By Chinweizu
26jan15
Anybody who thinks that, under Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution,
any government, party or president can eradicate corruption is like a man who
expects a worm to give birth to a lion, or who wants to go to heaven but
doesn’t want to die.
If Nigerians are at all serious in their endless noisemaking
against corruption, they must, as a first step, get rid of their 1999
Constitution. Anybody who is claiming he can end corruption but who isn’t
campaigning to get rid of the 1999 Constitution is a fraud.
But Nigerians are not serious. First of all, they love what
they call corruption, they became addicted to it right from the 1950s. They
want to loot and squander, that’s why they don’t really want corruption
tackled. Secondly, they love their
noisemaking against it. If “corruption” was eliminated, they would lose their
favorite topic for complaining. In this matter of denouncing corruption,
Nigerians are like a rich hypochondriac who is addicted to his symptoms and to
the attention he gets because of his condition, and doesn’t want it cured. He
refuses to go for the diagnostic tests that can determine the cause of his
symptoms so it can be treated. Instead he keeps going from one quack doctor to
another, each of whom claims to have the magic cure for his condition. Of
course all that each wants is to get at his money and take his share and run.
So each denounces his predecessor and gets his chance until the next quack
doctor displaces him, and he leaves the patient uncured and even worse, and the
hypochondriac is happy that his symptoms are still with him.
Which coup maker in the past 50 years hasn’t claimed he has
come to get rid of corruption only to get even more corrupt than those he threw
out? Which presidential candidate hasn’t claimed the same intention and ability
only to fail when he got into office? Why has that been so? There are three
main reasons why that has been so since 1999:
