Yesterday I listened to an audio recording of a phone call between 2 people. Some random chap and a lady who appears to be a state of the Lagos Taxman, LIRS. They were discussing the many sins of Ambode and why he’s lost his seat
As @RemiAdekoya1 pointed out, a skillful politician relieves you of the burden of having to think for yourself. So the first sin they attributed to him was ‘deviating from the Lagos Masterplan’. Well done to Tinubu for this genius narrative
But as I’ve said before, economic development comes down to whah people believe. And that conversation showed that you’re not going to get a Singapore out of Nigeria anytime soon. The country is destined to remain this way for a while
One of the sins the lady pointed out was that Ambode sacked the LIRS boss for corruption (thisdaylive.com/index.php/2016…). She then went on to say that anyone appointed to such an office MUST steal
She said the guy begged and begged but Ambode refused to reinstate him. And then the clincher - she said that it was the prayers of people like that that felled Ambode. That is, his prayer was righteous since he did nothing wrong by stealing
She gave another example of revenues from swearing affidavits at the High Court. The actual cost is N300 but the women there charge N1000 and pocket everything without issuing receipts. She said they use the money to fix up and look sharp as Dizzee Rascal said
In this case, Ambode’s sin was to outlaw cash payments and say all payments must be made by card only. In her telling, Ambode took the money away from those women (“just N300”). And of course, their ‘prayers’ caught him.
To be clear, I’m not mounting a defence of Ambode - he himself ate public funds and ate it very well I’m sure. But why is the Nigerian response to problems never to solve it but to seek to profit from it?
“Indignation from the ground, if pervasive, stops corruption dead” is one of my favourite quotes. From this we conclude that Nigeria is a deeply and wholly corrupt society with the approval of Nigerians. The people don’t want change, they want exchange
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