Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Thursday, September 09, 2010

Corruption before bathrooms

Dr Ogaga Ifowodo teaches poetry and literature at Texas State University-San Marcos. He tells with horror a story about corruption in his native Nigeria.

In the second half of the article, Dr. Ifowodo seeks an explanation for corruption in Nigeria in the analysis of Dr. Franz Fanon's idea that there's a mental illness (and lessons learned from the British) behind it.

They Won’t Even Build Toilets For Themselves!

How bad is corruption in Nigeria? … [L]et me tell you a story. It was told to me [by my] good friend, Emenike…

[He] had, by one of those flukes of Nigerian politics, become the acting chairman of a local government in the east… I prompted his story by asking if the tales of the orgiastic looting at local governments that I hear are true.

[H]e was scandalised to notice that the local government secretariat had no toilets, though the chairman’s office had one. The council’s employees were constrained to make a dash for the nearby bush to answer the call of nature. “Imagine that, the women having to go squat in the bush!”

Mouth agape, I managed to ask, “Are you really telling me that no one thought of including toilets in the plan when building an entire local government secretariat? So where did the honourable councillors go when pressed?”

Well, they didn’t come to work often enough, or tarry long enough when they did, to have that problem. On the rare occasion they were betrayed by biology, however, they too headed for the conveniently placed bush.

My friend named his first order of business to be the immediate construction of a toilet end to the secretariat.

No! said his councillors, who were appalled by the use to which the acting chairman wished to put the lean resources of the council. A loftier end was to share the funds set to be flushed down some toilets. That was how things were done before he came, and that was how things were going to be done under him, as they surely would be done thereafter.

Against their stiff resistance, my friend built the toilets, together with a borehole to service the water system...

“They wouldn’t even build toilets for themselves? So what on earth would move them to build a school, a library, a clinic, or a park?” I kept interjecting as he informed me of his efforts to appease the incensed councillors by letting each take a contract for grading and making motorable the road to his village. Only one councillor cared to dump four tipper-loads of sand before considering his work done...

So how bad is corruption in Nigeria? Words cannot begin to describe it, but we can agree: corruption is arguably the greatest evil confronting the nation today. Absolutely nothing of any worth can be done in the public sphere as ninety to one hundred percent of budgeted sums, already inflated beyond insanity to begin with, end up in private hands. Consequently, seeking political office, as two-time head of state General Obasanjo declared, is a “do-or-die” battle where the spoils of war are instant fortunes for the victors.

Today, a struggling man or woman barely able to make ends meet, like the great majority; tomorrow, rich beyond dreams and even flaunting the loot while still in office. Corruption has become the oxygen Nigerian public office holders and their cronies breathe. Unchecked, it seems now our “natural” way of life. We can, therefore, go about its business in the open, as the police demonstrate at numberless checkpoints across the country...