Yes We Are All Corrupt!

Early in September, a mild argument ensued between two of the most vocal individuals in a WhatsApp group I belong to. The argument was triggered by a comment made on a video shared in the group showing the erudite Catholic Bishop of Nsukka Diocese, Most Rev. Godfrey Onah, expressing his views on the awaited verdict of the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC). The professor of philosophical anthropology had, among other things, observed that people were being unrealistic in their expectation from the court being that the court is not different from other Nigerian institutions with Nigerians as its drivers. The cleric noted that the justices of the PEPC were not imported from other countries, but were full-blooded citizens, drawn from the same notoriously corrupt Nigerian population.

While one of the two gentlemen mentioned above was not comfortable with the bishop’s choice of words that saw him refer to all Nigerians as corrupt, the other saw nothing wrong with it, viewing it as a mere imaginative use of words to highlight the pervasive nature of corruption in our country. I read the two sides of the debate with some degree of indifference being that in my opinion, the sheer profundity of the cleric’s intervention obviously far outweighed whatever semantic blip anyone may have, rightly or wrongly, picked out in his speech. Besides, I was very conscious of the truth that human language use is never rigidly mechanical and simplistic; it is infinitely nuanced, flexible and dynamically creative both on the side of the originator and the receiver of a communication. On this note, if I was summoned to be the judge, I would have endorsed the argument of the fellow who saw nothing wrong in the bishop’s choice of words.

One sad reality I have observed about our country is that the question of corruption has gone beyond individual guilt or innocence as the system has got corruption embedded in it. Corruption has become a way of life, so much so that many corrupt acts have assumed a routine such that people rarely recognise them as corruption when they or others engage in them. One example will suffice; late last year, I was discussing the oncoming 2023 elections with some of my colleagues in my office and was making this same point that corruption has become so much embedded in our system that most persons are not even conscious of the fact that they routinely engage in corrupt practices. Someone among us appeared not convinced and a colleague intervened to help me make the point by asking the lady: “how did you get employed here? Think about it. Did it follow the due process or came through the usual Nigerian way of whom you know?” The lady was dumb.

Of course, corrupt practices in our process of public recruitment has become a way of life. Unfortunately, it is only when people give bribe to get a job (job selling) that most persons appear to recognise that corruption has taken place. On the contrary, people are usually blind to other more routine corrupt practices of getting government jobs through “connection” thereby circumventing the laws and regulations regarding job advertisement and interview. The admission process in our tertiary institutions is another yearly instance of routinization of corruption. All sorts of influential and connected persons prepare different shades of list of persons to be given admission irrespective of whether they met the officially advertised criteria or not. Every season of NYSC mobilisation, postings are routinely influenced contrary to extant regulations. In fact, it is difficult to imagine any aspect of our national life where jettisoning of due process and abuse of office are not a regular occurrence.

When a practice becomes institutionalized in a system, it assumes a collective routine such that individuals who live their lives within the system tend to personally reflect less on what they do and its implication. In other words, they tend to lose their sense of individual responsibility for the act in question. This is the essence of what psychologists call de-individuation. The social media provides a striking example of manifestation of this tendency. In the social media space, communication actions are collective as people co-share and co-consume messages so much so that individuals begin to lose their sense of personal responsibility for their actions on social media including sharing of information. Thus, people routinely share news that they stumble upon without giving even a moment thought to the fact that they cannot vouch for its factuality. Hence, it is not uncommon to find individuals who in ordinary life are usually conscientious and discreet about information they give out behave differently on social media by joining the crowd to routinely share information that is potentially defamatory of a person or dangerous for peaceful co-existence even though they certainly cannot vouch for its accuracy. Such people’s moral disposition or religious conscience has become drowned in the sea of de-individuation as they now act, not strictly in line with their personal convictions and conscience, but as prompted by the routinization embedded in the system they are part of. Therefore, they feel no guilt when they share such information; they do not feel the sting of conscience of one who has erred or sinned.

For some exciting insight, I will recommend for any interested person the book, CRIMES OF OBEDIENCE: TOWARD A SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF AUTHORITY AND RESPONSIBILITY (1989, New Haven, Yale University Press), where Professors Hebert Kelman and Lee Hamilton made a compelling analysis of how individuals employed in institutions that meted out cruel treatments, such as the Nazi secret police, were able to proceed with unimaginable atrocities without qualms simply because the acts of torture, murder and other inhuman treatments have been routinized and embedded as an integral part of the system’s process.

Thus, as we examine our conscience to see whether we are part of the “all Nigerians” whom Bishop Onah described as corrupt, we should be mindful of the fact that what we call conscience has a lot to do with training, or to speak in sociological terms, socialisation. This is why many things we routinely do in Nigeria with no qualms will alarm the conscience of a person trained and socialised in another clime. About 10 years ago, a manager of a radio station told me how a Nigerian girl who schooled in UK returned to do her NYSC and was posted to her radio station for her primary assignment. One day, this corps member saw a reporter download and copy wholesale a foreign news story and included it, without attribution, in the news bulletin he was preparing for airing on the station. This young girl was highly alarmed by the sheer act of plagiarism which no one in the station appeared to have taken notice of. The young girl was socialised in a British society where plagiarism was considered a mortal sin, where a student would face a disciplinary panel for engaging in it, whereas her superiors in the radio station were socialised in a society where the act of downloading, copying and pasting has been so routinized that no one sees anything wrong with it. Human moral personality, to use the language of the social sciences, is both a product of nature and nurture, it is both natural and socially constructed. Where we have got it wrong so far in Nigeria is the nurture aspect of it. Our institutions have so far failed to nurture us to think and behave in ways that bring progress.

This explains why many Nigerians engage in all sorts of corrupt practice yet without considering themselves as corrupt. Many acts that would alarm a person socialised in a decent society are what we see as nothing here. About 20 years ago, a minister in the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair resigned because he was exposed to have used his position to facilitate visa acquisition for his mother-in-law. In Nigeria, using the privileges of one’s office to secure favours for one’s relative, friend, acquaintance or lover is seen as normal. The strict institutional objectivity that must guide the judgment and decisions of persons who occupy public offices certainly makes no more sense to us.

Corruption is in many cases transactional as evident in the way Nigerian citizens routinely become partners-in-corruption with persons who occupy public offices. Such public officers are always under pressure to meet the demands of friends and relatives who ask for jobs, school admissions, favourable NYSC postings and other favours that imply circumventing due process and breaking the law. Any public officer that fails to meet these corrupt demands is considered inefficient and even bad-intentioned. Sometime ago, a friend told me she would not vote for a particular governorship candidate from her village simply because he did not give jobs to the people of his town when he once occupied an influential public position. So warped has our moral thinking become that we now view public recruitment as a private thing which influential individuals should appropriate for giving personal favours!

The above underlines why it is dangerous to leave Nigerians to their conscience in matters related to the wellbeing of our nation. Conscience can be healthy or sick, hence the idea of a scrupulous and lax conscience. A suicide bomber may sincerely be acting according to the promptings of his conscience that tells him that he has the obligation to kill enemies of his God and religion. Perhaps, English philosopher Bertrand Russel may be somewhat right in describing conscience as “an anarchic force.” The conscience of Nigerians is actually proving to be a force of anarchy as it is no longer capable of differentiating between what is corrupt and what is honourable.

This underscores the point I have always laboured to make in this column; our society must be built on laws and institutional objectivity and not on individual sentiments of what is appropriate or not. But again, when the law is enthroned as the ultimate standard and institutions strengthened as the objective and levelling watchdog of conduct, our individual conscience will ultimately be nurtured away from its laxity to become really scrupulous, and we will begin to think and judge differently.

When Bishop Onah described “all of us” as corrupt, I understand this to be a way of admitting the obvious fact that once corruption has become deeply systemic, it no longer matters that a few individuals may be innocent of corrupt practices, as the impact of their uprightness on such society may be next to nothing. Uprightness must be systemic and institutional (and not merely a private virtue) to make a societal impact.

Thus, any serious attempt at changing the nation must focus on systemic change that will galvanise the citizenry for patriotic thinking and action. I was highly impressed when a mentee of mine, while discussing with me last Friday, made this point. This girl, who became an English Language graduate two years ago, told me that her experience with her classmates who were sniffing around looking for who was ready to take bribe to upgrade their final result as well as those who did not do youth service but succeeded, through bribes, in getting themselves documented and certificated as having served has made her lose faith in her generation as far as changing the nation is concerned. She feared that corruption in the country has become so entrenched and systemic that even these young people who are clamouring for change appear not to know they are part of the problem.

She is absolutely right, the fact that many young people are seeking to have certificates they never earned is irrefutable evidence that the current certificate issues involving President Bola Tinubu and Governor Peter Mbah are not just isolated cases of individual transgressions, but a veritable instance of systemic decay, which, of course, will continue to produce more Tinubus and Mbahs for as long as Nigeria exists. This young graduate believes her own generation will even be more sophisticated transgressors than these older politicians.

As I once pointed out, it is this consciousness of our collective decay and the need to remedy it that the young people that were active (especially on social media) in the last elections appeared to lack. They surely wanted change but did not seem to understand, in ideological terms, the full implication of this change. In the part 3 of my article “Ezu River Corpses: 10 Years After And Setting Agenda for 2027” published in this column, I wrote: “Around [the time of the 2023 election] … I was speaking with some students and asked about what they thought should be done exactly by whoever became the next President. Their answers were, in a nutshell, a rehash of the familiar lines like create jobs, provide electricity, provide roads etc. Even though some of them mentioned ending corruption but then they appeared not to possess any in-depth understanding as to what doing this entails in its full spectrum and dimensions. This became more obvious when I asked them to tell me in all honesty whether they were ready to lose whatever privilege they may enjoy now or in future by way of having an influential uncle that will influence their NYSC posting to a favourable state and place of primary assignment or an aunt that will give them job at the CBN or NNPC upon graduation… Lo, the students were not sure they were ready to do any of these. At that point, I told them that if they could not answer categorical YES to the questions, then they are really part of the problem and not part of the solution, they are part of those holding the nation to hostage and not part of those wanting to ‘take it back’. At best they are cooperating with the hostage takers rather than wanting to do away with them. You cannot want your nation to change without being morally involved. This reinforces my conviction that when eventually our much-sought-after political messiah will come, we may not recognise him – nay we may stone him for speaking in a language foreign to our ears.”

The youth need to understand what changing the trajectory of the country means; that it implies breaking with the past and all its dishonest privileges. Development will not happen by magic, but through a slow, difficult process of rebuilding the institutions and renewal of values. And in treading this path, we must drop all our old habits, no matter how sweet they taste.

Therefore, in future elections, any presidential candidate that will win the hearts of the youth, be it Peter Obi again or any other person, should importantly try to instill this consciousness in them. He should get them ideologically orientated and morally involved. He should speak to them in very frank terms: “I am here to lead this nation to the change you all desire. But I must be honest with you, it will be a difficult process because the good economy, good infrastructure and everything good we crave for will not happen if we do not start by removing those obstacles that have hampered our growth all these years. This means that we all must be involved in this; all of us, beginning from myself, will be ready to embrace due process, to lose the privilege of getting admission or job from that our uncle in public service…”

This will be a message of hope laced with the bitter truth of the difficult path that must be trodden. It is the only way of averting the quagmire where a supposed messiah would soon become the worst enemy of the people he came to redeem; a people who, like the Israelites, will cry that he should take them back to Egypt rather than bringing them to the wilderness to perish there.

Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.