By Sunny Ikhioya
MAN is under the classification of animal and therefore, has the characteristics of selfishness – me, my family, siblings, clans, tribe, state, region, country, etc comes first.  Even amongst siblings, when it comes to sharing of spoils, there is  disagreement. In the family tradition, as soon as one becomes a man or gets married, one’s interests and decisions as it concerns the family are respected. How you run your family, how you fend for yourself and how you relate with friends and outsiders, is your own business, except, where issues concerning the whole family crops up, then you will be invited to offer your own contribution or views. That way there is peace in the society.

This logic can be extended to the amalgamation of ethnic groups in Nigeria. Before the intervention of the British colonialists, tribes were on their own, self governing, self sustaining and if there was need to deal with people from the outside, such are mutually agreed upon, especially as it concerns trade and commerce.

When the British brought all of these ethnic groups together in the amalgamation of 1914 to form a country named Nigeria, all of these basic rules of self government by individual tribes were thrown overboard. Consequently, the country Nigeria came into being but existed less as a nation. This has been the foundation of all the disruptions or contradictions that we find today which also includes the so much talked about corruption. There is no way we can effectively tackle the issue of corruption in the country, today, if we are not united in vision and purpose. There must be a way of bringing all of these people together willingly and make them contribute to the overall goal.

This will be possible if the leadership is willing to accept the true situation of things, as they are. The British had no stake in the ethnic composition of Nigeria and so did not care how the people relate. That is why they left the country this way – very much divided – at the time of our independence in 1960 and it did not take six years for the whole structure to come tumbling down. The fears of 1960 were tribalism, nepotism and oppression of the big tribe over the smaller ones and so on. The same fear exist today, in 2017, fifty seven years after.

Leaders have used their positions at the national level to advance themselves, cronies and ethnic groups, to the detriment of others. That is the source of Nigeria’s problems because, it has made it possible for people to get to the top unjustly and when they get there, they perpetuate the cycle. The biggest corruption that can ever happen in a society is when leadership is unjustly imposed on the people. It is said that ‘when the head is rotten, all other parts follow accordingly’. This has been the burden of Nigerians.

You cannot fight corruption successfully, if your people do not believe in the anti corruption fight. This is why, in two years, the Nigerian situation has progressively got worse. People no longer believe in the system and instead of investing, they are taking their money out of the country. The leadership has not given them the required confidence. If the people have been given enough cause to build confidence in the system, there will be no cause for sabotage of our oil pipelines, which has caused drastic drop in our revenue earnings, reduce our ability to trade internationally, reducing the value of the naira which is responsible for a recession that has refused to abate for a year now.

If the people are sabotaging the system, it means that they have no confidence in the system and whatever  makes them  lack confidence in the system must be looked into. The sum of its part is greater than the whole in a country’s situation. It is therefore very important to strengthen its parts. In other words, make the parts viable for the whole to be strong. That should be the focus of our strategy, it is said that ‘united we stand, divided we fall’. We have become too divided that our fall or descent have become so obvious. It is a surprise that we are wasting time on several programmes and ventures, forgetting that, without a proper foundation, nothing will work out right, no matter how hard we try to make it.

People are surprised that the entire country’s economy is undergoing recession, while that of Lagos state is stable or on the rise. They have failed to find out why that of Lagos is so. They have refused to recognise the fact that Lagos is a state that accepts all without discrimination and as it gives to you, it expects a reciprocal response from you. As a result, structures have been institutionalised, that will keep the state afloat, no matter who becomes governor of the state.

That is what is lacking at the federal government level. Do not tell me that there is no corruption in Lagos state because, for the past two years, I have been trying to procure a document from one of the ministries and still waiting to get it . But overall, the things work in Lagos state.

The pathway to our moving forward as a nation, is to try as much as possible to achieve unity. This can never come through with witch hunting or persecution of perceived enemies. It is clear that our methods of tackling corruption have failed and is causing more division amongst the populace, irrespective of  what the authorities’ claima are.

We have to forget the past, build afresh and focus on the future, beginning with, a genuine reconciliation plan, so many interests have been bruised and the hurt will not go away easily. Next is to identify the ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. There  are more than three hundred of such nationalities. There is need to bring  them together, through their selected representatives, to decide on the pathway forward for Nigeria and how they want to be governed.

It is important for all voices to be heard, as they say, ‘the minority will have their say but the majority will have their way’. It is important for all to be involved, that way, no group will feel alienated or marginalised.