Desperate times, unhinged people (III)
Today, let us conclude the education about the desperate things Nigerians are doing for survival and for greed. This is important because as the government is trying to tackle corruption, the phenomenon is also metamorphosing, and indeed there are compromises from within that render many of its efforts fruitless. The issue is that we cannot call what ails us just ‘corruption’. It is deeper, but we haven’t even started to find out the real issues. Anyway, read on; 1. BVN BATCHING Many people thought the advent of the BVN was the final straw that will break the back of criminality in Nigeria. No. We hear some unscrupulous bankers now sell BVNs to whoever needs them, by the batches. Any company who wishes to justify anything to regulators can simply hire some BVNs from the banks for a fee. 2. OLUWOLE MOVEMENTS Every Nigerian city has a den of forgers. Oluwole is standard for Lagos even though that has now been democratized. There are places where one can obtain fake passports, fake visas, fake company documents, fake bills of lading, and everything in between all over Lagos and in every town in Nigeria. Some people wake up daily and that is their normal places of work. Nigerians no longer see any big deal in forging documents. Many people now move around with fake names, fake dates of births, and fake certificates.
3. CLEAN COOK STOVE STEALING FROM THE POOR
Recently we heard about how less than 20% of the promised clean cook stoves were supplied to Nigeria’s poor families while we’ve been billed for the full supply. The poor are the easiest to steal from. These stoves sit somewhere in Abuja stadium but the poor can wait forever. Nigeria is a dumpsite for useful assets which soon turn to rust.
4. NYANYA BOMB STEALING FROM THE DEAD AND WOUNDED
Apart from dead civil servants, another category of ‘unfortunates’ that Nigerians are stealing from are victims of terrorism. The victims of Nyanya bombing are still stranded, as are victims of other mishaps. Their benefits have been embezzled by some big men in power. No mercy. 5. CORPOTATE BURGLARY This is a case where a contractor is told to supply goods to a government agency in the morning (say 500 laptops worth N300,000 each). Then he is instructed to collect them back in the night when everyone has closed to collect back his wares. The supply would have been registered and the disappearance will be put down to distribution and usage among the MDA’s staff. Contractor gets a cut for his troubles and still has his goods with which he can repeat the cycle at this or another MDA.
6. ELECTION BRIBERY FRAUD
We recently saw the display of N111million in raw cash, displayed by agents of the EFCC being part of the proceeds of bribes allegedly collected by INEC officials for the Rivers State rerun elections. The entire heist they said, was around N350million. As has become the standard practice in high profile bribery cases, no names were mentioned. If they were small criminals their names will be splashed all over the newspapers; alongside their pictures. Our anticorruption strategy shows too much respect to criminals. It is therefore less than sincere. 7. PLAIN FRAUD As we evolve into a merciless society where the winner grabs all, plain old fraud is on the increase. Armed robberies and kidnapping too. Boys and girls are organizing themselves into criminal gangs in order to forcefully get their own back from society. Their targets are the most vulnerable among us. There is more armed robbery in poor areas than in organized rich vicinities. But lately, spontaneous kidnapping has also taken on a life of its own. No one is safe anymore. Housegirls kidnap children in their care. Armed men using speedboats lay siege on middle class communities, kill security men and police like they don’t care and snatch victims. It is even very risky to now jog in the morning. That is the Hobbessian society that ineffective and visionless leaderships have gifted us. In banks and other corporate workplaces, workers are increasingly casualised. No one is employed directly anymore. The directors create a special purpose vehicle which does the employment because there’s money to be made from there. Those employed in this manner have no rights and no career. They therefore see nothing wrong in stealing their organisations blind. Everybody is smart. 8. CORRUPT JUDICIARY One of the worst types of corruption is when the judiciary is corrupted. It seemed too highhanded when masked security men stormed the homes of some old judges the other day, but emerging evidence shows that almost all judges in Nigeria receive bribes in order to grant judgment. In that case, they grant victory to the criminals and defeat to the innocent. They could give a death sentence to an innocent person, and free up the most dangerous criminals who will go ahead to unleash violence on society, all for money. Judges are seen as God’s representative on Earth. Nigerian judges, up to the highest echelons are heartless and lawyers who know, are aware that the judicial process in Nigeria is a huge joke. Everyone is on the take. Never used to be like this, but of late we’ve lost all sense of caution.
9. YOU TAKE THE CAR, I TAKE THE TYRES
Nigerian big men love cars. Even in recessions they buy more from the public till. But their drivers take the types. All they do is simply to swap new tyres for old ones and complain to oga that the tyres are worn. They get money for new ones and go to collect back what they swapped. An SUV tyre costs anything from N100,000. No big man will check tyres every morning. The same goes for every and any spare part in the car. That is why cars bought for government officials especially get run down much faster than those used and maintained personally by individual. If our big men are smart and greedy, their workers are smarter.
But it is not merely a public sector affair. Last week the new broke about how 285 Dangote drivers have stolen and sold in the open market 3.5million tyres! These are big truck tyres. They must cost at least N200,000 each. If they sold for a mere N100,000, that is N3.5Trillion in their pockets. Everybody wants to be as rich as Dangote. Most of the fantastic houses we see around us are proceeds of crime. 10. THE TURBINE HEIST Did you hear about the attempted stealing overnight of a N7.2billion Russian gas turbine somewhere in Delta State? The thieves had it all sorted and were going to dismantle the structure and mount them on several trucks. There is nothing people cannot steal in Nigeria. It is like dismantling and stealing the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Desperate times have collided here with an unhinged population 11. ILLEGAL REFINERIES Did you hear the news that illegal refineries are being destroyed in Kogi State? When did they discover crude oil deposits in Anambra State which shares a border with Kogi? Illegal refineries used to be a Niger Delta problem, and would usually be justified with the issue of perennial neglect of that region. But today, it seems like standard practice. By the time crude oil is discovered in Borno and Bauchi, there will spring up, illegal refineries there too.
Nigeria is broken.