Bukola Elemide the amiable Nigerian songstress answers the sobriquet ASA, the Yoruba name for the predatory hawk. However, better known for its predatory prowess than its chirping, still I confess that Asa’s songs easily catch my fancy despite the tyranny of the oppressive generation gap.
As she croons her various hits, from “Jailer”, “Bi ba nke,” “Be my man”, to “Share my blessing”, her smash hit duet with Naeto C another young Nigerian rap artist and musician, I find myself always lost in her poetry, dozing and sleeping to her lullabies and sometimes even tapping my aged feet shamelessly to her very few dancehalls. She effortlessly mesmerises me and cuddles me in the magic of her lyrics.
Of course she cannot claim to be apolitical because her lyrics in many of her compositions betray a well read and politically sensitive mind. Her poignant satire in her famous track, “Broda ole” amazes me no end, especially in its apt, bull’s-eye depiction of the Nigerian reality. In that song, Asa is obviously miffed that her child is being labelled a thief by those who had indeed taught him the art and science of pillaging.
With her smattering knowledge of the Yoruba language due to early, foreign exposure to Europe, Asa only ups the exotic appeal of her lyrics. So whenever she struggles to present her music in her faltering Yoruba language, it only adds to the allure of her lyrics.
So, in her hilarious but explosive rendition, Asa assembles a coterie of assorted quixotic characters from iya sidi onidiri mi, sisi uche egbon ore mi, to iya mulika olomo meje, all of these characters - hoi poloi all of them - have jointly sent her on a mission of protestation against those who taught her child to rebel against and regularly revile her.
She is also pissed that although these people pretend to be as holy as a deity, they are actually agba ‘ya, leaders undeserving of any prestige and honour. Asa’s song, Broda ole therefore is the narrative of corruption in Nigeria where it has become a conundrum of some sort shaming and defying all the hypocritical attempts to curb or stop its malignant ravages.
At the onset of the fourth republic in 1999, not a few observers wondered and pondered on the wisdom and feasibility of a democracy that could be sustained on the twin foundation of poverty and corruption. To be sure, corruption is to some extent universal in that no human society is immune to its pervasive tendencies.
For some societies, corruption and its tendencies are seen as challenges to be confronted with strong institutions laws and sanctions. These societies ensure equality of all citizens before the law, fair hearing and no sacred cows. All infractions committed against the law including especially graft and larcenies are duly sanctioned irrespective of the status of the felon. In certain European countries, it is interesting that their jails are empty for lack of convicted felons.
The trouble is that in Nigeria and most of Africa, corruption is romanticised, celebrated and therefore endorsed indeed, positively sanctioned. Top positions in politics and the bureaucracies are for appropriation, personal aggrandisement, and primitive acquisitions for the office holders. The office holders are routinely celebrated and rewarded with ascribed prestige and honours.
The slow, plodding style of the criminal justice system, sometimes the judiciary, are accomplices in a system that seemingly reinforces the belief that corruption pays. The compromised value bases of the societies of the various ethnic groups constituting the country have also worsened matters by allowing corrupt people to take the lead over regular folks to the point of passing unfair and derisive judgments on them.
But somehow in the very recent past, both former governors Jolly Tanko Nyame and Joshua Dariye of Taraba and Plateau states respectively have been handed judgment in the cases of corruption and misappropriation of public funds brought against them in offences committed over a decade ago. Not a few Nigerians live in the forlorn hope that similarly circumstanced politicians and political office holders will also receive their just deserts soon.
But some others, with good reasons, wonder how come that only these two out of a legion have been sanctioned? Why is it that when herdsmen are killed, their alleged assailants receive prompt justice whereas their own victims are left to mourn their woes privately? Is it possible to fight corruption with an uneven hand? Can a crooked arrow be used to hunt?
The anti-corruption agencies need to be even handed and comprehensive in their various investigations and prosecutions of the corruption cases before them so as not to give the impression of either bias or prejudice especially to those rogue politicians who are so adept at jumping ship into whatever ruling party in power to avoid the scrutiny of the law.
Although some judges have been compulsorily retired for reasons bordering on discipline from the NJC, none has been made to face the full wrath of the law or jailed for corruption. Those who have been retired compulsorily are still able to enjoy their gratuity and pension despite losing prestige and honour.
This arguably is infradig for those to whom the society assigns roles in which above board comportment, disposition and conduct are top requirements and it should be shocking to any society that has a standard moral and ethical direction, especially because their accomplices have been made to suffer greater losses.
This is another reason for corruption to flourish and spread like an invading fungi since it is ultimately met by a feeble, defective and indulgent moral values base of the society and an inefficient criminal justice system. The administration of President Muhammadu Buhari which rode to power on the wind of the repudiation of the old ways of doing things and therefore corruption has equally been flat footed in the fight against corruption.
Before his ascendancy, he had somehow succeeded in branding himself as an austere stoic who had zero tolerance for all forms of iniquities at both social and individual levels. But despite the assumed rigmarole permitted by liberal democracy, the onslaught against corruption in governance still lacks the required sting to make it abate even temporarily.
The indictment of the former Secretary to the Federal Government SGF Mr Babachir Lawal, the scandalous re-absorption of the fugitive former Chairman of the Pension Committee, Abdul Rasheed Maina into the mainstream civil service in disobedience to the counsel of the Head of Service, the allegations of skewed recruitments into the Federal Civil Service are few of the litany of damages to the credentials of an administration bent on reforms by discouraging and punishing corruption.
There is a desperate need for more steam in the fight against corruption. It cannot survive let alone endure on the credentials of an individual. It has to be an institutional fight. The attempt by a gullible section of the polity to valorise an individual, the president so to say, as a champion in the fight is delusional, baseless and empty.
Up to now, corruption as deadly as it is, is still being treated with kid gloves even at the institutional level and with these unfriendly statistics stack against the country, it might just be a little while before it goes under the haystack of repudiation.
The most painful aspect of the fight against corruption is the hypocrisy of those made prominent from the proceeds of corruption turning their noses up against the poor victims of their tin god, corruption as if they are fools not to have known that it pays to subscribe to its pernicious allure. Confused and exasperated, Asa inexorably resorts to fatalism as everybody does, when they have been licked, defeated.
“Ori abiyamo a mu elomi o” she croons till fade off. Nobody should blame her, even the President did the same thing after visiting Jos Plateau state, he asked for prayers!
* Muyiwa Apara is a journalist and writes from This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
