by Joe Ogbechie
In 2016, David Cameron—then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom—called Nigeria “fantastically corrupt.” He said it to the Queen. The Queen, God bless her poker face, did not flinch. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, immediately jumped to defend President Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade. And Nigerians? Nigerians erupted.
We were insulted. We were furious. We were—and this is the part that matters—not entirely surprised.
That is the ostrich acceptance. Not ignorance. Not denial. The knowing. The seeing. The benefiting. The complaining. And then the shrugging. The ostrich does not bury its head because it does not know the lion is there. It buries its head because it has decided that seeing the lion is worse than being eaten by it.
We are a nation of ostriches. And we are running out of sand.
Who said it matters, but not the way you think
Words mean much. “When beggars die there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes” — Shakespeare wrote it in Julius Caesar, and Cameron seemed to know it too. He knew that calling Nigeria corrupt from a position of British power would sting differently than if, say, a random Welshman had said it. He knew the word would travel. He knew it would land.
He was right. It landed. And it landed because it was true.
Now, Buhari’s detractors had a field day. Some Nigerians wanted Buhari to go full Trump on Cameron—insult for insult, tweet for tweet, strongman for strongman. Others wanted him to wave the flag and deny everything. Buhari, to his credit or his detriment depending on who you ask, simply admitted it. Yes, Nigeria is corrupt. Yes, Nigerians are corrupt. Yes, it is fantastic.
You could hear the collective gasp from Lagos to London. A Nigerian president admitting corruption? Without blaming the West? Without mentioning colonialism? Without a single “it is not our fault”?
Revolutionary. Truly revolutionary. There is a line, often attributed to Orwell, that in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. Whoever said it first was right — though he forgot to mention that the revolutionary often gets crucified first. Buhari said the truth. Half of Nigeria wanted to build a statue for him. The other half wanted to build a gallows.
The gradient of corruption
Here is a truth that will annoy everyone: corruption in Nigeria is proportional to what you can get away with. That is it. That is the whole formula. The man at the top with access to billions bags billions. The woman at the desk with access to thousands bags thousands. The police officer at the checkpoint with access to your wallet bags your wallet. The customs officer at the airport—the one who is supposed to teach you that the law is faceless—is the first person to teach you that the law has a price list.
It is not that Nigerians are uniquely evil. It is that the incentives are uniquely perverse. Everyone is playing the same game. The rules are simple: take what you can, when you can, because everyone else is doing it and the system will punish you for being a fool.
But here is the thing I did not mention earlier. It is not just money. Money is measurable. Money is quantifiable. Money is, in a strange way, honest. The worst corruption is the invisible kind. The corruption of character. Poverty of individual character is a permanent repellent of personal integrity. And when character is bankrupt, the whole society goes bankrupt with it. Apathy becomes the antonym of civility. We stop caring about each other. We stop caring about the country. We stop caring about anything except our own survival.
That is the real corruption. The kind you cannot put in a budget. The kind you cannot prosecute. The kind that lives in the mirror.
It is not me. It is them.
No Nigerian will admit to being corrupt. Not one. We are all innocent. We are all victims. We are all just trying to survive in a broken system. The corruption is always somewhere else—in Abuja, in the churches, in the police, in the customs, in the politicians, in the “them.”
But come on. Let us be honest. The society takes breaks from corruption—does it? Church time. Surely we are not corrupt in church. Well. That depends on which church. The one with the private jet? The one where the pastor tells you to sow a seed of a hundred thousand naira so God can bless you with a million? The one where the “man of God” lives in a mansion while the widow beside you gives her last coin?
You know the one.
The church administrators. The church Daddies and Mummies. The prophets and prophetesses. The apostles male and female. These are the people who pray the most. These are the people through whom other members see God. They sow the seed of hopeful fear into the poverty of our minds and reap the widow’s mite. That is corruption too. It is just wearing a cassock.
And the workplace. Ah, the workplace. Ask for something—anything—that is rightfully yours. A service. A document. A signature. The instinctive gratification request kicks in. The employee being paid to do the job will not do the job until you gratify them for their trouble. And then—and this is the beautiful part—that same employee will be the first to tell you that nothing works in this country. He is not corrupt. How dare you. He is just surviving.
The police? “Oga, we dey here ooo.” Translation: “Sir, we are here, and you will pay us for the privilege of our presence.” The soldiers? They are supposed to be more honorable. They are not. The customs? They are supposed to introduce you to the facelessness of the law. Instead, they introduce you to the price list.
Everyone is a player. The ball has not been passed to you yet. That does not mean you are not on the team.
The cure starts with the disease
A known disease is half cured. They say that. They also say that doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is insanity. Nigeria has been doing the same thing repeatedly for sixty years. We are not insane. We are something worse. We are comfortable.
We quote the notables. We post the quotes. We retweet the outrage. We change the narrative. We change it every four years. And nothing changes.
We need a balanced training of leadership mindset. We need to train the trainers. Who will train the trainer? How can a leader today teach what they know little or nothing about? Octavio H. Diogo wrote about the crisis of leadership or crisis of values in Africa. I read it. I nodded. I agreed. And then I asked the question that nobody wants to answer: who will train the trainer?
Because the trainer is also an ostrich. The trainer also pays bribes. The trainer also cuts corners. The trainer also blames the system. The trainer also says “it is not me, it is them.”
What can be done differently
I am not going to give you a ten-point plan. I am not a politician. I am not a pastor. I am not a prophet. I am just a Nigerian who is tired of the ostrich dance.
But here is what I know. The cure does not start with the government. It does not start with the president. It does not start with the church. It does not start with the police. It starts with you. And it starts with the next bribe you are asked for.
Will you pay it? Will you laugh it off? Will you say “that is how it is”? Will you say “everyone does it”? Will you say “it is not my fault”?
Or will you be the fool? The one who refuses. The one who says no. The one who insists on doing it right even when doing it wrong is easier, cheaper, and more popular.
The ostrich buries its head. The rest of us call it survival. The question is not whether Nigeria is corrupt. We know the answer to that. The question is whether you will pass the bribe the next time it is asked of you.
The next time it is asked.
And the next.
And the next.
I would have loved to quote Hon. Patrick Obahiagbon here—his grammar is a thing of wonder, a lexical gymnastics routine that leaves you breathless and confused and oddly uplifted. But the Nigerian situation is not a fable. It is not a joke. It is not a Shakespearean tragedy. It is a comedy. A dark one. And we are all in the cast, whether we auditioned or not.
The only question is whether you will keep reading your lines, or whether you will walk off the stage.
I am walking off.
Who is coming with me?
Here, we challenge you to be a part of the whole.
