Anti-corruption experts have said that Nigerian and African leaders must change their ways as citizens of the country and Africans are tired of lack of accountability, corruption, poverty and bad governance.
At the African Business Ethics Conference held virtually on Wednesday, organised by the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) and other partners, Haroune Sidatt, West African representative of Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), said the growing and deepening divide seen in Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso and other West African countries were caused by lack of purposeful governance and accountability, urging leaders of these countries to wake up to their responsibilities.
“It is caused by the inability of leaders to implement programmes,” he said, on the second day of the event.
He noted that most people in the West African region sympathised with extremists because they felt that Western democracy brought corruption among the elite and were unable to tame it due to lip service and hypocrisy.
“People associate democracy with corruption and try to seek alternatives. And that is what these extremists are leveraging. Therefore, people in our countries are having some sympathy with these extremist groups due to this,” he said.
He pointed out that with the amount of money and resources going to Mali, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, it was difficult to understand the level of instability in these countries.
Ayisha Osori, lawyer and executive director of Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), noted that the competence of the people managing state resources in West Africa was weak.
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He said from 2021, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) countries, including Nigeria, would begin to publish their contracts, describing it as a step in the right direction.
She said OSIWA was set up to strengthen regulatory framework, support regional campaigns, engage the public and hold public officers to account.
She advised honest and corrupt-free Nigerians to move into politics to save the nation.
“Political parties as leadership development are broken. Politics are filled with people who are not the productive members of the society. I would not hire them, but these are people who decide who gets into power.”
George Ehusani, a Catholic priest and morality crusader, said a lot of people did not have integrity as they cared less about legacies and personal ethics.
He said many politicians were at the lowest level (physiological level) of Moslow’s hierarchy of needs, which was why their only ambition was to grab.
“This is why we call it primitive greed. Our happiness should be how to make others happy, not how to keep them down. In Nigeria, we have this concept of “I better pass my neighbour,” meaning that I am happy that I am better than my neighbour. We have not nurtured any sense of patriotism,” he said.
He stressed the need for everyone to begin to critique the value system in the society.
“From the time the child is growing up, parents must make them respect the retired school principal and policeman in the village who are making contributions to the community,” he advised.
Richard Bistrong, an anti-bribery, ethics and compliance consultant, said the world should begin to understand that there was always alternative to corruption.
“It is important that no one thinks that they have to give up integrity to achieve success,” he said.
“There are alternatives. There is pressure to cheat, but cheating is always a choice,” he further said.
Albaqir Alafif, a Sudanese human rights crusader, noted that corrupt regimes, especially those in Sudan in the past, adopted empowerment and bribery to woo even the elite.
He said they neither revealed state revenues to the central bank or finance ministry, nor did they spare the institutions of the state.
