“There is shared responsibility or culpability between the elected officials or leaders and the society and since our elected officials were born and raised in our society, then one can posit that the responsibility falls squarely with our society.”
CULTURE change must be an indispensable part of any real effort to transform our nation, politically, socially, economically or otherwise. While this article is not saying that there are no problems in many of the developed nations of the world who insist on atonement and accountability before forgiveness as part of their societal norms and traditions, but because they insist on accountability and atonement as part of their justice system they have managed well and have not stagnated, nor have the vices of political and bureaucratic corruptions impeded their national development and the quality of life of their citizens in any adverse ways.
Frankly, in these countries corruption at any level is seriously frowned at by society and not rationalized like we often do by saying “it is his turn to eat, wait your turn”. The acceptable culture of any nation has an impact on the kind of life the people live, how they live, and what it is they hold dear as a society and people. Notwithstanding the views of majority of social critics and many Nigerians of all stripes, my views are further reinforced by the fact that military and civilian governments have come and gone, but the issues facing our beloved country have remained and in most cases have gone from bad to worse as demonstrated by the deplorable conditions of our roads, epileptic nature of power supply, failed educational system, to endemic corruption in all facets of our national life, total absence of pipe borne water anywhere in Nigeria and complete infrastructural decay across the land.
There is shared responsibility or culpability between the elected officials or leaders and the society and since our elected officials were born and raised in our society, then one can posit that the responsibility falls squarely with our society. These are all issues that that are yearning for solutions and that requires CULTURE CHANGE for us as a people to begin to address these challenges and that effort must begin from our homes, towns, various state’s, schools and houses of worship.
The solution to all that ails our country is CULTURE CHANGE, as that essentially means doing away with all our existing vices, norms and traditions that promotes the current state of lawlessness, corruption and financial malfeasance, like SPRAYING MONEY, FORGIVENESS without ATONEMENT and TRIBALISM to name a few, while embracing PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, MORAL AND ETHICAL STANDARDS, ATONEMENT and TRANSPARENCY at all levels. This change must begin from the ground up because when we embrace it as a people, it will TRANSFORM us fundamentally in how we see ourselves, our role in society and the values we hold dear as a people.
Consequently, and with this new transformation of our society, a new quality of leaders will now start to emerge from amongst the people that is not burdened by the vestiges of a quid pro quo norms of our currently corrupt and irredeemable civil service nor a symbiotic corrupt relationships between the elected officials and their electors. This drive for change must target our civil service and all government bureaucracies as they are the CORRUPTION LABORATORY or CORRUPTION UNIVERSITY in our country, because these institutions are mostly the feeder system to political office or leadership in our country and if we need to grow and facilitate transparent leadership, CULTURE CHANGE must start and take root in our civil service and other government agencies.
When you consider a basket of rotten tomatoes as your sample population, the probability of randomly picking a good sample is statistically near zero, while the probability of randomly picking a bad or rotten tomato from the basket of rotten tomatoes is statistically near one. Consequently, to improve the odds of picking a good tomato sample we must replace the basket of rotten tomatoes with a basket of good tomatoes. Similarly, when we consider a basket of good tomatoes, the probability of randomly picking a good tomato sample is statistically near 1, while it is near zero for the probability of randomly picking a bad tomatoes from a basket of good tomatoes.
Thus in other to improve the odds of our embracing and enthroning good governance and transparent leadership at all levels we must replace the existing acceptable norms, cultures and traditions that promotes the wrong values in our society today and replace them with a new culture that promotes integrity, ethics, transparency and accountability at all levels and above all a culture that demands atonement as a condition for forgiveness. Culture Change will mean that a contractor will not just collect contract mobilization fees and abandon the project, but will execute the job according to the terms of the contracts and failure to do so will lead to severe consequences including prosecution, asset forfeitures and possible jail time.
However, it is abundantly clear at this point that this writer is of the view that our society bears a fair share of the blame for the culture of corruption in our country, because the political leaders are from our society and enjoys support from the society and therefore in other to change our country and enthrone ethical and transparent governance we must change the cultural norms of our society, hence my advocacy for culture change from the ground up as an imperative and the only solution to transforming our nation and society: thereby resolving our innumerable problems and enthroning good governance and transparent leadership at all levels.
An outside the box thinker will observe that in organizational leadership the powers rest with the head of the organization who has the power to set the vision for the organization, hire and fire any employee that is not performing to standard or upholding the company’s values. Similarly in the parlance of political and national governance the real power and sovereignty rests with the people as they retain the power to fire, hire and set the direction for the country, thus a large share of the responsibility is on our society for tolerating corruption and bad political governance when we retain the rights to hire and fire them. This article and this writer hopes that this write up is contextualized and not taken in anyway as an attempt to minimize the failures of our political leaders and their responsibility in the cesspool of corruption in Nigeria.
Osaikhuiwu is a project manager and trainer based in Houston, Texas, USA
