‘Why is your country so corrupt?’
Friday, 08 October 2010 00:00 By Afis Oladosu Features -Guardian Friday Worship
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful
“CORRUPTION has appeared on land and sea because of what humanity has earned, so that Allah may give them a taste of some of their deeds; perhaps they may turn back (from evil).” (Qur’an 30:41)
The Prophet was asked: “When will the hour (resurrection) take place? He answered: “When the trust is lost then expect the hour.” Then the man asked: “How will it be lost?” The Prophet answered: “The hour will take place when charlatans become rulers over men.”
“...Just as it is impossible not to taste honey or poison that one may find at the tip of one’s tongue, so it is impossible for one dealing with government funds not to taste, at least a little bit, of the King’s wealth.” — From the treatise, The Arthashastra, by Kautilya (chief minister to the king in ancient India), circa 300 B.C.-150 A.D.
Last week, the above question, which has been chosen as the title of this sermon, was posed to the Pakistani Ambassador to United Kingdom, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, by the BBC presenter on HARDtalk. I literally became chafed by the choleric nature of the question, by its imperialistic tenor and by its potential to preserve existing stereotypes and myths constructed of Muslims and non-minorities all around the world. Immediately the BBC interviewer posed the question I riveted my sight and focused not just on the face of the Pakistani diplomat but equally on his lips. I discovered I was anxious. I wanted to know whether he was a man of wit, someone who, in line with the Yoruba axiom, would not plead with his traducers that he be allowed to “go back home” in order to consult his superiors for the right answers to the question. Eventually, the diplomat muttered: “that might not be the correct description of my country”.
In other words, the diplomat would probably have wished that his interviewer framed the question in a more innocuous way. He probably would have preferred a situation where Pakistan is not treated as a metaphor for the incidences of corruption all around the world; that even though it is true that the Police and law enforcement agencies, the Judiciary and the legal profession, the Power sector, the customs, the health and education sectors, the public procurement services, have all been afflicted by the virus of corruption in Karachi, to single out Pakistan for vilification would itself be a form of corruption – the corruption of existing knowledge that corruption has become a “global citizen”; that it is trans-gender, trans-racial and trans-cultural.
Brethren, how could the BBC have dubbed Pakistan the most corrupt country in the world when the biggest rip-off in world history was organised by the American, Bernard Lawrence “Bernie” Madoff.
Before that interview in question took place, a British medical doctor, by name, Dr. Trossel, and who is married to Dr. Wendy Denning, was found guilty of serious professional misconduct in respect of treating seven patients at his rooms in Wimpole Street, London, and at his Rotterdam clinic between 2004 and 2006. His crime is simple; he was caught treating patients with cow stem cells at a time the stem cell research is far from proffering fool-proof therapies for chronically ill patients.
But Dr. Trossel was not working all alone. He was getting his “supplies” from across the Atlantic; he was getting it from a U.S. company run by a former catwalk model, Laura Brown, and her lawyer, husband Steve van Rooyen – both now on the run from the FBI.
One of Trossel’s patients was reported to have lamented once the news of the fakery and illicit medicine injected into his body by Trossel came out: “I paid £10,500 for false hope”.
Investigation into this immoral and unprofessional conduct of this medical practitioner is still ongoing. But it has not become a measure of the level of corruption probably because the incident was not dastard enough as to warrant an enquiry into corruptible practices in the British medical profession. Moreover, this type of corruption is trans-Atlantic, while the one supposedly going on in Pakistan is insidiously internal!
While I was pondering on this event, some brothers entered my office. I immediately told them of the news, which was then unfolding on the BBC. I was consequently advised not to bother my mind with events outside my country. My attention was consequently drawn to an incidence of corruption in an institution of higher learning, that strand of corruption that is beyond the imagination of the most creative of all writers.
A contractor was paid by a university to procure new titles for its library. Working in collusion with the workers in the library, the contractor went ahead to gather old titles, took them to a workshop and got them relabeled and “rebranded” such that they now appeared as if they were coming straight from the publisher’s factory in the West. I found my lower and upper jaws ajar; for a moment I was unable to get over the shock.
But I was shaken back into reality by another brother who commented as follows: “I guess that is milder than the “ingenuity” displayed by that compatriot of yours who opened a factory in that big city in this country where chalks are being repackaged in form of Paracetamol! “How I wish we were in China! I muttered. “In that communist stronghold, men and women who indulge in that type of evil act are usually executed”.
“Wait a minute! My neighbour interjected. “If men and women who turn chalks into Paracetamol or those who “rebrand” old books into “current” titles merit being executed, then those people in Abuja who appropriate our resources unto themselves, the road contractor who collects money and constructs road which would lead to the death of hundreds of Nigerians, the governor who sits over the resources of his state and prefer to junket round the world, the medical doctor who ignores a dying patient just because his call allowance has not been paid, the lecturer who lusts after his students in return for unmerited grades, all these people should be taken to the guillotine. Ditto for the clerical officer in the government’s office who would not “push” the file unless he is settled, or the newspaper editor who would “bury” news involving “big” men and women in the society in return for millions of naira. All these people are corrupt, and are corrupting the fabrics of the Nigerian society. They are all guilty of either corrupting the intellect of young Nigerians, or corrupting their future”.
Then a pall of silence descended on us all. It felt as if we were all pondering and ruminating over the heinous nature of the crisis confronting our nation and imagining possible ways out of the malaise. As if he was desirous of breaking the silence, my neighbour said: “Was the bomb blast in Abuja last week a form of corruption or a weapon fashioned by those fighting corruption in our land?”
Abdul Fatah quickly took up the gauntlet. He said: “I am of the opinion that the bomb blast was probably meant to fight corruption. But those who did it have ironically and eternally “corrupted” the lives of families of innocent men and women who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Brothers, tell me what has that unfortunate taxi driver got to do with the politics of Niger Delta? That man who died in the blast never made more than N20,000 in a month. Yet he was made to carry the can of the tragedy that the years of neglect of the Niger Delta turned Nigeria into.
Whenever corruption thrives, both the corrupt, the corruptible and the innocent ones would be potential culprits. Until we start executing these corrupt men and women, this country will know no progress” Allah says: “And guard yourselves against a chastisement which cannot fall exclusively on those of you who are wrong-doers, and know that Allah is severe in punishment. (Quran 8 verse 25)
But what causes corruption? Why is corruption so infernal, so intractable and seemingly inimitable in our society?
Social scientists have written prodigiously on this subject. But of all the possible reasons we can offer, I found the following most engaging: extreme poverty and excessive and unbridled desire. While extreme poverty breeds desperation, excessive desire breeds greed; whereas extreme poverty is enamoured by the sight of the extremely rich, excessive desire is engendered by spiritual corruption and incontinence. The governor who has allocation of more than N50 million every month as security vote – money for which he would not be held accountable as to where or how he spends it, would most likely suffer from excessive desire because the more money he appropriates for himself the more he becomes insatiable.
Put differently, the reason the rich commits corruption is because excessive wealth is like waters in the ocean - the more you drink of it the more thirsty you become. This explains, in part, why the rich always yearns for money. He desires more money because he suffers from poverty of the mind - a psychological state in which a man perpetually suffers lack of contentment. There the rich man goes in search of more money. He is probably going to keep an appointment with death. (Quran 102).