NIGERIA AND THE BATTLE WITH UNHOLY TRINITY

In the religious sense of the word “trinity”, it is meant to be holy and sacred but so many situations happening in my dear country – Nigeria, has made me to understand that sometimes trinity is not a word which is to be solely associated with features of sacredness and holiness in totality. With reference to the realities of current aberrations that has bedeviled the country, we would be talking about the profane trinity. Nigeria today suffers from the shackles of profane trinity of– Corruption, Bad governance and Terrorism which has put our country into shambles and disorderliness.

However, in this form of trinity each entity is not begotten at the same time but one form begets another.

Starting with the first entity – Corruption. In Nigeria this is a word that is widely known and whose noise dominates every affair and sector of the nation and as time passes by its gradually becoming a norm that is permeating the society such that it is almost becoming impossible to find a sector or organisation in the country that is not corrupt or battling with one corrupt practice or the other. As the word become so infamous and very dissatisfactory to the masses, journalists in the country just recently introduced the Nigeria 21^st century word for corruption and that is SCAM. In the past few weeks we have had different kinds of scam in various organizations such as the pension scam, fuel subsidy scam, contract scam, police scam, scam scam scam everywhere. The truth is we all know it when we see it, and we see it every day. We all know it when we hear it and we hear it every day. Corruption/scam as the case may be, which is the first entity of the unholy trinity we suffer from as a nation, is borne out of greed and selfishness - a situation where just one person or a group of people decides to privatize and monopolize the resources and funds that are meant for the masses and for the development of the nation for personal or selfish reasons. A good example could be drawn from the recent hullabaloo in the oil sector where the greediness and selfishness of the oil cabals consequently brought hardship on majority of Nigerians.

Definitely when greed and selfishness is part of the nature of the people that govern and lead, then corruption is inevitable. Corruption will however not stop on its own but rather will thrive, develop and definitely begets bad governance - the second entity of the unholy trinity.

The fact is, the trouble with Nigeria is not the problem of formulating progressive policies and designing good programmes but rather the difficulty in policies implementations and programmes accomplishments. Over time government have gotten good policies and programme for the country but have found it extremely difficult to implement these policies and good programmes due to the presence of wide spread corruption. And as such the policies and programmes skilfully designed for the betterments of the people will become bastardized by corruption, hence leading to bad governance and its resultant poor score card. What’s the essence of governance if the people fell neglected, abandoned and deserted because of the non performance of leaders? Thus, corruption begets bad governance making the situation more challenging and tasking to address and control.

However, if the condition remained that way, it would have been a little bit easier to manage, but when the masses, who took their time and effort to vote for leaders, do not benefit anything good from the leaders they become furious and aggrieved. They start by organizing peaceful protest and showing grievances in different ways - through industrial action and the likes and gradually deteriorating into destructive and violent protest  and finally to terrorism when governments fail to listen to their yawning. Hence, breathing life into the third entity of the unholy trinity- terrorism.

Corruption, bad governance and terrorism are the unholy trinity I am talking about. Nigeria has now gotten into the last stage and the unholy trinity is complete. The combination of these three entities poses a great risk on every sector of the country, putting us in the state of dilemma where we are now. Nigerians have suffered so much in the hands of the these three entities, while many nations in the world are grappling with rebuilding their financial system, upgrading their physical infrastructure and human capital and adopting leapfrogging technologies to enhance their global competitiveness, our sensibilities are daily affronted by news of different scams, hapless leaders and multiple bombings all over the places.

Although, we might have lost so much due to this unholy trinity nevertheless, there is definitely still a way out of this big mess we are in now and it is just by battling and overcoming this unholy entity and things will be right back on track.

It is a step in the right direction if the governments today take a stand against corruption and fight it with all machineries. Definitely bad governance will become an infant and with time will be phased out and in no time the people will become happy and pleased with the governments - when they begin to feel and enjoy the dividends of good leadership, definitely they will stop being aggrieved and thus terrorism will no longer have a stand in the country.