by Abimbola Adelakun

Mundane acts like stealing might not be immediately classifiable as “corruption” if viewed in a micro sense, but they are a symptom all the same. Trying to separate them is like a Biology teacher who wants to explain the growth of legumes without the pod. Corruption is like HIV.

Recently, President Goodluck Jonathan refuted the World Bank’s statistics that place Nigeria among five countries that contain the world’s extreme poor. The President took a long and circuitous route to counter the World Bank by giving several examples of what make Nigeria a “rich” nation. He noted that Nigerians are one of the most travelled people in the world; he pointed at the richest black man in the world, Aliko Dangote, as an indication that businesses can succeed in Nigeria; he announced that Nigerians have one of the highest ownership of private jets in the world and even less fortunate African countries like Kenya salivate over this; and that a certain amount of money does not mean anything to Nigerians because, well, we have too much of it. Jonathan then concluded that Nigeria’s problem was not one of poverty, but redistribution of wealth.

He could have lengthened his list by pointing at the number of Nigerian students schooling abroad and how they contribute to building those countries’ education enterprise through the billions of dollars they pay as school fees; the rate at which Nigerians travel abroad for medical care; the increasing number of Nigerians who go to Dubai to stage fanciful weddings; the amount of money Nigerians shelled out for an evening with Kim Kardashian, something even an average American would never have paid for the same show; the humongous amount we spend on religious tourism annually; and all other money we invest in other countries’ economies when we go abroad for our vanity fairs.

These, although testify to the amount of money available in Nigeria, they, ironically, confirm how poor we are.

One reason Jonathan went round in that long disingenuous circle to explain away World Bank’s figures was his characteristic denial of reality. He did not want to have to admit that what is eating up Nigeria is corruption, and so he perambulated to eventually settle on “redistribution.” Who talks about redistribution in a country where there are no coherent social mechanisms to effect the transfer of wealth? We don’t even have a well-developed taxation system.

How, for instance, do you redistribute wealth between a governor who owns a private jet and the university graduate in his constituency whose primary means of employment is a motorcycle? Should talking about redistribution even come up at all?

It is possible the President believes his own yarn and he is convinced that because Nigerians travel everywhere, because they procure private jets like they are toys, and can afford to look down on certain sums of money, it means Nigeria is not a poor country. It is conceivable that for someone who grew up in poverty, his conception of it has changed to the point that he sees only what he wants to see.

His contention of the World Bank’s position, really, is to avoid talking about corruption and its debilitating effect on the nation. If he should point out the actual reason Nigerians are one of the highest owners of private jets in the world, he would be hitting too close to home. It is obvious that that is a conversation he would rather not have, not with his minions insisting he is solving the corruption problem.

In a presidential media chat, the one he had in October last year, the President stated that Nigeria’s corruption was not even the country’s number one problem but the third. The first two problems, he claimed, were access to finance and infrastructure. I don’t know why else –other than his persistent habit of downplaying the role of corruption in crippling our systems – he would imagine that corruption being number three on the list of Nigeria’s issues is not bad enough; as if even if corruption were on top of the list, it would compel any urgency in him. With that assertion, he carefully sidestepped a proper engagement with the topic and sadly enough, he was not prodded enough.

The village square format of the presidential media chat, I must say, helps him give shallow responses to questions that require profound treatment.

 Again, in January, when Jonathan was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he reiterated the same point: That Africa’s biggest problem is not corruption. He blamed security – and the growing problem of Boko Haram – instead.

 The latest instance of his attitude to corruption was reflected at his last presidential media chat on Sunday, where his dismissal of corruption as our biggest issue was anchored on a pedestrian conception of what corruption even means. Jonathan claimed stealing is not corruption; that 70 per cent of what Nigerians describe as corruption is just “stealing.”

Somehow, with the example he stated on Sunday, his palongo dance around corruption no longer looks like denial. All these instances where he disclaims corruption cannot be a mere coincidence. It could be that, genuinely, the President just does not understand what corruption is all about, and why it is consistently implicated in the dysfunctionality of Nigerian/African societies. Maybe, he does not even see corruption as a scaffold that enables the brokenness of a nation’s system to thrive. Corruption is not limited to a country’s economic activities; it coopts the social and cultural systems.

Mundane acts like stealing might not be immediately classifiable as “corruption” if viewed in a micro sense, but they are a symptom all the same. Trying to separate them is like a Biology teacher who wants to explain the growth of legumes without the pod. Corruption is like HIV. It is not what kills you but it wrecks your immune system and opens you up to opportunistic infections. Without suppressing the viral load of corruption in Nigeria’s system, all other economic approaches you want to embark on are a waste of everybody’s time.

No, you cannot talk about redistribution in a system where a whopping $20bn goes missing and the most intelligent response the President has to offer is that if such money were truly missing, “America will know, because it is their money.” His point –from my interpretation of it – is that because the money is denominated in dollars, it will flag an alarm in their systems somewhere. Really?

With such a mindset, maybe, the President is right after all. Perhaps, Nigeria’s problem is not corruption but that we are stuck with leaders like Jonathan.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.