No matter the lens we use in viewing the effects of corruption; it is often personal and very devastating… If Nigeria must escape this annihilating poverty trap, let there be consequences for actions, let there be justice and Nigeria will realise its potential and take its place among great countries of the world.
After the mismanagement of the oil boom years following the civil war, Nigerians got progressively poor, corrupt and criminal. Poverty is not a crime but it predisposed its victims to crime. Why? People who live in poverty are more likely to break rules and skirt the edges of the law to survive. Poverty and corruption enjoy a direct relationship; the most important nexus between them being depravation. Corruption feeds and accentuates poverty. All efforts at poverty alleviation by various governments are unsuccessful because they engaged a linear approach to solving multidimensional problems. This happens when we tend to block other coefficients in our development equation. Corruption and poverty go hand-in-hand, and eventually, both work in conjunction to threaten our collective well-being and endanger the lives of too many people.
In 2014, somewhere in Lagos, an unscrupulous developer erected two structures on a piece of land and blocked the neighbourhood storm drain. I took photographs and petitioned the State Ministry of Physical planning through a proxy. The permanent secretary of the Ministry ordered the halting of construction on the site immediately. I was happy, and thought there may be hope for Nigeria after all. How mistaken could I be! I left Nigeria for eight weeks, and by the time I came back, the two houses were already built! Most likely, a bureaucrat was paid a bribe to give special re-consideration for the buildings to be erected. Today, every multimillion naira property in that neighbourhood is in jeopardy of perennial flooding, including those who bought the said houses. The approval to build those two structures has increased poverty for those who own houses there. Every raining season, home owners scramble to pump water from their yards, cars are parked on neighbouring streets, residents wear rainboots to get out of their houses; the appearance of cumulonimbus cloud fills them with so much dread. A bribe of a few thousands of naira has imperiled the wellbeing and lives of forty households! Poverty or corruption may develop independently, but the occurence of one, makes the establishment of the other more likely.
Due to corruption, we pay for basic services that should be free and are taken for granted elsewhere. Everybody is on the take and eager to “obtain”. An example can be found in many communities in Nigeria where people routinely buy electric poles, power distribution wires and transformers and pay to connect themselves to the national grid. Accusers who report crime to the police are made to pay for pen and the paper on which their statements will be written. In some cases where a visit to the scene of a crime is necessary, complainants are asked to provide fuel for the police vehicle or give the Investigating Police Officer (IPO) some transport fare. Given these ugly developments, impoverished people have taken to self-help through protecting themselves by fair or foul means. Even the poor have resigned to the reality that there exists a different law enforcement system for the rich and another for them. If the poor and the rich are arrested for the same crime, the rich one usually gets away free, while the poor one goes to jail. Everyday, corruption augments the cycle of poverty as the system allows the interests of the rich to take precedence over the interests of the poor.
The root of Nigeria’s escalating youth unemployment and poverty can be traced to the structure of our public and private markets. Due to our culture of nepotism and graft, inexperienced and inefficient firms and reserved bidders are favoured over honest competitors in bids for public and private contracts.
The recent hijack of the Chinese Railway Scholarship is a veritable example of how corruption promotes poverty. Due to clan-based thinking, top government officials shared scholarship slots among themselves without giving interested Nigerian youth any fair chance at competing for the available slots. Every opportunity or available position in government is given to that uncle, sister, brother, son, daughter, nephew, niece or friend. Excellence is sacrificed as the nation is continually denied access to intelligence and talent. In business, poor people and small businesses have few economic alternatives, and are more vulnerable to exploitation. Market women and commercial drivers endure shakedowns on roadblocks in the countryside, where they must pay policemen at checkpoints before they can proceed on their journeys. The extortion of twenty naira here, and fifty naira there may seem like negligible change, but they help in keeping lowly earning people poor. Sometimes it is so hard to blame the police, given their abysymal salaries, squalid living conditions and the terms of their employment. The policemen we see on Nigerian roads have a lot of trouble earning an honest living. They buy their own uniforms and accessories, and they must provide a stream of payments to patrons at higher levels.
With the normalisation of bribery and extortion, corruption has very high costs for local businesses and international investors. The kickbacks may be thought of as a normal thing to do to speed up the process or grease the wheels of our monetised bureaucracy to get that contract signed or obtain an important approval. Each kickback, each bribe, creates a loopy dynamic of expectations and laziness. Every bribery given encourages government officials to design news extortion schemes by making files disappear or demand a new set of requirements, ask for new forms to be filled and the creation of artificial times. These are all designed to make their patrons pay. Soon, nothing moves in the real sense in the economy and legitimate opportunities become scarce, thus creating more fertile ground for corruption as it is found in Nigeria at the moment.
The root of Nigeria’s escalating youth unemployment and poverty can be traced to the structure of our public and private markets. Due to our culture of nepotism and graft, inexperienced and inefficient firms and reserved bidders are favoured over honest competitors in bids for public and private contracts. The surest way to win contracts is through connections and cash, instead of innovation and excellence. Top level decision makers in public and private institutions are more interested in buying homes in world capitals, having tuition for their children’s attendance of top schools abroad, going on exotic vacations and owning cars than human capital development and technical development for the next generation. When they have collected their share upfront, the rest of us do not get what we pay for, and pay for what we get. We pay for cost overruns, waste and bad products that are covered up by bribes. The third mainland bridge is a case in point. At fifteen years, post construction, the bridge began to show structural defects. Less than 30 years later, the bridge is already a monumental disgrace, requiring frequent patch work.
Poverty and corruption thrive upon weaknesses in key economic, political and social institutions. Poor and corrupt societies are often unreliable guarantors of trust, protection of property rights, and faith in the judicial system for enforcement of contractual obligations.
Poverty and corruption thrive upon weaknesses in key economic, political and social institutions. Poor and corrupt societies are often unreliable guarantors of trust, protection of property rights, and faith in the judicial system for enforcement of contractual obligations. These are essential to building strong financial markets and effective governments anywhere. The sum of all these factors is the reason why I don’t take the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a serious barometer of growth. Nigeria is the darling of short term investors in emerging markets because of the inherent insecurities in the system. Short term gains are huge because investors keep their asset mobile. They keep them mobile because contracts cannot readily be enforced, asset cannot be protected and the regulatory environment is volatile. Investors are wary because vital regulatory postures are taken to enrich individuals or groups. Each time the markets perform consistently well up to some technical points, investors pull their capital and head for the exits only to come back after the cow is ready to be milked again. To make a dent on poverty, any serious government must tackle corruption because in its various forms, it stunts economic growth.
No matter the lens we use in viewing the effects of corruption; it is often personal and very devastating. It orphans children, it leaves the unemployed without a social safety net, families without healthcare, the elderly without security, people without food and businesses without capital. There can be no real progress until we all understand what the stakes are. The price we must pay, is our collective resolve that we, as Nigerians must as a matter of creed, insist on basic rights, depend upon the rule of law and hold those who govern us accountable. If Nigeria must escape this annihilating poverty trap, let there be consequences for actions, let there be justice and Nigeria will realise its potential and take its place among great countries of the world.
Bámidélé Adémólá-Olátéjú a farmer, youth advocate and political analyst writes this weekly column, “Bamidele Upfront” for PREMIUM TIMES. Follow me on Twitter @olufunmilayo
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