Once again,
One unique charisma about Nigerians is that they show respect to their colleague in Authority; imposed or voted by fair or foul, I and fellow countrymen are ready to obey them. The authorities are known with gruesome flaws, we overlook them, since we are highly reputed to remain the best Rules observers in
Just to be a law into themselves, they take junket from
We are intoxicated with politics. The premium on political power is so high that we are prone to take the most extreme measures in order to win and maintain political power, our energy tends to be channeled into the struggle for power to the detriment of economically productive effort, and we habitually seek political solutions to virtually every problem. Such are the manifestations of the over politicization of social life in
What we have seen therefore is that because of the winner-takes-it all attitudes that permeate our political lexicon, any one who looses an election in any political party quickly gravitates towards the ruling party. The important thing is being at the corridors of power at all cost. That is why you find Chairmen of some political parties leaving office to become Special Advisers to the President. That is why the PDP Chairman would run errands for Mr. President and then go to Aso Rock to report. On no account should the Chairman of a political party report like a school boy to a Headmaster, to a President made by his own political party. But we saw that. No wonder then Mr. President suddenly now saw him as a dispensable syringe that could be thrown into the garbage heap of history after being used. So the only opposition that we have had because of the moribund nature of these opposition political parties who are all swimming towards the ruling one threatening to make
Many early reactions portrayed the election riggers as a bunch of power-hungry politicians, with no appreciation for democracy, eager to dip their hands into the nation’s coffers. This is a gross misreading of the flaw. The new government may, in the end, fail the expectations of the Nigerian people as badly as previous governments have, but it has swept into power on a deep tide of disillusionment and disgust with civilian politics. Its primary purpose appears overwhelmingly to have been national salvation, not personal aggrandizement. Its motivating spirit has been popular and redemptive, not authoritarian.
What caused the electoral malpractice was not the ambitions of the politicians. The decay of the country under eight years of civilian rule had three components: staggering corruption, crippling economic waste and mismanagement, and the vitiating of the electoral process through violence and fraud.
It is another misconception to argue, as many Western newspapers have, that corruption under the last regime was no worse than it had been under previous regimes, and hence was only an excuse for the massive vote rigging. In fact, corruption in
Continually, the newspapers published exposes of fantastic corruption, something much more than business as usual. Force, fraud, oppression, looting are openly displayed without any attempt at concealment, and it requires an effort to discover within this tangle of political violence and contests of power the stern laws of the economic process. In reality, political power is nothing but a vehicle for the economic process. The conditions for the reproduction of capital provide the organic link between these two aspects of the accumulation of capital. The historical career of capitalism can only be appreciated by taking them together. ‘Sweating blood and filth with every pore from head to toe’ characterizes not only the birth of capital but also its progress in the world at every step, arid thus capitalism prepares its own downfall under ever more violent contortions and convulsions…
This is not a time of radical, revolutionary politics. Not yet. Unrest, riot, dissent and chaos notwithstanding, today’s politics is reactionary. Both left and right are reactionary and bureaucracy. That is to say: Both are political. They seek only to revise current methods of acquiring and wielding political power. Radical and revolutionary movements seek not to revise but to revoke. The target of revocation should be obvious. The target is politics itself. They have had their sights trained on politics for some time. As governments fail around the world, as more millions become aware that government never has and never can humanely and effectively manage men’s affairs, government’s own inadequacy will emerge, at last, as the basis for a truly radical and revolutionary movement.
We must continue to explain to the working class and youth that the perennial failure of
Cases of looters and plunderers should be re-opened in view to get back the looted money. I strongly condemned the recent series of indiscriminate attacks in the country; Government should curtail them, arrested the situation, So that people would come together as the voice of the nation.
President Umaru Yar’Adua has been urged to publish the names of past leaders and serving politicians who looted the nation’s treasury and stashed such funds in bank accounts overseas. We cannot “win” a decisive battle against fraud. We need to be eternally vigilant against fraud and work cooperatively with other nations. The Institute for Fraud Prevention (IFP) can help build those alliances—and CPAs and lawyers are vital to the effort. CPAs ensure the reliable accounting essential to any well-functioning enterprise; lawyers have taken the lead in helping to create a rule of law in emerging states.
The time-tested virtues of independence, professional skepticism and competence have never been so important. We have to take control fraud (that is, fraud perpetrated by management) seriously—that means recording it when we detect it and conducting research to learn how to spot it before it causes catastrophic damage.
