It’s very interesting to observe how whistleblowing has suddenly become such a big time profitable business in such a poverty stricken, nay, I mean poverty segregated country as Nigeria. Definitely, Nigeria can never be described as poverty stricken. It’s poverty segregated. The fact is, the country is so massively rich, and yet, so enormous is the wealth looted and secreted away by so few people, while so massive is the number of people allowed access to so little wealth. This scenario is creating a schism between the minority rich and the majority poor. The result has been the multiplication of crimes and insecurity in society.
Essentially, there is so much money in Nigeria that not only do people not know what to do with it, as it was once reportedly mouthed by a leader of the country, even the banks in the land can no longer have enough supply of vaults to store it. This has unfortunately given rise to increased number of thieves in as well. And, individual thieves now construct their own private treasuries where they stash away their loots, like African rabbits would stack away dry cassava and yam tuber bits in their burrows. Tomfool rabbits! Why do they go for yam and cassava peels, precious as these basic food items are in these days of recession? They should rather have been digging for, and scooping away, American dollars, British pounds sterling, the Euro, or the Yens. By now, they would be flying about in their own private jets scavenging for palm kernels in the rainforest meadows, and peanuts in the hot savanah desert wilds. These cash crops themselves are gradually becoming extinct and scarcer than money because agricultural farmlands are now being turned into money farmlands, where rogues and con men are burying banknotes like farmers do Irish potatoes. This is where the relevance of whistleblowing has become so apparent. Oh, I love whistleblowing!
Is 5% of one billion dollars, or 2.5% of 100 billion Euro, which is what government offers as rewards for whistleblowing, a volume of money any worker can ever earn anywhere else for a dint of genuine hard work? By now, money would have been flowing into my hamlet home piggy banks like the never ending flows of River Niger into its conjoint twin sister, River Benue, at Lokoja estuary in July rainy season. Just imagine the volumes of money whistleblowers are raking in, in this country, by just sitting down in their homes and piping away at their whistles. Can any whistling football referee ever dream of touching with his fingers such quantity of money, no matter how frantically loud he bows, or how fast and how many times he can run across football pitches from one goal mouth to the other throughout the whole world?’Perhaps, some Nigerian economists would be kind enough to confirm whether the whistleblowers are receiving earned incomes, or just transfer payments from contemptuously uneconomic activities which add no value to the county’s economy.
Back to my whistle, I was so obsessed with my little plastic toy that my father was one day forced to sit me down to give me a heart-to-heart talk about whistleblowing in his own childhood days. He said that at that time only the Nigerian police was authorized to own and blow whistles. It was an overreaching crime for an individual to own or blow whistles. And whenever a whistle sounded, everybody knew something serious that involved the police had happened. That was when the only weapons a policeman could carry were a torchlight, a wooden baton and a whistle. The police uniform then consisted of a pair of crisp starched, and well creased oversized khaki shorts, and a matching short sleeve shirt. These were embellished with a flat-top black felt visor cap. The baggy shorts would reach down below the knees, leaving the wearer’s legs, wrapped up with black woolen puttees, to oscilate like the pendulum of a gigantic church bell, when he walked along. At the ankles, the leg-wrappings that began a little below the knees, terminated at the openings of a pair of black leather boots. The boots were nicknamed “kick-dog” for their solid toes, hard carved rubber and metal soles, and uncommon overall sturdiness. The boots could very easily crack a dog’s teeth or ribs, and render it hors de combat, if the policeman decided to use his WMD-boots on any daring canine.
My father recalled an incident when a policeman, well kitted for his duty beat, was confronted at night by an audacious robber, who was wielding a heavy bludgeon. A fracas ensued between them, and became a match between a policeman’s baton and a criminal’s thorn-studded bludgeon:
“Hey, who goes there? Stop! Who are you?” The policeman snarled at the criminal, flashing his torchlight angrily at him. “You’re under arrest for being in illegal possession of dangerous weapon,” he threatened the underworld operator, who retorted with equal hoo-ha.
Unnerved, the policeman reached for his whistle. And in minutes the local community, and a couple of policemen from near-by locations, came flying to the scene from all directions to help the policeman out of trouble. But this was only after the robber had inflicted some injuries on the law-keeper. This was why police authorities began to provide policemen with the Lord Luggard riffles, putting away their almighty whistles. Little did they know that whistleblowing would one day become another lucrative pastime. Meanwhile, it is necessary to watch whether this newly discovered enterprise would develop into a full fledged economic sector in the country, like its cousins that we are about to look at now.
The two newest additions to the major sectors of the Nigerian economy have quickly turned out to be the all time fastest and most rewarding of all sectors. Their meteoric rise was achieved, notwithstanding their having arrived through the back door. They need to greeted with some boos rather than cheers! But, they are also the most evil, most destructive, most brutal, most mindless, most despicable and the deadliest of all the economic sectors. The newest arrivals are the corruption and the criminal sectors. Thumbs down for corruption and criminality in Nigeria!
Hardly is there any other country on planet earth that has had the disingenuity that some of our people have had in bringing into the mainstream economic activities these notorious and God forsaken enterprises. So many stunning incidents are happing daily in the corruption sector of the Nigerian economy that are showing as clear as daylight how art can imitate life in a country whose poverty per capital index is next to none at the bottom line, though its human population is amongst the largest in the world. The daily revelations within Nigeria’s corruption empire are so unbelievably filthy, so gross, so profoundly surreal, and so extraordinarily sub-human that they have surpassed what the best-of-the-best creative minds in theatre script writing can plot for a screenplay. The unraveling corruption rots appear to be leaving the other twin sister-in-lawlessness, criminality, dazed and blinking in perplexing disbelief, about how corruption has descended to such an abysmal and unprecedented level of depravity. Just imagine people draining all the money in circulation and stacking it away in multiple billions in spider holes, toilet cesspits, and abandoned decrepit houses. Imagine the horrors in the on-going free for all public fund looting in high public offices. Ponder the massive certificate racketeering in all levels of education in the land. Think of the petrifying degrees of decadence, loss of honour, trust, transparency, truth, and more in all nooks and corners of society. There is no single sector within the society that is spared the dizzying rate of decay in human, social and moral values. Lord! Where are we heading?
That may be why the criminal sector seems to be struggling to double up with all its equally stultifying dark activities such as armed robbery, kidnapping for ransoms, hired assasination, political thuggery, human trafficking, deranging tempo of cultism, increasing incidents of rapes, child slavery and child pornography, bank gouging, terrorism, and other unrelenting but reprehensible onslaughts of criminalities, and what have you. It seems not funny that the criminal sector appears to be doffing its hat to the corruption sector. Could that be because there appear to abound in their most populous numbers in the corruption sector, the crème de la crème of the country’s criminal minds? It seems it is in the corruption sector where both the political and military wings of corruption cohabit happily together ever after in the pieces, instead of peace of their graveyard.
No wonder, therefore, it is the mind boggling wreckage and carnage in the corruption sector that seems to have induced the introduction of the newcomer, whistleblowing, into the sector, supposedly not as assistant looter-scooper. The real function of the whistleblower is to draw attention to the massive looting and enormous amounts of stinking practices that occur throughout all areas of socio-economic life of Nigeria. It also appears the huge currents and heavy torrents of money that flow within the corruption sector is too overwhelming to be allowed to go on unchecked. Hence the need for the introduction of the whistleblower. And, fortunately, the requirements for admission into the “National Whistleblowers Association (NWA)” are very easy to fulfill at the inception stage. NWA, in my local language, as you must have known, is the second daughter within a family. And to join NWA, all that you need is a loud sounding whistle, like the one I had in my childhood, and a good ability to see far, wide, and near. You must have a 20/20 vision, and good memory to recall what you have seen – who, where, why, which and how. So the main task is to raise alarm whenever you see public money “missing road.” I almost forgot, a whistleblower must have to develop thick skin to withstand the wiles of the enemies that will come as storms, lightenings, brimstones, blizzards, and landslides. This is because when you begin to blow your trumpet, you will be sandwiched between the people against whom you are piping, and the people for whose attention you are whistling.
So, be courageous, just keep whistling, be not afraid. Stand firm even in evil days, and whistle. On the top of shifting sands, whistle. When you see burial ceremonies at cemeteries at dead nights, whistle. When your neighbors have more overhead water tanks than necessary, whistle. When you see a stern looking guardsman sitting in front of an abandoned decrepit house, whistle. When you notice a basement without steps in a house, whilstle. When you notice a house where there are more activities at night than in daytime, whistle. Your luck may come one day. Your hope for a treasure trove may soon become a reality, if God stands by your side, or a nulity, if your mission is accursed, God forbid. But, just whistle, and be sure your own treasuries are well constructed on your “money farmland,” and are solid enough to withstand termites and rodents.
May your whistleblowing be crowned with naira, dollars, euro, pounds and yens.
Amen.
Ambassador Sunday Benjamin Bassey is Nigeria’s former Ambassador to Equatorial Guinea
