BY IDUH ONAH
NIGERIA’s underdevelopment is usually explained through a familiar vocabulary: corruption, poor leadership, weak institutions, policy inconsistency and insecurity. While all these are true, they are however largely symptoms rather than the disease itself. Beneath them lies a deeper moral crisis that receives far less attention than it deserves: the deadly partnership between greed and selfishness.
The two are closely related but distinct. Greed is the excessive desire for wealth, power or privilege. Selfishness is the willingness to pursue personal gain regardless of the harm inflicted on others. Greed asks, “What more can I get?” Selfishness asks: “Why should I care who suffers because I got it?” Together, they have hollowed out Nigeria’s institutions, economy and social fabric.
Perhaps greed’s greatest casualty is social trust. Citizens lose confidence that honesty and hard work will be fairly rewarded. Investors lose confidence in public institutions. Rules become obstacles to evade rather than standards to uphold. Public life degenerates into a scramble in which every individual seeks advantage at everyone else’s expense.
Corruption is simply greed armed with opportunity and protected by selfishness. With corruption, public office ceases to be a platform for service and becomes a gateway to personal enrichment; national or state budgets become feeding troughs, and government agencies become private estates.
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The greatest tragedy is not merely that public resources are stolen, but that those who steal them display astonishing indifference to the millions condemned to poorer schools, collapsing hospitals, poorly constructed and maintained roads, infrastructure and failing public institutions.
This contradiction is perhaps most striking in our public morality. Nigeria is one of the world’s most visibly religious societies. Places of worship dominate our landscape. Meetings begin and end with prayers with eloquent and impressive quotations from the Holy books. Ironically, moral restraint often disappears the moment wealth or power comes within reach. The problem therefore is not a shortage of religion but a shortage of ethics to correspond with the spiritual expression to produce public integrity.
Even institutions expected to provide moral leadership have not escaped this affliction. In too many cases, the pursuit of influence, prestige and material success has become difficult to distinguish from the pursuit of virtue. Piety is displayed publicly while selfishness quietly governs private conduct.
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The consequences are evident everywhere. Examination malpractice flourishes because certificates are valued above knowledge and integrity is routinely exchanged for cash. Merit becomes negotiable, competence declines, and excellence becomes optional. No country develops when rewards are disconnected from effort.
The same pattern weakens businesses and public institutions. Organisations frequently collapse not because markets fail them, but because those entrusted with their survival treat corporate resources as personal property. Inventories disappear, accounts are manipulated, contracts inflated and productivity sacrificed for private gain.
The public service offers, perhaps, the clearest illustration. Files move only after palms are greased; projects exist impressively on paper but mysteriously disappear on the ground; roads deteriorate; hospitals decay, and schools crumble despite repeated budgetary allocations. Public infrastructure remains trapped in an endless cycle of appropriation, abandonment and decay.
At the highest levels of governance, the consequences become even more severe. Chinua Achebe famously argued that Nigeria’s problem is leadership. True; but leadership failure itself is often nothing more than organised greed. Across all strata of government, public office has become, for many, a shortcut to astonishing private wealth. The public good shrinks while private fortunes expand.
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The question, however, is: should only politicians carry the blame? For me, the answer is No! Since leaders emerge from society, and do not descend from another planet, they ultimately manifest the predominant character of the society that produce them. The uncomfortable truth is that greed and selfishness have become democratised. It thrives in markets, schools, offices, boardrooms, religious institutions and homes.
Until personal ambition is restrained by concern for the common good, Nigeria’s development aspirations will remain elusive. The challenge before us is not merely political or economic but profoundly moral. Until we confront that reality, our development will remain more aspiration than achievement.
This explains why anti-corruption campaigns repeatedly disappoint. We condemn corruption in theory while celebrating its beneficiaries in practice. Wealth, regardless of its source, commands admiration. Individuals whose fortunes deserve scrutiny are honoured with titles, applauded at ceremonies and presented as role models. We claim to despise corruption while worshipping its proceeds.
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Sometime in 2009, Mrs Farida Waziri, shortly after her appointment as Chair of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), paid a courtesy visit to the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) at its Paschal Bafyau Labour House National Secretariat in Abuja to seek the labour movement’s support for the national anti-corruption campaign and discuss challenges within the criminal justice system. One memorable comment she made, amongst others, was that in Nigeria, everybody talks about corruption and condemns it such that made her wonder who was carrying out the corruption.
Mrs Waziri’s remark is still relevant today as it was seven years ago because of its strongly embedded paradox. The connecting link in unravelling the paradox is the inherent greed and selfishness in Nigeria. Greed and selfishness destroy merit. Under a system moderated by these twin evils, nepotism, favouritism and patronage replace competence. Positions meant for the qualified are reserved for relatives, political loyalists and personal associates. Institutions inevitably weaken because excellence is systematically excluded.
It also fuels insecurity. Resources intended for public welfare and security are diverted. Opportunities become concentrated in the hands of a privileged minority while millions of young people confront unemployment and hopelessness. Criminality flourishes where opportunity disappears. Insecurity is therefore not merely a policing problem; it is also the predictable consequence of moral failure.
Perhaps greed’s greatest casualty is social trust. Citizens lose confidence that honesty and hard work will be fairly rewarded. Investors lose confidence in public institutions. Rules become obstacles to evade rather than standards to uphold. Public life degenerates into a scramble in which every individual seeks advantage at everyone else’s expense.
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No nation can sustainably develop under such conditions. Economic reforms, constitutional amendments and anti-corruption agencies can only achieve limited success if the culture that rewards greed remains intact. Development is ultimately as much a moral project as it is an economic one.
There is an African proverb that warns that when a rat is entrusted with a basket of dried fish, extraordinary discipline is required for it not to become both guard and thief. Nigeria’s tragedy is that too many custodians of the commonwealth have become enthusiastic thieves while society applauds their ingenuity instead of condemning their betrayal.
We continue to commission roads that soon become rivers of potholes, celebrate fortunes that provoke more questions than admiration, and lament failing institutions while rewarding those responsible for their failure. Like a farmer who repeatedly burns his own barn and then complains of hunger, we manufacture the very crises we later condemn.
Corruption is not Nigeria’s deepest disease. It is merely the most visible symptom. The real disease our social acceptance of greed and selfishness as legitimate organising principles of our public life.
Until personal ambition is restrained by concern for the common good, Nigeria’s development aspirations will remain elusive. The challenge before us is not merely political or economic but profoundly moral. Until we confront that reality, our development will remain more aspiration than achievement.
Onah is the Editor-in-Chief of NATIONAL RECORD and writes this column every Wednesday. Send reactions via email to: nationalrecordng@gmail.com, onahiduh@yahoo.co.uk. WhatsApp: +234 8033209749
