as being responsible for the increasing corrupt practices across the world, because the more the politicians, the more the corruption. Corruption and democracy are said to be inseparable. Unlike in military government, where the head have power to order certain and immediate actions against any culprit and to a larger extent hinder his juniors officers from massive corruption, a democratic head have no such power. However, democracy by itself cannot be blamed for the increasing act of corruption, as it had clearly defined mode of engagement which when applied properly would prevent any act of corruption, but failure to abide by those rules and principles such as separation of power, rule of law and many others have been a major source of concern. Again, corruption has always been there before the advent of democratic governance. It is my believe that, democratic principles such as separation of power and the rule of law must be re-defined and re-applied to meet the challenges of the 21st century. For example in Africa especially in Nigeria, separation of power seems impossible when the same political party controls both the executive and legislative arms of government. By definition, political party is a group of people who share the same ideas about the way the country should be governed, they work together to introduce new laws and try to control what happens in the parliament by securing a majority seat. This means that, the primary purpose of a political party is to promote its ideal, either at the legislative or executive arm of government. If a political party produces heads of the executive and the legislative at the same time, there can hardly be any separation of power, as those occupant shall continue to protect the interest of their party against the state. This is so because, when those at the legislative arm act contrary to the executive, it is assumed that they are working against their party’s interest which may give other political parties advantage over them. Therefore, it shall be more meaningful if the principle of separation of power emphasis on the need to have two different parties as head of legislative and executive arm of government. By this, when a party produced the head of executive, the first opposition party should produce the head of legislative. Different party heading different arms of government should produce meaningful check. Furthermore, it is important to ask at this juncture, can corruption be prevented in the real sense? According to expert analysts, many believe it cannot be prevented considering its nature, but they say it can be reduced to the barest minimum. What is the barest minimum of corruption if we may ask? In answering the above question, some people refer to U.S as a country with minimal corruption, though transparency international in its corruption perceptions index ranked the United States 24 out of 183 countries. In this regard, using the U.S as a measure for a minimal corruption may be justifiable. However, If U.S is to be used as a measure, we must first refer to U.S and listen to what its citizens are saying about their own corruption within their society and its impact on the people. The American dream, a US based organization waking people up and getting them to realize the American dream is quickly becoming the American nightmare, in one of its publications titled: 25 Bizarre examples that show U.S. Government is absolutely brimming with idiots, incompetents and incredibly corrupt politicians says: ‘’If our founding fathers could see us today, what would they think? Unfortunately, they would probably come to the exact same conclusion that so many of us have come to - the U.S. government is absolutely brimming with idiots, incompetents and incredibly corrupt politicians.’’ The organization noted in the publication that, “today it is very rare to come across a politician that still has any integrity left in U.S. Washington D.C. has become such a cesspool that it seems to corrupt even most of the politicians that originally go there with good intentions’’. They went further to say that, U.S have created the most complicated government in the history of the world and we have hundreds of thousands of pages of laws, yet nothing seems to work right except lawlessness. The American dream added that, “U.S economy is dying, our relationships with the rest of the world are a mess and we have accumulated the largest debt in the history of mankind. Meanwhile, our politicians openly hand out our money to their friends and to those that have donated money to their campaigns and they waste our money on some of the stupidest things imaginable”. It asked: Have the U.S now gotten to the point where our system of government has become so corrupted that it is almost impossible to repair it? There it seems as though almost everything our government tries to do is cursed and nothing ever seems to turn out the way that it is supposed to. The more our politicians promise to get spending under control, the more money they seem to waste. It is almost as if there is a "drought of common sense" in Washington D.C. right now. Not only can't our politicians fix our problems - everything that they do only seems to make our problems even worse. American dream said. So, if the U.S is to be used as a measure for what analyst call minimal corruption, it shall not be out of place if we adopt the title of the American dream’s publication which says, THE U.S GOVERNMENT IS ABSOLUTELY BRIMMING WITH IDIOTS, INCOMPETENT AND INCREDIBLE CORRUPT POLITICIANS. The above description of corruption in U.S is similar to that of every other country across the world. Therefore, if the U.S is as corrupt as mentioned in the above, there is no justification to refer to U.S as having minimal corruption. Follow me on twitter @Abdool101