I always find it fascinating how conversations like the one under this tweet focus exclusively on the moral failings of the public officials living above their incomes, and completely sidestep the fact that public sector wages in Nigeria are stupidly, ridiculously low.
If my dad had not retired and gone private, I would not have had the opportunities I had and I would not have the life I have.
Are public sector workers in Nigeria not entitled to achieve self actualisation? Or that is reserved for the private sector alone?
These are the issues
My older sister once worked in the Lagos State Civil Service with her BA, MBA, 1 year experience at a bank and NIIT certifications in Java and C++.
Her monthly wage (2009)? N38,250 after deductions.
Is this realistic or genuinely sustainable? What do you expect will happen?
This is the basic difference between process thinking and magical thinking.
Process thinking discards moralistic, sermonising talk and draws a straight line from cause to effect.
Low wages + control of essential processes = access to black market cash cashflows = corruption.
Magical thinking on the other hand, expects that a Commissioner of Police who must have spent at least 10 years in the force after graduating from the police university (and will probably be married with children) should live as a senior officer on $600/month.
A corrupt public official is never justified of course, but the point is curbing public sector corruption has nothing to do with moralisation and calling people "thief."
It has everything to do with creating a system that makes corruption UNNECESSARY and difficult.
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I remember in 2016 when I traveled to Ekwulobia via Asaba airport for a Nigerian Breweries activation and I passed through Onitsha.
There were snipers with flak helmets stationed above the Niger Bridge and military roadblocks with sandbags on the main road through Onitsha.
There were assault rifles peeking out above the sandbags and sniper rifles on tripods pointing at ordinary passenger vehicles going past.
You would have thought these guys were scanning for IEDs in a hot zone in fucking Fullujah, not cosplaying GI Joe near Onitsha Main Market.
You could hear comments from people in the vehicle and their tone, and you could feel a very deep sense of resentment at being treated like they were subjects under martial law in a territory under hostile occupation.
A bank C-Suite guy makes something like N2m/month. A teller at a branch of that bank makes something like 75k/month.
The C-suite isn't paid that much because they necessarily produce 27x the value of a teller, but because their potential risk to the bank is 27x that of a teller.
If the teller goes rogue and somehow beats the control systems in place, the most they can cost the bank is a few million naira. If the Head of Network Security goes rogue, he/she can bring the entire bank down.
That's what justifies that pay. And that is my point.
No one is suggesting that Nigerian police officers should be paid significantly more because they are great people or they necessarily deserve it, but because the COST of unmotivated police obsessed with petty bribery is many times the cost of paying them well.
Apart from seeing the inherent dishonesty and illogic of Jehovah's Witnesses up close, it was also observing the likes of Bakare, Okotie and Isi Fried Hair while growing up that first made me entirely question the concept of religion.
Imagine taking these fraudsters serious.
Someone will look you in your eyes and tell you "God told me that I'll be the next Nigerian president." The omnipotent Judeo-Christian god told him o!
Then the election comes and goes, and this dude gets 35,000 votes.
And you still carry your yansh to his church subsequently🤮
How many times did Tunde Bakare claim that "God" told him that he would be the next president? Was his god lying? Or his god's power no reach INEC power?
Or perhaps Bakare himself is a pathological liar and career bullshitter who lives off people's credulity?
I wish people would stop citing this as an example for Africa because it omits one HUGE fact: Korea, Taiwan, Japan etc are ALMOST ENTIRELY HOMOGENEOUS COUNTRIES.
You CANNOT pull this stunt in a post colonial African state with 50 million people and 76 distinct ethnic groups!
Put it this way: If North Korea were to open up its economy and become capitalist today, within just 15 years, its HDI score will be higher than ANY African country.
Ethnically and culturally homogenous countries have the ability to act in ways that diverse ones simply cannot.
Taiwan, South Korea and Japan could thumb their nose at the IMF and World Bank because 1) Cultural homogeneity assisted the govt in enacting large scale change in a very short period of time and 2) Their statehood and sovereignty genuinely meant something to those populations.
I'm amplifying this because I've started seeing the usual WhatsApp broadcasts and Nairaland posts giving different versions of what is actually happening between Nigerian banks and MTN customers punchng.com/ussd-banks-dis…
To reiterate, the problem started when Nigeria's Telco body ALTON threatened to disconnect banks from USSD services over an accumulated debt of N42bn thecable.ng/telcos-to-susp…
The banks have refused to sign off on an agreement to pass USSD charges on to customers since 2019 because they want the agreement to include "end user billing" so they can keep on collecting revenues and boosting their profit margins.