Corruption in all places: Crossing the line means nothing to Nigerian leaders.

I will not be outrightly wrong to say a large percentage of unaffected Nigerians have forgotten the not too long flood disaster that claimed both lives and properties of innocent and struggling citizens of this rich but loosely and carelessly poor country called Nigeria. I will also not be wrong to openly state that not too many Nigerians know exactly the amount of relieve funds sent to the affected areas; areas such as Adamawa, Kogi, Ibadan etc. You are about to find out!

The relieve funds that the federal government sent to each of these affected states runs in hundreds of millions. Take for instance a place like Adamawa State, the sum of five hundred million (NGN500, 000,000.00) was given to help support those who has lost all of their live savings. Recently I was in Adamawa State where I had a one on one chat with some of the affected victims of the flood disaster. It was an eye opener for me to hear that a whopping NGN500, 000,000 sent never got to them but settled in the hands of “men and women who holds power in the State”.

According to the representatives of the groups I spoke to, he said quite alright the money came to them but the question is “how much did go to them?” The young man whose anger visibly showed in his gesticulations said they refused to take the money because to him it was a humiliation and insult upon injuries. What the government of the State did according to him, was to come up with a concept that saw every affected household in Adamawa State getting between NGN200 to NGN250. After hearing from some of them, I personally understood their anger and why they had rejected the money. Come to think of it, in a normal situation, where no form of disaster is involved, how much can NGN250 do for a household in an hour, a day let alone months? In case you don’t understand, most household in a place like Adamawa State have an average of six (6) persons with the exclusion of the parents. Most of these so-called commoners in villages depend on the produce from their farms, cattle, goats to survive etc. the flood swept away all this things they own leaving them with nothing. These are the set of people that Gov. Murtala Nyako, the one they call Baban Mangoro, were giving NGN200 to NGN250 per household.

Kogi State if you remember vividly was the stone that cracked the camel’s back during the peak of that flood moment, thousands of travelers were trapped, daily run users were caged, it was a case of being between the rock and a crazy place. The sum of nine hundred and eighty-two million naira (NGN982, 000,000) was released, for helping out the affected people and also to assist the state government in constructing a lasting drainage system and durable road network. Take trip down to Kogi state and see if there is a sign of that money anywhere, even the affected farmers never saw a dime from the government. Till date, they still cry to the federal government for succor, most of them still lives in refugee camps with no hope whatsoever as to what their future looks like.

I don’t know the kind of world our leaders come from, where they believe that the people they rule are just there as their subordinates and only meant to serve them, but in my world, leaders are meant to protect the people they rule not just the office they occupy. In as much as many believed that the arab uprise was internationally influenced (which to some extent, is true), the people grew tired of the suffering rule of their leaders like we currently do today and so they protested, they revolted and fought for their liberty. When will Nigerians kick aside bad and highly corrupt leaders in order to protect and re-engineer the image of this nation?