Corruption: Unpacking Kukah’s logic on absence of ‘collective revulsion’

By Son Gyoh … .
As a long time admirer of Bishop Kukah, I had to read the presentation he made at the Convent Centre Lagos, on the occasion marking 55 years of Nigeria’s independence. Quite expectedly the paper was interrogative, even though I found the second part a distraction from the core argument on the nature and character of corruption in Nigeria. Reading some of the discussions that followed on various social media forums, and sensing a danger in the uncritical application of his logic to rationalise corruption as part of our DNA, and the futility to question it thereof, I found it necessarily to offer a counter argument. To get straight into my position, I start from the extractions below that were at the core of the self-interrogation and logic the Bishop offered in the characterization of corruption as intrinsically attractive to Nigerians.

“If corruption is so evil, how come we are so much at peace with it? If corruption is so rotten, how come we all seem to enjoy its company” -Bishop Kukah

“If we are so much against it, how is it that we cannot generate a collective sense of moral revulsion”.-Bishop Kukah

I found this interpretation of ‘our comfort with’ and ‘intrinsic attraction’ to corruption a sweeping conclusion, and the analysis of our inability to generate ‘a collective moral revulsion’ rather simplistic, or if to borrow his word, ‘shallow’. The use of the term ‘collective’ suggest that there might indeed exist a sense of revulsion that is unable to attain a critical mass in translating to a ‘purposive collective’ revulsion across the spectrum of the Nigerian society. I am not sure there is anyone reading this that will say they are comfortable with, or prefer corruption as a social order, not even those that have amassed illicit wealth. In my view, the problem is twofold. Firstly, a revulsion against corruption exist, but is disaggregated at ethnic and clannish level as the absence of a common or ‘group identity’ across the diverse people of Nigeria does not allow a trans-ethnic coalescence to generate ‘collective revulsion’. That is why you find Nigerians shielding their kind from probe when they cry ‘witch hunt’. Now, the second element explains why even at the micro-ethnic level, this revulsion seems muted. The reason is found in the mode of our production relation, where corruption, defined as the manipulation of institutional processes and the capture of public goods, constitutes a dependent variable in our dysfunctional economy. Revulsion only finds partial expression when desperation converges in the naked glare of trans-ethnic elite collaboration that evokes a sense of conspired exclusion and a ‘hysteria’ that manifest in the fuel scarcity or subsidy demonstrations for example. However, this palpable revulsion quickly dissipates to its original form when the same trans-elite stork ethnic sentiments at the slightest discontentment in their fold.

But here is the bigger picture. We exist in an economy where basic assumptions in state policies and social service delivery has little bearing with realities of the living wage of the average Nigerian, and the possibility of living within the boundaries of a lawful income/wage. The pressure to have multiple income sources takes a new meaning as a ‘resourcefulness’ to make ends meet. This dysfunctional economy incubates and reproduces corruption, as ‘other income sources’ becomes a central assumption in calculating effective demand. For example, government housing policy proceeds with no clearly functional mortgage financing accessible to the average Nigerian, but citizens are expected to ‘somehow’ raise the money to buy a house. No car finance credit structure, yet government policy encourages you to buy brand new cars to stimulate the local auto industry whilst banning importation of the more affordable second-hand cars. Furthermore, the inefficiency in public and social service delivery creates conditions where people must pursue their entitlements, and in the process sow the seeds of patronage that reinforces paternalism in public service delivery and becomes a norm embraced in the private sector.

Read also: Hysteria, euphoria & amnesia: Nigeria’s long walk to freedom

The Bishop appears to have captured this motion later in his paper when he stated “we should see corruption as a symptom of something that is intrinsically wrong with our society, the loss of the moral center of gravity of our society”. This ‘loss of moral centre of gravity’ is however, a product of, and response to a dysfunctional system, and not necessarily an indication of an aversion to transparency and due process or a preferred mode of social engagement. Therefore, when a figurehead comes with narratives of fighting corruption, there is a tendency for the public to embrace ‘hysteria’ and get caught in temporary ‘amnesia’. This ‘euphoria’ not only provides a therapy, but also a disorienting shock that exposes the fallacy of our ethnic comfort zone. Today, the Yoruba people led by a retired ‘Nigerian’ army general threaten secession on account of the activities of marauding Fulani, but limit their concern to the menace of the ‘herdsmen from hell’ in their homeland. But isn’t this yet another evidence of a ‘collective revulsion’ dissipating or stagnating at ethnic level, and the inability to translate into a collective revulsion due to the absence of group identity among Nigerians.

The ‘trepidation and de javu’ the Bishop referred to, resides in the collective amnesia reproduced by ethnic essentialism, and the tendency to ignore the incubators and drivers of corruption embedded in policy planning and implementation. In the absence of an alternative narrative therefore, it is easy for a contra elite figure to exploit our collective nostalgia by tapping into a latent disaggregated revulsion. If a sense of ‘euphoria and hysteria’ is evoked in that process, why should we worry when a semblance of order is achieved? Corruption will thrive and find nesting places anywhere in the world where impunity reigns, and when the realities of the dynamics of demand and supply is ignored in charting the distribution of opportunities and in the allocation of public goods.

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