Nigeria as a country for so long has been in the fight against this ugly beast called ” corruption “. Various past government and successive ones have done their utmost best to defeat this beast that is savaging, polluting, and denting Nigeria’s image in the global sector. Their efforts have proven to be abortive and it has even escalated over the years with all efforts to curtail it.
One is seriously bewildered on why corruption seems to be very difficult to deal with in Nigeria, even with so many efforts put in place by the government to sanitize all levels of government.
The Buhari-led government came into power with the pact of eradicating corruption by prioritizing it on their manifesto, which should be accomplished when they come into power. But we haven’t seen that promise fulfilled, though some pragmatic efforts were made. Corruption has escalated and the rate of financial embezzlement still outweighs that of its previous government.
Why does corruption in Nigeria seem so impregnable? Could it be that we are only treating its leaves and not the roots? It just seems to be the prospect!
In fighting corruption, we have to study it, know its origin, and how it operates to do a successful wipe out of it.
Contrary to popular belief, corruption doesn’t start at the government level but in the families of Nigerians. The AIG of police was once asked “why is it that policemen are so corrupt?” He replied by saying That “the police was taken from the corrupt society”. Truth be told, every society is a combination of families. The corrupt policeman, politician, lawyer, doctor, etc all came from a family and their behavior and personality disposition are all sharpened by the various families they owe their aborigines.
In tackling the issue of corruption let’s look inwards rather than outwards. Let marriage counseling be made compulsory, so that people know what they’re getting into, to prevent future domestic violence, parents absenteeism which of course is the reason why most kids in Nigeria grew up in broken homes and are broken in life.
A birth control policy should also be in place and should be enforced by the government (Let families only give birth to the number of children they can take care of within their means).
In countries like China, because of their explosive population demography a birth control policy was put in place from 1980-to 2016 which is known as the one-child policy which has been relaxed now to accommodate two to three kids per family. The Chinese government was trying to control its population growth which was termed too rapid for the population not to outweigh the human and natural resources needed to accommodate such a population.
In Nigeria, the population is growing exponentially, with most families giving birth to more children than they can train. And even with the advent of family planning most families in this country still frown at it. Nigeria is considered the most populous black nation in the world with the population still on the increase, yet no sustainable plan to manage our population expansion. On the aspect of education, we have failed as a country in providing free education for our citizens which of course gives the reason why we have 10.5 million children out of school in Nigeria, which is the highest rate in the world. Why would we not struggle with corruption and insecurity because most of these out-of-school children have no families that can cater to them which would later become breeding grounds for bandits and banditry in the country as we see in the northeast? If we don’t buy books as a country, we would buy more bullets to kill the growing population that we cannot curtail. Therefore, let the government enact the birth control policy and put its effort into seeing that the families are in proper shape to guarantee healthy nation-building.
