Comparative Corruption

A report on Nigeria’s Inspector General of Police, Sunday Ehindero’s, verbal assault on his senior commanders recently draws an interesting comparison of relative corruption.

He put the blame for high crime rates right the Commissioners of Police, saying they were liable for the high spate of crime because of their disobedience to some of his directives.

Well, he also said they weren’t watching what was happening under their watch and that despite his efforts to stamp out corruption in the force; graft remained a major vice among the rank and file police. allAfrica.com

Of course we sophisticated nations don’t have that problem. Unless you count the New Zealand police woman who reportedly moonlighted as a prostitute; or New York’s Mafia cops who acted with impunity for years; or LA cops who have their own way of doing things; or Florida and Oregon jailers who trade sex for contraband; or the Australian cop who settled in with a hunted con-woman, impregnating her in the process; or the English cops who use the cover of anti-terror laws to shoot people they don’t like the look of.

If Nigeria’s law enforcement looks like the keystone cops, they are hardly on their own. But in developed economies it really is the sophisticated, hard to track corruption which eclipses the banana republic’s versions.

Sure, Nigeria and Kenya, along with others on the Dark Continent, can boast their big money corruption. Ironically, however, that big money comes from the West. It is the developed economies who are driving third world major corruption.

The scene of an angry and frustrated Inspector General, red in the face and spiting his words, is both funny and sad. The fact is, he’s on a hiding to nothing.

In Nigeria, like in the USA or Britain, corruption is led from the very top. The example set by leadership is picked up right down the feeding chain.

All power to the IG, but he is pissing into the wind. Even the voters, if they have such a thing in Nigeria, continue to accept entrenched corruption as a simple fact, just as they do in our ‘oh so sophisticated’ countries.