ECHOES TO THE ELITES

“Behold,you will stand before kings and princes and mighty ones of the earth to testify against corruption and wrong in high places in the name of truth.Thou hast courage and the stars in their courses shall aid thee.And now take this message to the sons of men,and I give it thee as an emissary of the gods.Say unto the mighty that the cry of the afflicted and the distressed among the sons of Ethiopia has come up to us,and we will visit the earth” – J.E.Casely Hayford on page 67 of his book Ethiopia Unbound:lessons in race emancipation.

I’m sure I must have asked myself this questions several times: why do I abhor corruption so much? Is it because I’m not in a position to benefits from it or because of my social upbringing? Have I ever engaged in a corrupt practice before? Well, in the usual Ghanaian style,we would have to define what corruption is before I answer that. Or better still,as a human being or Ghanaian?

Well let try and define corruption then.Maybe I or should I say ‘we’ might pass the test. According to Transparency International, corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private or personal gain. They classified corruption as grand, petty and political depending on the pecuniary value and sector of occurrence.

But I wouldn’t want to go so much into the historicity  of corruption in Ghana. Indeed I won’t even attempt a technical assessment of the subject because I am not sure I have the capacity to do so. However, one thing is certain to me, the rate of corruption in this country is getting alarmingly out of hand. It is inherently pervasive across all sections of the social strata.

How and why have we allowed something that is so demoralizing to fester for such a long time? It seems to me that we are happy building a corrupt system that is rigged against the ordinary citizen. Corruption keeps stealing the future of our kids. It is contributing to the ever-widening income inequality across all spectrum of our population,which in itself,threatens our social cohesion. Corruption is a social danger that obstruct the doors of opportunities available to today’s youth.

Corruption is increasingly marginalizing a lot of our active youths from the governance process.Despondency is growing among the group we conveniently refer to as ‘future leaders’. Corruption has become a serious security threat to the stability of our democratic system. This goes to the very heart of the system. As the brilliant Yaw Nsarkoh,the Executive Vice President Ghana & Nigeria,Uniliver puts it in his rather lucid speech at the ‘Achimota speaks’ forum; ‘No system can ever expect to leave out so many and stay in equilibrium because it eventually explodes’.

We better deal with the menace of corruption now or watch in horror, the justified social revolution of tomorrow,which we will seek to crush with brute force.

Maybe I should ask your permission this time around to take a little of your time to rant. Permit me,I’ll say or even plead!

Just a couple of days ago,I met a group of friends at the beach to ‘catch up’ on old times. Well, I got more than I bargained for. Apparently I’m the most naive person in Ghana when it comes to ‘making money’ alongside official business at the office. My friends gave me reasons as to why I should be doing ‘business’ aside my normal office routine. One of the things they pointed out to me was the low levels of remuneration within the public service.That got me thinking. Low levels of salaries could be a fine incentive for corruption in our parts of town. But is that enough justification? With a legal framework that is largely hesitant to punish official graft,perhaps it is time for us as ordinary citizens to adopt personal codes of ethics in our public engagements.

I’m not a sociologist so I may not have a solution to the growing menace. But I got valuable insights into one of the root causes of corruption amongst young people-materialism.

I cannot pretend to know the drivers of this new craze for ephemeral things. Working in my privileged position, for the statistics and research unit of a major public service institution, opened my eyes to the true extent of the problem. I had the privilege of working with a lot of students from various tertiary institutions in the country during the long vacation. I decided to conduct an experiment to see what motivates these students. I engaged freely with them,often going to lunch with most of them.

Whenever I had a new student in my office for orientation, I gave them an hour free access to my personal computer and books. I realized none was interested in the books I was reading. But that wasn’t so surprising.Perhaps,our generation is fast moving to electronic forms of books. Perhaps,just perhaps, I may be behind the times. But it wasn’t so. What most of these students did on the internet was simply mind-blowing.

From watching video clips of ‘latest trends in hairstyles’,watching obscene musical video clips,shoes, to cars. I was most surprised by the shallowness. In most of my conversations with them,two questions kept coming; “how much is your net salary?” “Which big man helped you to secure a position here?” None actually believed I got my position on merit. I was scandalized but couldn’t help but just laugh when they started telling me their dreams. Well that is a subject for another day.

As young people,I believe it is incumbent on us to change the narrative. Opportunities for corruption abound in Africa,the motivations are unlimited. Both arising largely because of our dysfunctional system.But we must rise above the ‘sins of our fathers’ to uphold a system of personal integrity. We must create a society where opportunities are available to all and advancement is based on merits rather than one’s political affiliation.