 Published
October 5th, 2011
Nigeria is a metaphoric Federal Republic which is now poised
to embrace a democratic future after many years of
dictatorial military governance and military inhibiting
mentality that will take more decades to obliterate. It
would then proceed to become a Confederal Republic.
The obstructionist policies of those that seek our
disintegration, coupled with the actions of local,
misinformed compatriots stultify our steady societal growth.
Two Nigerians of high learning and culture, Emeritus
Professor Wole Soyinka and Emeritus Professor Chinua Achebe,
have repeatedly harped on the damage that corruption and
other societal vices are doing and have done to Nigeria.
In spite of the Himalayian protests against corruption, the
practice has gathered tsunami intensity. All over the
world, many states have suffered from the debilitating
effects of corruption.
As a result, the United Nations Organisation has adopted a
Convention in order to expose how corruption operates and
the UN has tried to make states to understand that
development suffers inexorably, where both public sector and
private sector officials indulge in corruption.
It must be pointed out that in unorganized, under-developed
states, corruption is the engine that drives corrupted
accelerated upper ladder climbing. Studies have shown how
penniless, uneducated persons without entrepreneurial skills
go into politics with fake altruism and become rich and
infamous. There are people in our polity, who would not
have existed today, if they had not stolen the peoples’
resources.
If a government official earned N2million a month, he
would have earned without paying taxes, a total of N24million
in one year. He would have earned N96million in four
years.
So, by what magical conjuration would such a citizen be able
to purchase a house costingN500 million? If he is a
successful entrepreneur, this may be possible.
Recommended Solutions
In order to solve the problem of corruption, the state must
institute a social justice system that would make it
possible to educate its capable citizens from the cradle to
universities, create jobs and build affordable homes for
citizens. The fear of the future fuels corruption. Family
responsibilities like the extended family structure put
pressure on the well-to-do members of the family in
government or corporate outfits. Lack of life insurance,
medical services and social welfare system push people into
corruption. Also lack of a religious and God-fearing
attributes allow misplaced conscience to fester.
The struggles by the working class to put pressure on their
states by demanding for social justice is growing
world-wide. I know people, who are upright but are forced
by circumstances to become corrupt
THE UN CONVENTION AGAINST CORRUPTION (1)
Introduction:
By the end of the 20th century, the human race
had irremediably crossed the Rubicon into self-destruction.
Frightened by this undesirable prospect, some thinkers
organized to re-think CORRUPTION, which is a twin brother or
sister of every human aberration.
In the 21st century, the issue of corruption must
not be restricted to what man’s puny brain can devise from
time to time, in order to get by. The centre-point of the
struggle against corruption must extend to the activities of
states, politicians, military intelligence operations,
belligerent policies, arms manufacturers and dealers,
currency traffickers and dealers in human beings. These
constitute a more formidable assignment for all those who
are endowed with uncommon abilities and spiritual vision.
In contemporary world society, there are political leaders
who have refused to accept modernity but have sustained the
anachronistic practices enshrined in a perverted version of
the Abrahamic religion. Inevitably, there is a clash of
values and virtues, which often lead to wars. The
imposition of archaic thought systems on a large number of
people in the Orient has tended to draw back the hands of
the universal clock.
There is bound to be corruption in every system of societal
organization where there is the absence of GOD, the absence
of good and the absence of ethical politics. Leaders, who
are supposed to advance the cause of their people, have
become their problem.
Some world leaders approximately to SWIN BURNES’S qualities
of a silly angel (of the Luciferian genre). We identify
some world leaders as having:
1.
Enthusiastic puerility of mind
2.
Incurable un-soundness of judgment
3.
Restless excitability of emotion
4.
Helpless inability of intelligence
5.
Consumptive wakefulness of fancy
6.
Feverish impotence of reason
7.
A dreamily amiable uselessness
8.
A sweet fantastic imbecility
It can be said that in every corrupt mind, act or decision,
there is:
(a) a propulsion of evil-mindedness
(b) a vain ambition to make it big and quick
(c) an amorous trajectory to earthly paradise
(d) A decadent moral fibre
(e) A robust criminal intention
(f) An unrepentant, stiff-neck mien and Luciferian
disposition to evil
Corruption, like evil, destroys the economy. The result is
mass poverty and absence of ethical life, which leads to
violence and bloodshed.
The United Nations and Corruption:
International Institutions,
Namely, The United Nations Organisations, The World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund, have shown utmost
concern for humanity.
While the United Nations Organisation has taken on the
onerous task “to maintain international peace and security”
1 among other global concerns, the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund have catered for post-Second
World War reconstruction and development.
The United Nations occasionally feels frustrated by the
war-mongering activities of its disunited sovereign
entities. In the same vein, the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund often wonder why, in spite of
their efforts at providing financial assistance and at
times, advice on development, the snail speed in some
states’ progress remain disheartening.
Enquiries into the reasons for the slow pace of
development yield evidence that among other factors,
corruption at various levels and in many states, constitute
immaculate impediments to “social progress and better
standards in larger freedom.”2
The United Nations Organisation, which has deployed its
efforts, invested its energies and has employed its
“international machinery for the promotion of the economic
and social advancement of all peoples, “3 has realized that
very often, its mobilizations often end in the wilderness as
a result of hydra-headed monster, corruption.
The entire world community, which had earlier regarded
the problem of corruption as “matters within the exclusive
jurisdiction! Of states”4 began to accept that there was
need for action to combat corruption. The UN drew
inspiration from its fight against apartheid, racism and
racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance by
belatedly introducing the United Nations Convention on
Corruption.
On 29 September 2003, the UN Convention against
Trans-national Organised Crime entered into force.
The main aim of the above-named Convention is to check or
at least, minimize corrupt practices like offering bribes to
any official or person. In the domain of politics, it is an
offence to rig an election. Election rigging would mean
that political power was obtained fraudulently. Where the
facts of rigging an election are established, they
constitute a breach of the relevant laws. This would engage
the action of law enforcement agencies to impose penalties.
Definition of Corruption:
The difficulties often encountered by the international
community in defining some concepts leave open ends for
transgressors to escape judgment.
In my opinion, corruption is a societal, malignant tumour.
It is a soul-destroying, spirit-humiliating and
mind-afflicting malady. It operates in a conspiratorial
atmosphere, in which one party (the corruptor) offers or
promised to offer some material gift, inducement, bribe or
any other act which mounts irresistible pressures on the
other party (the corrupted) to do or refrain from performing
his official duties or act in defiance of laid down official
rules ad practices consequent upon the gift, inducement,
bribe or pressure. The proximate cause of the favourable
acts must be traceable directly or indirectly to the gift,
inducement, bribery or pressure. (see Articles 15 and 16 of
the UN Convention)
1.
UN Charter (1945) Preamble
2.
UN Charter (1945) Preamble
3.
UN Charter (1945) Preamble
4.
See Article 2(7) UN Charter
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