These days, there is fury in the firmament. The headlines beggar belief. They tell of thievery in the land in a heart-breaking manner. It does break the heart. The stench of corruption in Nigeria is such that has made dare-devil armed robbers look like angels. Public office holders have stolen and are still stealing the soul of the nation in billions and trillions. I once tried to keep a diary of the mind-boggling financial scams that have signposted the nation’s public space but I lost count because they were too many, too frequent and sometimes too benumbing to track.

The military ruling class ignominiously laid the foundation of corruption on which the civilian elite from Obasanjo to Jonathan happily set up their tents. Let’s take a historical excursion. Under the civilian leadership of Alhaji Shehu Shagari, a good man but a very weak leader, corruption was just in its embryonic stage. There was thieving but it was not in the outlandish sense that we have come to experience today. And nobody took note that what was just an embryo would soon metamorphose into a beastly adult. Then arrived Ibrahim Babangida (aka IBB) and his cabal of heavily starched-Khaki men; the man from Minna ensured a mushrooming of corruption in Nigeria as if it was our fundamental human right to be crooked. Not only was there mindless looting in the public domain, there was also the blooming of another dastardly variant of financial crime: advance fee fraud, alias 4-1-9. It was an era in which scammers were so emboldened that they flaunted their illicit wealth, printed business cards and had posh offices to the knowledge of anti-crime agencies; they were untouchable.

His successor, the late General Sani Abacha, took looting to a higher plateau. Under Abacha, the Central Bank of Nigeria became his private estate and cash in all relevant currencies was supplied to the dark goggled man. Abacha’s style of looting was beyond the ken of logic; it was primitive. The one-year reign of General Abdulsalami Abubakar witnessed another looting spree. At the twilight of Abubakar’s regime after successfully conducting a general election that birthed a new civilian administration, he and his men pounced on the external reserve and plundered it. Nigerians did not know about this until President Olusegun Obasanjo held his first Presidential Media Chat in 1999. He described Abubakar and his cabinet as “reckless” while making reference to the plundering of the external reserve. Obasanjo inherited a meagre foreign reserve of $5billion.

But the Ota chicken farmer was no less immune from the culture of corruption. His tenure opened a new frontier in corruption and under his watch public officials became more innovative in the ways of bribery and graft. He, too, left office dripping with the blobs of graft. The list of Nigeria’s scam diary is long: Halliburton and Siemens bribe-for-contract scams, Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) scandal, National Assembly bribery diary, Police Equipment Fund fraud, Tafa Bolugungate, National Identity Card scam, Civil Service Pension rip-off, National Independent Power Project bazaar, and the perennial NNPC sleaze. While all this was happening at Federal level, state governors emboldened by the unmitigated stealing at the centre helped themselves to a few billions of naira from their respective states. Tafa Balogun, a former Inspector General of Police was convicted of stealing N16 billion from the police treasury. A man appointed to catch the thieves became the chief thief in a colony of thieves.

But Tafa Balogun, Bode George and a few others were only ‘unlucky’ to be convicted. Many more have escaped with their loot. In the case of Halliburton, the bribery recipients had been named by US officials, yet we did nothing. Halliburton representatives had long admitted they bribed Nigerians. Siemens officials also admitted bribing some Nigerians to win a contract for the German company. Siemens was fined and two of its staff jailed by the German government but in Nigeria, home of the bribe recipients, silence is both the word and attitude. The actors in the Nigerian public space have continued to prey on our national patrimony. And for their penitence, they ask us to pray. And we do. We pray every day. In the mountains of power and valleys of dominion, we pray. We pray at vigils; in the church, in the mosques, even in offices. Yet, while we pray, they still prey on the treasury, even more voraciously.

Former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon (Rtd), took it upon himself to rally Nigerians to pray. In 1996 in the height of tyranny by the late General Sani Abacha, he launched an intercessory body called Nigeria Prays. He had wished Nigeria’s travails including the primitive plundering of the treasury at all levels would wear out with prayers. But he was wrong. The more we pray, the more they prey. While Gowon was busy praying, Abacha and his men were busy looting. Till date, Nigeria is still trying to recover bits and pieces of the Abacha loot. But Abacha is only a pawn because he’s late. Were he still alive, nobody would summon the courage to pry into his account or ask question of his government.

Yet, we still pray. And they still prey. The recent revelations about deals too sleazy to be ascribed to sane men during the Goodluck Jonathan era makes me shudder; even wonder if God is listening to our prayers. Don’t get it wrong. I believe in prayers; I believe God answers the effective, fervent cry of His people. Yes, I believe. But I also believe we need more than prayers. We must own up to our legendary criminality and punish crime for what it is: a poisonous brut brewed by evil men.

Pray, how do you rationalize the grisly disclosures that the office of the National Security Adviser of a nation in the thick of a war against terror was suddenly converted to a cash office under Col. Sambo Dasuki (Rtd) for the ‘sharing’ of public funds meant for the purchase of arms and ammunition. They shared the money voted for weaponry to equip the soldiers fighting at the theatre of war. As they shared the money, terrorists shed the blood of our ill-equipped soldiers turning their wives to premature widows. And when the soldiers complain about their poor, outdated weapons of war, they are court-martialled for mutiny.

This is the time to stop praying for Nigeria because the more we pray, the more we become their prey. This is the time to rise above emotive blurts and punish crime. President Muhammadu Buhari must not relent in this resurgence in the fight against graft. Nigerians stand with you on this. But you must make this fight total by revisiting the Siemens-Halliburton scams; the Obasanjo power project and others gathering dust in the cabinet of EFCC, including the cases of some of your recent appointees; ministers and all. Falling short of this makes this war against corruption curiously selective.

Author: KEN UGBECHIE