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Now that I got
your attention, let us together discuss other form of racism as they
apply to our nation, Nigeria. What is racism to you with respect to
this geographical contraption called Nigeria?
The classical definition of racism is, an
individual's discriminatory behavior and prejudicial attitude toward
people of a certain race or institutional practices that subordinate a
certain race of people or
a belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another;
that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her
inborn biological characteristics. This is indeed a formal definition
which has been inherently used effectively and particularly in the
United States of America. Racism is a political weapon used to
denigrate a race in order to
maintain status quo, force segregation and keep races apart from one
another so that their confusion is the gain of politicians.
During
the last 1000 years or so, racism on the part of Western powers toward
non-Westerners had a far more significant impact on history than any
other form of racism
such as racism among Western groups or among Easterners (Asians,
Africans, and others). The most notorious example of racism by the
West was slavery, particularly the enslavement of Africans in the New
World. It is noteworthy that Americans who engaged in slavery did not
think that Africans were inferior, not at all, they believed in their
own limited knowledge that Africans were physically superior and if
they could breakdown African slaves’ psyche, they could make them
believe that they are inferior through infliction of pains, deprivation
of love, and allowing their women control the family contrary to what
African men knew, they’ll eventually succeed in creating inadequacy in
the minds of the slaves.
The
US founding fathers knew too well that no race was superior to
another. If America was built on Judeo-Christian principle that all
peoples are equal in the sight of God, then no race can be superior to
another. Although no one has yet met God but by faith we believe He
exists and we believe that He is a free and fair God. Every human
being is superior to another in their areas of interest. For instance,
a terrific engineer may be terrible in human relation. A person
considered to be inferior in academia can be superior in using his hand
to create magnificent edifice. One that is superior in singing may be
inferior in athletics, and so on. Europeans were believed to be
superior in navigation, Magellan, Christopher Columbus, to mention a
few. Germans had superior intellect at missile designs because their
interest to dominate the world was predicated upon this weaponry.
Americans seem to be better at acquiring other people’s knowledge (Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr Von
Braun – a preeminent rocket scientist) and adding her own ingenuity to
make the overall result seemingly superior. America used to be
superior at technology acquisition but now superior at technology
transfer to other nations by her current outsourcing strategy.
The
fact is that no label ever helps any person or nation it only helps to
reduce the collective and corporative potential of a people. Racism in
America happens to help few at the top because it causes disunity at
the expense of the majority. Does an average American white benefit
from racism other than just feeling superior without a good measure to
justify such a superior outlook?
Senator
Barack Obama’s brilliant speech on racism, in my opinion, has given
Nigeria a real opportunity to revisit, to discuss her own racism –
corruption and to find a face saving solution to corruption in Nigeria
and Africa at large. What is corruption? What are the causes and
opportunities for corruption? Nigerians must understand what
corruption is and how it affects self and nation’s development? What
do corruption and racism have in common?
Corruption was defined by ancient political
philosophers Plato and Aristotle as a general disease of the body
politics. Plato, in his theory of the "perverted"
constitutions-Democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny worried that these
regimes instead of being guided by the rule of law were serving the
interests of the leaders who purposely impoverish them in order to
control the mind, soul and body.
If we take human nature into consideration, we must
then ask why do all political systems experience corruption? Why do
some leaders engage in corruption and some do not? Corruption
has its root factors in cultural, psychological, and systems. In some
countries like Nigeria, corruption is more or less acceptable depending
on the scale in the traditional political culture. Nigeria has more of
a reputation for corruption particularly because of traditional
attitudes towards family, kinship, or some form of family welfare.
Nigeria has also the unfortunate experience with military culture of
weakening the rule of law or low level of respect for the law. Because
Nigerians are not getting answers to their questions about corruption,
many then justify it on tribal basis whether it favors them or not.
For example since OBJ is a Yoruba person perceived to be corrupt,
they’ll say, why do you want to chastise Diepreye Solomon Peter Alamieyeseigha for corruption when your tribe’s man is equally corrupt?
From another view point, corruption has a psychological component.
Of course there are a number of psychological factors that help to
explain some types of corruption. When taking into account the
internal factors that some individuals are naturally evil and will
commit criminal acts, including corruption in any type of political
system especially when corruption is not actively condoned by a system.
Per chance, the external factors, individual's relationship to the
group is also important. For instance, when individuals see others
around them benefiting from corruption with perfect immunity, they too
may choose to indulge. For example, those that work in a position
susceptible to taking bribe and do not use their chance may belief
wrongly or rightly that their coworkers will consider them to be stupid
especially in Nigeria where wealth is displayed publicly through
spraying. Therefore, under the pressure of this factor many public
officials during some period of time become corrupted. We discussed
nepotism earlier and one can defend corruption in terms of individuals
seeking to maximize their own power and the lust for power is a
psychological variable.
There is of course
a salient factor called human weakness. Some persons find it extremely
difficult to reject offers for what they perceive as generosity for job
well done. In some culture, refusing a gift may be considered
insulting, the giver may get offended or may not want embarrass a
grateful supplicant. Moreover, whenever a leader or officials have
monopoly of power over provision of government goods, they can easily explain the incidence of corruption without seeing it as theft. There
are some corruption contributory factors that are purely systemic in
nature. The first is that Nigeria does not have a guaranteed but firm
retirement type social security. For this reason, many see corruption
as a means of preparing themselves for life after retirement. The
fallacy of this is, how much looting will be necessary for a person to
be self sufficient after retirement? Why can’t the next leader set
enabling policies for Nigerians to become entrepreneurs and compete
side-by-side with other nationalities in Nigeria. Available evidence
shows that the spending habits of these looters, the women they keep
and inflation they create always manage to put them in the correct
station of life at the end of it all.
How corruption and racism be compared side-by-side (see the table below)?
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RACISM |
CORRUPTION | |
1.
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Is a lethal accelerant to disintegration of common ideas, values and vision.
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Brings about influence peddling when
individuals with access to people in high places are sometimes tempted
to trade on the influence of high ranking government officials. | |
2.
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Creates inferior-superior relationship that can be used to disenfranchise citizens over a long period of time. |
Creates mistrust, poverty, false wealth, retards development and creates hero worshiping. | |
3.
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Brings about economy of fear, an imaginary glass ceiling, and asserts an undeserved aggressiveness
while promoting an over-the-line action and reaction by afflicted and
aggrieved citizens. At the end, no one wins. |
Brings
about poverty, material and personal insecurity, extortion, misuse of
public funds and underdevelopment. Control of property provides
opportunities for mismanagement and corruption. An extreme form of
misuse of public funds is the large-scale privatization of state assets
by enterprise managers and other officials in some transition
economies.
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4.
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With racism, success is seen as a zero-sum game where one group has to fail in order for the other to win. This shouldn’t be.
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Brings
about poverty, insecurity of life and properties, invokes Federal
Character and local content business and interactive vocabularies
(Nigeria) when such artificial corrections are not needed.
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5.
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Has a serious deleterious effect on a nation’s cultural norms and societal values.
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Brings about political Patronage which does not benefit ordinary citizens.
The assignment of government positions to mostly minimally qualified
political supporters has long been a practice in politics. Political
appointments remain at the top levels of government both on national
and state levels because executive Governors control the financial
infrastructure of the states and corruption provides a legitimate way
for elected politicians to influence bureaucracy through the
appointment of legal executive officials.
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6.
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Is
manifested in language, ideas, schools, language policies, economic
stratification, social segregation, housing markets, hiring and
promotional schemas, and minority access to a variety of social
services and opportunities.
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Degenerates into nepotism. That is granting of public office on the bases of family ties and nepotism depletes citizens’ sense of belonging and patriotism. | |
7.
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Competition for resources is set in terms of us versus them and cooperation to advance a common cause never gets traction.
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Tends to promote real or perceived shared experience because
some of these actors have worked together in the past usually on failed
projects and may also be on good terms. Thus, the patrons promote or
have promoted the client on the basis of these past experience and warm
relationship. We see this in case of Obasanjo – Yar ‘Adua
relationship.
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8.
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It
indirectly stifles development, clouds our judgment, encourages
selfishness and deprives the nation of the best of the contributions
from the minority (perceived inferior) group because the majority
already predetermined that the minority offers can have no value.
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Inoculates
leaders from theft because officials do not see themselves as sealing.
They are incapable of separating the role of self from that of
government. Government is seeing in third person. Therefore, theft of
government financial resources is another form of corruption when
officials may pocket tax revenues or fees often with the collusion of
the payer; in effect combining theft with bribery, looting from the
treasures, extending advances to themselves that are never repaid, or
drawing pay for fictitious “ghost” workers.
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Having reviewed
the sources and causes of corruption in our society, this author
believes that it is time for Nigeria to seek a lasting solution, and
eliminate by outright removal of the influence of those that
perpetrated and encourage corruption still ready to inflict the
greatest pain on the nation? Corruption has never benefited an average
Nigerian, not even the immediate families of those looters. There are
no jobs for young graduates, our energy supply is epileptic yet we
expended so much on bogus energy contracts, our children are getting
inferior education, we are faced with mammoth moral of decadence yet we
visit churches and Mosques every day to tell the almighty our day’s
deeds. It is time for every citizen to note that after receiving bribe
they cannot demand for improved healthcare, foreign companies cannot
outsource to Nigeria because we do not have standards, and our young
people will continue to be sold out to the highest bidder.
Corruption more
than tribalism/race has destroyed the very fabric of our society: has
profound negative effects on governmental policies, economic and
political development but the role of civil society, of real leaders,
of our judiciary and of the media can go a long way to nib corruption
in the bud, to finally move Nigeria forward and start the creation of
Africa’s development in the true African way. Corruption is the best
gift to the enemies of Africa to latently continue slavery in the 21st century. The IBB, the Abulsalams, the Obasanjos, the Iboris, the Alamieyeseighas,
the Adedibus, the Sarakis, the Ubas of this world that added nothing to
but taken everything from our nation will soon leave Nigeria after
establishing corruption as a means to development. These are leaders
that encourage money transfer for the disposable income of pure
relations instead of transfer of technology for industrial capacity
building. Let us stop this hero worshiping of those that make us poor
and disenfranchise our common aspirations. This time around, we need
courage like that shown by the young man, Senator Barack Obama to
prevail on those that call themselves leaders but who otherwise are
unpatriotic citizens and stop corruption in its tracks. Our own
perfect union will never be manifested without a head-on tackle of
corruption in all our institutions.
For far too long,
we have been coping unsuccessfully with the dangerous but self
inflicting cross-currents of corruption and no one has thrown the
nation the lifeline. Yet, we are unable to relate to the explication
of the Nigeria’s common but tragic experience in corruption and the
path to no where that corruption has lead our nation. This
time around, a people must be willing to sacrifice and stop the painful
hemorrhaging of corruption before it is too late for the next
generation. It is this time around that we can move to the higher
level of development after 47 years in the wilderness of independence.
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Authors 
Posted by Robot| 21.03.2008 05:46