Corruption is always possible. It
becomes widespread, when a society accepts it as a normal part of doing
business. The point is that
corruption in the public sector is aided and abetted by millions of Nigerians,
even though most people want to pretend that only high-ranking public officials
are corrupt.
You have corrupt government contractors, and workers who pick up
their paychecks regularly, without doing the work for which they are being
paid, for instance. You also have leaders of churches who receive money
from people who fraudulently enrich themselves.
At the local level, we have corrupt local government officials and
loyalists. We could go on and on. I know that the popular notion is
that corruption is a crime that only the top brass in the public sector could
be guilty of. If that was the case, public corruption would not be so
widespread, so inter-generational.
You should be really
careful with the broad stance about "the level of corruption in Nigeria,
that has often led to the death of workers, retirees and compromised national
security." If indeed, there are such cases, the laws against
manslaughter, breaches of national security etc. should be able to care of
those. However, the charges in such cases will not be "public
corruption."
Again: if Nigerians were
repulsed by public corruption to such a level that they are willing to treat
corruption in the criminal code as just another kind of armed robbery, they
should be able to take the baby step of the obvious: stop being corrupt; stop
your extended family members from being corrupt; ostracize the corrupt, make
sure that people do not loot your public treasuries and then turn around to
become your national heroes, political king-makers, owners of oil blocs, owners
of universities, and future presidents, governors and legislators.
The most important dislocation has always been that we
have refused to run the nation based on a system of law and order.
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