How did we arrive at this point where animals now ‘control’ more money than some local government councils in Nigeria, talk more of poverty ravaged homes?
There are things that shouldn’t be mentioned among human folks, but daily we are inundated with such bamboozles. Imagine animals now feed on money.
Why won’t they when everyday, the Federal Government through the financial auditors and accountability agencies like ICPC and EFCC, including the national assembly, declare certain individuals or organisations of stacking our collective wealth in one bank or the other.
At a point in this nation men where storing money in suck-away, safety-tanks; what a country and a generation!
While addressing the party faithfuls on Tuesday, President Muhammadu Buhari actually reflected on governance in the close to three years now. He said, the government engaged itself in digging Nigeria out of the mess it met.
Mr. President’s speech collaborates Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, earlier statement it implied that 55 Nigerians stolen over N1.34 trillion from the country’s treasury from 2006 to 2013.
Though many people did quite agree with the Minister, but if you look at the figures, the Minister alleged that out of the stolen funds, 15 former governors were alleged to have stolen N146.84 billion; while 4 former ministers stole N7 billion; 12 former public servants, both at federal and state levels, stole over N14 billion; 8 people in the banking Industry allegedly N524 billion; while 11 businessmen allegedly stole N653 billion.
Giving reasons why Nigerians should “own” the war against corruption, Mr. Mohammed said using the World Bank rates and costs, showed that one third of the stolen funds could have provided 635.18 kilometres of road; built 36 ultra modern hospitals, that is one ultra modern hospital per state; built 183 schools; educated 3,974 children from primary to tertiary level at 25.24 million per child; and built 20,062 units of 2-bedroom houses.
“This is the money that a few people, just 55 in number, allegedly stole within a period of just eight years. And instead of a national outrage, all we hear are these nonsensical statements that the government is fighting only the opposition, or that the government is engaging in vendetta,” he said.
As if that is not enough, PwC’s report shows that corruption in Nigeria could cost up to 37% of GDP by 2030 if it’s not dealt with immediately. This cost is equated to around $1,000 per person in 2014 and nearly $2,000 per person that lives in Nigeria by 2030.
While you are trying to digest that the recently released 2017 Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International (TI) Nigeria now ranks 148th (together with Comoros and Guinea) among 180 countries surveyed.
Previous ranking for 2016 placed Nigeria at the 136th position with a score of 28% over 100%.
The 2017 report indicates that corruption has gotten worse in the last 12 months. Rather than descending, Nigeria has climbed a few rungs upward on the ladder of corruption, scoring 27%.
More disheartening than the worsening corruption perception score is the response of the federal government. According to a statement released by the Presidency in response to Transparency International, the criteria and methodology used in arriving at the ranking is questioned; the government goes ahead to describe the ranking as fictional and unfortunate.
With all this, why won’t the animal kingdom get tired of us? We refuse to call Nigerian animal kingdom, because there are men and women of repute who inspite of lack of good governance and leadership, they have forged ahead.
They refused to be slowed by the cacophonies: snake swallowed N36m in Benue; Money eat N70m belonging to Northern Senators Forum; rats chased Mr. President from office. You know, such annoying narrations told on national television to the amazement of the international community. Are we serious at all!
There is urgent need to curb corruption in Nigeria and it starts with all of us. No body is spared, because if someone isn’t giving, he might be taking or in one way or the other enjoying the proceeds of corruption.
More so, the traditional institutions should wake up. Corruption seems to be bred at the grassroots level where communities no longer punish offenders, rather celebrate them with chieftaincy titles. Enough of all this! This monkey must not contest for Presidency in Nigeria while we have noble men and women to salvage the country.
The time is now!
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