By Mobolaji Sanusi Precisely on September 7, 2023, in faraway India, President Bola Tinubu, GCFR, made a profound statement with a penetrating effect on our collective psyche as a nation. He said: “We are not poor in knowledge. We are not poor in human resources. We are only poor in management and leadership.” This statement exposes our collective guilt as partakers in the mismanagement of our commonwealth, human resources, and knowledge endowment. Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, made a classification depicting an understanding of why a nation can be poor in “management and leadership.” This student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle aptly captured societal men and their cherished values when he said: “There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honour, and lovers of gain.” Obviously, the problems bedeviling the country are largely due to the dominance of state institutions by men and cronies who, according to Plato, are inordinately “lovers of gain.” Pointedly, this explains why efficient management and remarkable leadership are inherently threatened in our jurisdiction. Today, as never witnessed in the annals of this country, we live in a society that is largely inspired by systemic gain rather than patriotic fervour and hard work. Therein lies the problem of lack of respect for accountability, sound knowledge, probity, human capital, ease of doing business, and good leadership orientation. An aggregation of all these brings to the fore the corruptive effects requiring urgent meaningful action. And this urgent response remains the only way to stop our knowledge, rich human resource endowments, and wobbling institutions from further regressing into the abyss. In our country today, corruption has become a routine recurrence in daily life. Ease of doing business has become so problematic that nothing can get done without negotiating bribes with officials in charge — at the detriment of the jobs to be done. So endemically institutionalized is corruption that being invited by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, is no longer perturbing to Nigerians. No matter the gravity of alleged graft by public officials or politically exposed persons, or the weight of evidence against them and their cronies, the disturbing impression in the public domain is that after quite a few visits to the anti-corruption agencies, the matter will, with the effluxion of time, fizzle out of public consciousness. The intellectually versatile Tatalo Alamu aptly captured value degeneration and corrupt inclination in the country in his piece in The Nation newspaper titled “State Paralysis and Ethical Disorientation” of July 12, 2026, when he affirmatively stated: “In Nigeria, only fools play by the rules…” So many upright Nigerians have lost their positions while crooks have retained theirs or even got promoted for a “job well done.” What a country! No wonder the law in this country is akin to cobwebs where the upright get stuck while the crooked and those who circumvent the rules easily get through. And sincerely, save for a few exceptions in high-profile cases, this ugly trend has been the sad reality of the country’s public/institutional life. To be corrupt is to be rewarded with higher official responsibilities. We no longer see stealing from the public till or collection of bribes before approving what is good for individuals and our collective wellbeing as something wrong. Things have so degenerated that we now perceive the forceful demand and receipt of bribes/gratification as an ‘opportunity’ presented by the Almighty by occupants of positions who cart away whatever benefits can be seen or perceived at the expense of our collective growth. Most people now have an avaricious ‘gain’ mentality of grabbing anything in sight, with attendant policy distortions, and believing that there will be no repercussions since the system can be easily manipulated. This has left a deep financial gouge on the public till, with the teeming populace left to bear the brunt of excruciating reforms by successive governments. In recent times, yours sincerely has rigorously reflected on and welcomed the judiciary’s bold pronouncements on the issue of unexplained wealth brought before it by the anti-graft agencies. Abubakar Malami, SAN, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, recently forfeited 48 out of 57 identified properties across the North believed to have been acquired by him with unexplained income. Godwin Emefiele, former Central Bank Governor, also forfeited millions of dollars, investment assets, a 753-unit housing estate in Abuja, and properties in choice locations in Lagos, among others, to the Federal Government. A private businesswoman, Ms. Aisha Achimugu, with alleged links to a governor,
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