Consumption > Legitimate Income – My Simple Equation for Determining Corruption/Illegitimate Earnings

My mother once told me that my father almost joined the Nigerian Army. Just as she prevented him from doing so, she also disallowed me from being educated in schools attended by children of servicemen. Nevertheless, I have ended up spending most of my life growing up around folks in the armed forces.

My non-biological Dad in whose tow my Dad would have joined the Army retired as a Colonel. I spent most of my service year in 1988/89 between the premises of Plateau Publishing Company (Standard Newspapers), Bukavu barracks in Kano, Rukuba barracks in Jos, and the Nigerian Defence Academy in Kaduna. I eventually carried out a doctoral research on military history. So, I know a little bit of what the Nigerian armed forces used to stand for, the standard that used to obtain and the disciplined non-frivolous life most of its personnel in the 1970s to late 1980s were known for. Then, you rarely see the family of a Nigerian Army General with more than two cars as personal possessions – one of which would belong to the wife who is more likely to be a professional in her own right or a legitimate business woman. Such cars were of the same brand as you would find in the possession of an average Nigerian middle class family, typically the Peugeot 504 and later 505 brands. Exotic or luxurious cars owned by armed forces personnel were not the vogue. The few you found were either bought second-hand or in certain cases bestowed on the officers by parents known in society to have done well as entrepreneurs.

That was then, until the advent of the 1990s and the Babangida regime. Then, the word or phrase ‘settlement’ entered Nigeria’s lexicon, and we started to witness Nigerian armed forces personnel in possession of personal vehicles whose values could not be justified by their known official and legitimate earnings.

Unfortunately, most Nigerians under the age of 35 did not know the Nigeria of my youth. Neither have they had the opportunity to know standards obtainable in other nations against which they can benchmark the Nigerian society as well as public service holders. All they know, is the Nigeria Babangida left us with. A Nigeria: of settlements; of big-manism; of impunity; of ‘my mercedes is bigger than yours’; of owning exotic properties and cars that cannot be legitimately accounted for. Consequently, they cannot see anything wrong in the current exposition of looters of our commonwealth by the Buhari regime.

Going back to my equation, my simple means of judging if a man’s wealth is legitimate or questionable is by ascertaining whether his consumption is less than/equal to his earnings, or if the consumption is greater than all ascribable earnings. When I enter the personal compound of a serving Nigerian Armed Forces personnel (or a civil service official for that matter), a quick valuation of his house runs into millions of Naira, owned cars are more than 3 among which are vehicles that cost more than N10m apiece, I get suspicious that ‘the snake has gotten a well hidden hand’ – Ejo l’owo ninu.

So, I am not surprised by the allegation against the former NSA. But the rot goes beyond him to all those who have headed our armed forces as well as the police in the last 25 years.

As I previously wrote, if only the middle and lower echelon of the Nigerian Armed Forces and the Nigerian Police would realise and understand that they are intertwined in fate and suffering with the masses, they will not be brutalising those they are meant to protect. Rather, they would be aligning with the aspirations of the Nigerian people by venting their anger and frustrations on their bosses that have conspired to impoverish them.

N.B.

With the benefit of hindsight, maybe Mum was right after all. It was as if she knew the child she bore had within him a rebellious streak at odds with his passion for the regimental, hierarchical but disciplined life of the armed forces.
My big mouth of challenging authority behaving badly may have earned me being roped into one of the numerous coup d’etats in the history of Nigeria, and I may have ended not being the one writing this post.