Whispering Drums With Maigani
by Musa Ibrahim
Where politicians are stars
A national survey conducted by some political science researchers in 1980 aimed at trying to answer the questions posed above gave a somewhat even answer. Fifty-six percent of the population sampled agreed that the rich get richer because they are corrupt while forty-three percent said 'nay'. There was again an attempt by the researchers to provide a 'working' definition of the term corruption. There was little success in this. In the end, they concluded that "corruption as a term is ambiguous but viewed as a concept or as a fact of life, it is morally ambivalent…” Justifying the ambivalent value position, they stressed that "those who decry corruption do so not so much because they accept that corruption is morally reprehensible as because they are not in a similar position to exploit the opportunities that the holding of specific offices confers..”
Be that as it may, it is becoming increasingly impossible to escape from the issue of corruption in practically any discussion about Nigerian society and politics. And with each successive government, the rallying cry has been to "stamp out this cankerworm that has eaten deep into the fabrics of the Nigerian society", and yet, at the end of the day when the government is no more, and a new one emerges, the music plays back and the issue of corruption is re-echoed. What is it that needs to be done? Is there really the corruption in Nigeria, and at what levels?
For many of us, the constant reiteration of alleged instances of corruption, particularly by the Buhari military junta has now become more like a party attraction, it has lost its power to shock. It is no longer appealing because the approaches to corruption by the Buhari brigade smack of doublethink. For instance, how can a leader scream that corruption is morally reprehensible and yet at the same time, the same leader is reluctant to accuse members of his own community or family of corruption because to do so would be to judge them adversely?
Related to this approach of doublethink is the attitude of Nigerians as a whole and their interpretation of who is corrupt and who is not. For most people, in so far as a successful individual is seen to contribute to the welfare of his community, he is not seen as corrupt at all. That that individual has not kept faith with the wider society is not readily appreciated, since loyalty to the community is seen as the paramount virtue. And Nigeria is a communal society. That is why there is always the need for the successful individual to "legitimize" his success or make it "acceptable" to the community.
Legitimation here involves the demonstration of the fact of success. There are various ways for doing this. For the businessman or renter landlord this could mean residence within the community confines (or building a "personal" house within the community, even if it remains unoccupied) which would be interpreted as living with the people and being part of the people. As well as taking up residence, the businessman is expected to either build a hospital, school, mosque, church, a market place of whatever, to the community. For the politician, it involves the maintenance of a whole retinue of "hangers-on", part of whose function would be to maintain and propagate the rhetoric of the "self-made" politician. The politician is also expected to spread whatever largesse he has generously and continuously and to provide jobs for members of the community. There are obligations that derived from traditional expectations. Anything short of these, the politician or the businessman or the successful man becomes branded as an "outsider" whose interests and actions stand counterposed to those of his people, his community.
For these reasons, and to date, various communities in the villages stand shocked at the treatment being meted out to their successful sons, the politicians, by the military, for as far as they are concerned, these politicians have committed no crimes at all. What has corruption or mismanagement got to do with them? They were the communities' source of pride and moral strength. They were their families, bread winners, that was all that mattered, and in these regards, the politicians were seen to have excelled beyond human bounds and seen to have passed the test. It is the kind of value system that communal society had sanctioned from time immemorial, and to attempt to dislodge what community has joined together is tantamount to trying to uproot the very fibre of the society.
Besides, who is that incorruptible man that has the moral sanctity to challenge another man for corruption? Certainly not the military - past, present or in the future. In fact, if anything, the military stand more condemned than the politicians. For instance, they violate the dictates of the community by not living up to the people's traditional expectations. They use their positions to amass wealth and quietly retire to enjoy this wealth without letting the community have a share in it. They buy cars for their girlfriends and send them to trips to the white man's country. They build high rise houses in the cities of Lagos, Kaduna, Port Harcourt and Enugu and lease these out to multinational corporations who end up paying five to six years rent in advance, in the whiteman's money. They don't come to the village anymore and on the few occasions that they come, they carry guns, scaring everybody away from them. What manner of people are these?
Now you know why there is wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth among the wretched of the earth in Nigeria - they moan for their fallen stars, their true sons, the Politicians. That sentiment, the Buhari junta cannot succeed in wiping away. It is entrenched in the people, in the community. It is an African tradition and in Africa, there is one word for it - communalism - not a question of corruption or mismanagement which are completely alien to Africa.
