Recent events of corrupt practices across different government agencies; reeking of sheer abuse of positional power coupled with the barefaced attempt to fob off such levels of corruption with grand Nollywood acting, has left a significant proportion of Nigerians more despondent than ever. The memes and jokes making the rounds on social media are simply a reflection of Nigerians’ coping mechanism, as we are seemingly not a confrontational collective (a story for another day).
The article header is aptly a spin-off of Professor Wole Soyinka’s book titled “Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years “ referring to a period of corruption and injustices in the Western region of the country, which quite frankly, fits the description of the currently ongoing, which by the way, isn’t new.
Imagine the blatant disregard and lack of accountability to Nigerians during a public health crisis, which has been nothing but shocking to me. My personal hypothesis, that, maybe the pandemic would force leaders and Nigerians as a whole to be introspective and hopefully more considerate of our development plight as a nation, is appearing to prove false.
In 2017, when I serendipitously made the transition from Banking to Development, I had two sets of conversations. The first with the CEO of the organisation I was leaving – when I told him about the organisation I was going to and its overarching goal to catalyse the transformation of the public sector in Nigeria – he gave that chuckle of disbelief and asked if it was even possible.
The second conversation was with the founder and chairman of the organisation I was going to – he had such an optimistic vision for the transformation of Nigeria’s public sector, premised on his first-hand experience of a civil service that was the envy of other developed countries at a point in his lifetime. Apart from my utter admiration and respect for his audacity, I was inspired to be part of the solution.
In truth neither of them were wrong and both their views were driven by their Nigerian Public Sector experiences – one just happened to have been opportune to see both the good and the not-so-good versions.
You see, there are two options we have as a people:
- To give up, complain and make jokes out of our Penkelemes
- Summon the audacity like Mr. Aig-Imoukhuede and dare to actively do something to take our public sector back to its former glory at the barest minimum
My take, the risk with doing nothing is, in the long term, it will become everyone’s problem.
Indeed, what Mr Aig-Imoukhuede seeks to achieve through his Africa Initiative for Governance ( AIG) is ambitious and in fact, may not even start to manifest for years to come. However, it awakened my consciousness to the possibilities of the hope of an efficiently run public sector. So, imagine a critical mass of well-meaning and astute Nigerians, intentionally and actively intervening in correcting our Penkelemes.
Finally, with the events that have unfolded in the past few weeks, it would appear that Corruptionvirus still takes first place over Coronavirus as the public health crisis that plagues our country. Question is, who will create the vaccine to contain our Penkelemes?
*Penkelemes – Peculiar Mess