Bribery and corruption has become a norm/ daily activity socially embraced by the public not only in my country but all over the world. In my own opinion 90 percent of the problem faced in Nigeria is as a result of bribery and corruption. It has enabled a lot of people get away with so many terrible crimes, it has made people occupy slots where they never merited, it has caused oppression to the poor. Bribery and corruption has made justice, merit and orderliness look like a joke, people now believe that having power or access to anything of high value automatically makes you more privileged than the others. I will give a brief run down of bribery and corruption in Nigeria.
Bribery and Corruption in Nigeria
I won’t be going too far because, I have been deprived of so many merited opportunities as a result of my inability to participate in bribery and corruption. As a principled person, I have always believed in merit and orderliness but unfortunately I have seen opportunities slip down my hands because I couldn’t pay to get what I already merited. I lost so many merited opportunities because of bribery and corruption. I’d start with my own very experiences:
A. Buying Of University Admission Slot:
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To get admission into the Federal university has always been a different struggle from even passing the exams. I am a victim of this circumstance, In the year 2015 my friend and I wrote our first JAMB (joint admission and matriculation board) the exam body in Nigeria responsible for issuing admission into your university of choice, and I scored a band score of 296/400 aggregate while my friend scored 201/400 aggregate. We both seeked to get admission into the college of medicine university of Nigeria nsukka. After a month of writing the jamb, my friend called me telling me that his parents payed the sum of 1 million naira to the admission office in order for him to get admission seeing that his jamb score was low. At the other hand, I felt relaxed because I reached the desired cut off mark but to my greatest suprise when the admission list came out my name was no where to be found in the list of students offered provisional admission to study medicine, now my friend who paid the sum of one million naira with a lower jamb score got that very same admission which I lost. To you isn’t this bribery and corruption? These days students don’t even study to get admission because they pay to get a slot in the admission list, while those who merit the admission be denied the opportunity to study their course of choice. A lot of students who do not merit to get admission into some courses are currently displacing and buying people’s admission slot.
B. Police Bribery/Extortion
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This is now the norm of the day, I call it ‘Pay as you go’ You can’t mention bribery and corruption in Nigeria without mentioning the police. You can pay or tip them some money and get away with crime, this has always been the leading cause of increased crime in my country. The Nigerian police force, are known to be corrupt Set of people. They say nobody is above the law, but If you have money in my country then you are above the law. Justice is for the rich and not the poor, this has always been a major problem in our society. People of high status bribe the police in order to get away with crime but unfortunately this is not applicable to the poor because they have nothing to offer to the police in exchange for their freedom. They also go as far as extorting money from innocent citizens because they feel superior and above the law and this is real corruption.
C. Money For Grades
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This is another aspect of bribery and corruption in my country, students pay lecturers to get their desired grades. Sorry to say this, some courses in school cannot be passed if you don’t get involved in bribing the lecturer, no matter how good you are academically, or how much effort you put into reading that course. You will end up getting a bold ‘F’ if you don’t pay to pass that exam. The higher you pay the better the grade and also when you pay, you are allowed to get involved in exam malpractice. This has changed the ideology of students and people living in Nigeria, they even say that education is for the rich. Reason is because if you don’t have money, you can’t be successful in school.
D. First Pay First Serve
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This is now the order of the day in my country, people don’t believe in orderliness anymore, take for instance I’d use the bank as a point of discussion. If you get to the bank, certainly you would meet people who are already there before you arrived. Courtesy demands you wait or rather join a moving queue, so that those that came before you can get attended to before you do. Well today, this is not practiced because you could easily tip the banker or bank security some money to gain exclusive access to bank service even before those who came before you did. This does not only happen in the banks, it is practiced almost everywhere in my country.
Bribery and corruption has so eaten deep into several areas of life in my country. It almost looks like if you don’t indulge in bribery and corruption then you are not ready to achieve anything meaningful in life. Irrespective of the effect of bribery and corruption in Nigeria, there are still ways to curb bribery and corruption in my country.
Solutions to Bribery and Corruption in Nigeria:
I. Citizen should know their right by being able to report to the appropriate authorities should their right be violated: This especially would help curb bribery and corruption in certain areas like police extortion, money for grades, and lot more.
II. Religious Teachers should enlighten their people about the spiritual consequences of bribery and corruption: People in my country value religious teachings so much, they worship and pay good attention to the teachings of their spiritual leader. If various religious teachers can preach against bribery and corruption then it’ll help reduce bribery and corruption in Nigeria.
III. Technology and Digital Advancement: A situation where admission is awarded to people solely on merit through digital and technological accessment, without any external influence or access by man would drastically reduce bribery and corruption to the barest minimum. This system would not only Favour the admission sector in Nigeria but it will Favour other private and public sectors in my country.
IV. There should be serious punishment passed into bill against those citizens whom are caught in the act of bribery and Corruption: I believe people fear being punished for a crime more than committing the actual crime, if a bill against bribery and corruption is passed with strict punishment against citizens guilty of this crime, it’ll definitely restore orderliness to my society.
