With the May Day bombing of a bus park in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, coming on the heels of the national and global outcry over the April kidnapping of over 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, it must now be clear that Nigeria is at war. But is there enough to show indication that can give Nigerian people hope of victory in the face of these blatant acts of terrorism? I do not think so. More needs to be done to show that Nigerian security forces can win this war against terror.
Most of the impression people have of security forces are colored by the inefficiencies and acts of corruption that people have experienced or heard of when they come in contact with these personnel. Whether it is through the extortion of motorists and commercial drivers on Nigerian highways or in the reported misappropriation of huge public funds sometimes budgeted for the purchase of security equipment and at other times, for the pension of retired servicemen, there is enough to douse the confidence people can have in these institutions. Despite the fact that there are a number of patriots in these organizations who still demonstrate professionalism and dedication, the larger story is not good enough to fire up national confidence in a positive outcome.
When you add to this, the tribalism and nepotism that inevitably sacrifices professionalism and meritocracy in public services for relationships, it appears that everything has gone wrong and so people either blame the politicians for not showing better leadership or blame their fellow citizens for not resisting corruption in every little way they can.
But even these positions do not hold up under scrutiny because few politicians who get into power through a corrupt system which may involve rigging elections can turn around and begin to prosecute a moral agenda without running significant risks. And citizens who resist find they are fighting on many fronts in the face of endemic corruption and wonder where a sustainable solution will come from.
But there is a different way to look at the problem. Rather than see these issues as inherently behavioral so that it appears that we cannot make any progress unless we get a new set of “clean” Nigerians, we can look beyond these actions to identify the underlying mindsets that drive these behaviors, knowing that if we fix the root causes, the effects, no matter how many or how far spread, will also be fixed automatically.
It is that approach that I demonstrate in “The Survival Mindset: A Systematic Approach to Combating Corruption in Nigeria.” There is an opportunity for change that is within our hands but we must first see it before we can claim it.
