Expose corruption at your own peril

Aliyu Musa

Fuel subsidy removal, time and again we have been told, is a necessary evil because the government can no longer afford to subsidise the cost as often those who benefit are the wrong people – the fuel subsidy cabal. Thus, Nigerians are made to pay more for fuel not because they need to but because they have to pay for the misdemeanours of a certain clique that is serially but unrepentantly flouting the rule and remain clearly above the law. This scenario is replicated in all parts of the system and the government appears too overwhelmed.

The trouble with corruption in Nigeria is that it has metamorphosed into such a huge ogre that it would require total commitment and reorientation of our collective psyche to effectively fight. In almost all facets of the society the right posts are occupied by people who are not necessarily the wrong ones, but because many of them have been conscripted and now are on the payroll of this massive monster they constitute a staunch defence against the fight against corruption.

This trend is potentially self-destruct as good people end up either becoming inducted into playing evil roles up to worryingly genius levels or, worse still, are forced to opt for the conspiracy of silence. As such only a few extremely bold ones still muster the courage to stand up and be counted among those able to speak out against the severe aberrations imposed on Nigerians these days. Even then they do it at their own risk.

But the question we should all ask ourselves is why must we be tight-lipped in face of evil, evil that would consume us and successive generations? Our future generations are systematically destroyed because we are bequeathing to them abnormalities that they might take to further levels in the belief they are normal happenings. If good people are crushed for exposing felonies and felons are elaborately honoured who would blame young people that choose to play by this rule?

In addition to being unpopular whistle-blowing is a very perilous venture in Nigeria. When you try to expose corruption you indirectly beam the light on yourself and inevitably become the target of a stubbornly pro-corruption establishment. Just recently a civil servant, Abbas Faggo lost his job because he was said to have ‘wrongly’ accused the governor of his state of corruption. Luckily, all he lost was his job otherwise he would be in jail cooling his heels.

The latest victim of this hydra-headed monster is Dr Bashir Gwandu, an executive commissioner, technical, at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC). His crime, for which he has paid with his job, was his daring exposé of spectrum fraud at the regulatory agency. And rather than properly probe the claim and bring the culprits to book the whistle-blower is hurriedly booted out.

Frequency spectrum has been a subject of dispute between the NCC and the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC). It is, therefore, more than a coincidence that someone has raised this alarm over fraud at NCC.

Rather than working so hard to get rid of Dr Gwandu what the government needed to do was to investigate whether there was inappropriate frequency allocation to Open Skys and Smiles Communications. It should have probed the allegation of vested interest in the deal in which the former commissioner claimed the 450MHZ spectrum allocation to Open Skys should have fetched the nation more than N7 billion instead of the meagre N892.4m it got. Rather than calling for Dr Gwandu’s head, indeed, NCC boss Dr Eugene Juwah’s connection to the telecoms companies should have been sufficiently scrutinized.

The deductable point here is that those mounting a defence for corruption are not relenting. They are massively growing in strength and have successfully taken the government hostage. If people that expose corruption are penalised with such alacrity, why does it take the government eternity to prosecute those indicted of corruption even when the proofs are glaring?

Irrespective of the pressure to conform there will always be a distinct group that rises above oddities to act as a check on this deterioration. In the end it will be a victory of good over evil. But the least we can do as Nigerians is to support this group by, first, accepting that corruption is a complete evil that must be fought wholeheartedly.

Postscript:

This piece was published in the Blueprint newspaper of 30/11/2012.