By Cudjoe Kpor
This bombshell comes directly from the seat of power: The Presidency says the entire Nigerian system stinks with putrid corruption. As such, finding honest and trustworthy men and women with integrity for any national task is harder than pushing the proverbial camel through the eye of a needle.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo leaked the topmost national secret discussion which he held, not once, with President Muhammadu Buhari in Aso Rock, revealing that finding men of integrity who would be assigned various responsibilities of government has become a Herculean task for the government. Meanwhile, such men of integrity are indispensable for societal good and advancement.
Consequently, the Vice President reiterated with high optimism which may not necessarily be dashed as forlorn hope, that the government is seeking a new tribe of Nigerians comprising professionals, businessmen, politicians, religious leaders and all others who believe that a new Nigeria can be rebuilt from the dirty ashes of this corrupt one.
He told the members attending the annual dinner of Apostles in the Market Place in Abuja: “I have had several long discussions with President Buhari. The key issue always is finding the right persons for any task. A tough task, indeed, in a corrupt system.”
Not surprisingly, the current anti-corruption Czar Ibrahim Magu, Chairman of EFCC has more than once grumbled about how corruption is fighting back the anti-graft agency. But preposterously, he believes top-ranked senior lawyers and journalists are the tools the treasury looters and their co-conspirators in the society are using to fight back the anti-corruption war.
By his arguments, he may be right with top lawyers getting paid with part of the looted funds to defend and get their clients off the hook. However, his argument of journalists being paid to frustrate the anti-corruption war holds no water. If EFCC’s actions and omissions do not follow rule of law, even the blind man would see them. Similarly, if the commission follows the rule of law as they always claim to do, no self-respecting journalist will make a mockery of himself to write that the commission is not prosecuting the war according to the rule of law. Apart from the corruption he fights, nothing is hidden in journalism practice.
And it is no surprise that accolades and wishes of support and goodwill are coming from left, right and centre for EFCC to succeed in cleaning up the filthy corruption from the system. For the immediate benefit from EFCC’s success is that it will get back the stolen loot by the treasury looters so that their corruption would not kill Nigeria. But more significantly, victory with the war will clean up the leadership of the system and hopefully, restore integrity in public officials and institutions whose strength is the bulwark for good governance and democracy.
Already, Ambassador Christopher Kolade, one of the rare men of integrity who could beat his chest and say he is incorruptible and the overwhelming majority of the public will believe him, defined the criteria needed for the new tribe of Nigerians which must start strictly with every individual purging himself of the corrupt mentality and jettisoning the vice forever.
For, the new tribe whom Osinbajo defined must be made up of Nigerians who accept and believe in a society where good things are the norm, and who would tell the truth always and want to be told only the truth as well, Kolade said.
The broadcaster, corporate chief executive and ex-diplomat extolled the widened search for the Nigerian integrity tribe as a wake-up call, but singled out legal practitioners for special castigation as precluded from the new tribe.
In Kolade’s words: “I sometimes ask our lawyers, do we have a court of law or a court of justice in this country? If we could all say we are working for a court of justice and not a court of law, we will all be in the new tribe.”
Why is the new tribe indispensable?
The Vice President spelled out the response: It is a tough task to find the right persons to perform any task in a corrupt system. The current tribe of corrupt Nigerians pervades all the professional, social, economic, political and religious spheres of the country; they are united in corruption and therefore, protect the identity of one another.
Besides, these perpetrators of heinous crimes of high level corruption and their co-conspirators cut across all tribes, ethnicities and religions. They are ubiquitous in governments at the Federal, state and LG levels, the legislature, the judiciary and even in the media.
Meanwhile, Nigeria needs the new tribe of incorruptible men and women of all faith and ethnicities, committed to building a society with high values of integrity, hard work, justice and love of country and are prepared to make the necessary crucial sacrifices to restore the nation’s lost values and norms.
In Osinbajo’s words, these incorruptible Nigerians must constitute “a tribe of men and women who are prepared to stick together and insist on justice even when our friends are at the receiving end.”
He said: “We need a new tribe of men and women of all faith, tribes and ethnicities, committed to a country run on high values of integrity, hard work, justice and love for the country.
“A tribe of men and women who are prepared to make the sacrifices crucial to building a strong society, who are prepared to stick together and insist on justice even when our friends are at the receiving end.
“When you look at any list of alleged perpetrators of heinous cases of corruption, all tribes, ethnicities and religions are well-represented. In other words, high level corruption knows no religion or ethnicity.”
The annual dinner of Apostles in the Market Place is over with its theme, Change Agents in Nation-Building. But the Vice President’s search in the keynote address titled, “A New Tribe,” of incorruptible men and women is just beginning.
