One of the biggest problems with our current anti-corruption drive is the flawed assumption that corruption is something that only bad people do. It is flawed because it is simply not true. And to work with that assumption is to set ourselves up for another spectacular failure against this ubiquitous ailment.
Corruption can be bad – it can lead to murder, stealing, accidents, etc. But it can also be useful when it circumvents cumbersome governmental or official processes to enable people process transactions and access opportunities that meet their legitimate needs. To deny this is to fool ourselves and miss a crucial chance to tackle this problem at its root.
What is corruption? Some simply define it as abuse of office but it can be more useful to define it as a deviation from standard which facilitates personal illegitimate or inappropriate gain. There are two elements that must be present; the deviation, and illegitimate gain. To focus on the latter and not on the former is to take an extremely simplistic and insufficient approach to fighting corruption because it is the deviation that makes the illegitimate gain possible.
Think of it this way. Two months ago, a section of Aba Road at Eleme junction in Port Harcourt was so bad that motorists took long and tortuous detours through the bush and pedestrian walkways and even drove on opposing lanes to get past that section of the road. The road is largely fixed now and people are using it normally but can you imagine the effort and pain that would have been required to force people to use that bad road in its state of disrepair?
Human nature always prefers the easy way out. If the road is bad, we use another route. Now that the road is fixed and usable, you don’t have to beg anyone to use it. So, make the official processes transparent and effective and there will be less incentive to cooperate with corruption. Corruption thrives in the society that fails to provide enough legitimate ways for its people to meet their legitimate needs.
Secondly, do not waste too much effort punishing the road-users for not using the bad road. Instead, go after the road designers and punish them for not designing in drainages for a riverine road. Or go after the people who failed to maintain the roads and do this with the mind to ensure improved maintenance for this and other roads in the city now and in the future.
To focus on Dasuki’ s alleged loot and not improve the processes that made that crime possible is to lead us on a merry go-round that will definitely see some members of this administration in court in another few years for the same crime.
To make an object lesson of the Dasuki experience, we must not just stop at punishing the wrong use of public funds for electoral campaigns but also improve our system to fund elections in a more transparent manner. If not, how can we be sure that in four years’ time, the current government can resist the temptation to do the same and is not even doing the same right now for ongoing elections?
This corruption issue is our own unique problem and we must stop seeing it as something to run away from but instead embrace it, tackle it fully and comprehensively and export the technology of anti-corruption to other nations. In the next instalment, I will write about the 5 steps that provide any reformer with a systematic framework for tackling corruption.
