By Donu Kogbara

DAME Patience Jonathan can do no right in some folks’ eyes. I’ve only met her once and briefly, but I know several people who know her well; and all of them talk about her warmth, down-to-earth attitude and excellent sense of humour.

One of the insults that is frequently levelled against the poor woman is that she doesn’t sound like an English professor when she makes speeches. And though she sounded absolutely fine to me  when I heard her reading a biblical passage at a recent church service, I grant you that linguistics are not her main strength.

But, Justice Fati (Abdulsalam) Abubakar aside, other Nigerian First Ladies have also not been major intellectuals, so why single out the Dame for special abuse?

So can Mrs. Jonathan’s critics please forget about trivial snobberies and focus on the sincere and substantial support she is giving women via her NGO?

Corruption addicts

LAST week, I drew your attention to the fact that Nigeria got an embarrassingly low score in Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perception Index (we came 134th out of 178 countries surveyed…a worse ranking than eight other countries in the West African sub-region, including Ghana, which came 62nd ).

I made the point that pundits who have been insisting that corruption is largely caused by poverty and the inadequate wages that public servants earn are obviously mistaken because Nigeria was outranked by its poorer neighbours.

Ben Udechukwu, a Vanguard reader who regularly comments on the contents of this column, emailed me to say that he shares my view that it is avarice and bad leadership, not poverty, that cause corruption….and thinks that if political offices are made less attractive, we are more likely to get decent leaders who are not only committed to service delivery rather than self-enrichment but capable of encouraging and inspiring the rest of the society to avoid dishonesty.

With this rationale in mind, Ben suggests that policemen, for example, should earn more than senators. And I find this radical idea extremely appealing. I really believe that it will, if immediately implemented, swiftly change most Nigerians’ moral outlooks and significantly impact on a chronic problem that is crippling us economically and ruining our image internationally.

The rot starts at the top and many Nigerian leaders remind me of drug addicts…in the sense that though they are supposedly religious, supposedly respectable and already rich enough to be comfortable for the rest of their lives, they cannot abandon their constant quest for cash and concentrate on doing their jobs well because they are totally hooked on wealth acquisition.

Materialism is a sickness of sorts; and money is the drug that the cash-obsessed use to assuage their cravings. So is it too fanciful to say that people whose existences are dominated by a never-ending desire for financial benefits are very similar to abusers of unhealthy substances like cocaine or marijuana?

If a leader is never satisfied with what he has, even when he has more than enough by normal standards – and is always hungrily chasing after ill-gotten gains – is there any real difference between him and a psychologically troubled individual who suffers from a need to keep medicating himself with narcotics?

People who are addicted to marijuana or cocaine cannot feel completely relaxed, happy, whole or worthy unless they are smoking or snorting. Meanwhile, people who are addicted to money cannot feel completely at peace unless they are spending like maniacs or stuffing their bank accounts with illegal funds.

If they are influential – whether they are mini-leaders such as college lecturers who have the power to pass or fail students or Big Ogas like governors who have the power to award lucrative contracts – these insatiable types routinely demand bribes, dip their sticky fingers into any till they can access and just generally dedicate themselves to grabbing as many ill-gotten gains as possible.

When I was a UK-based journalist, I interviewed a psychiatrist who worked with a charity that tried to save addicts from themselves; and she told me that while  most addicts desperately wanted to dump drugs, only a handful succeeded.

I strongly suspect that the same can be said of most of the corrupt Nigerians who happen to be in leadership positions. They probably regret the woes that their homeland endures because of their thieving and probably wish, deep down, that they weren’t as insanely greedy as they are. But they’ve been gripped by a mental illness that is extremely hard to cure. So, let’s liberate ourselves from their pathological lack of self-control and bring in some fresh new blood!

Credible opposition

IN serious countries, elections enable voters to get rid of leaders they don’t want, for whatever reason. Sadly, we have yet to enjoy this basic human right.

Because President Obama’s government has disappointed many Americans, many of the candidates that his Democratic Party fielded were trounced by their Republican rivals in the mid-term elections that took place last Tuesday.

I disagree with most of Obama’s opponents, but I am glad that they exist and are capable of defeating Obama and his allies on occasion. If Nigeria had an effective opposition party, we wouldn’t have to put up with the rubbish the PDP is inflicting on us. Our current rulers would either have to shape up or ship out.