Society is filled with many ills. This ranges from corruption, crime to other vices. I would like to talk about corruption in every strata of our society and how the leaders are not to be blamed alone.
The leaders emerge from the people and the value they hold dear to themselves while leading tells a lot about the value held by the generality of the people.
I have seen cases where a follower criticized a leader deservedly. The follower got his opportunity to lead later and he did worse in the act of corruption than the previous leader that he criticized. It then unveiled the fact that some people criticized the leaders not for the love of the country or good governance but for their inability to join the corrupt leaders on the table.
There was a time that an aide to a Nigerian President said that you don't talk while eating. He was a government critic before being given an appointment. When he was reminded of his personality of the past years and how he had joined the people he lampooned in the past, he replied with the above statement to the full glare of viewers on national television.
Having identified that corruption is the bane of Nigeria's development, I developed interest in contributing my own quota to effecting a positive change.
How am I doing this? Corruption is a broad term. I looked further into the whole system and realized that the highest level of corruption is carried out by people who compromise on the job that they signed for.
A job is a contract that has terms and conditions but in order to meet up with personal interest, the terms and conditions are mostly abused.
A policeman that is collecting bribes to overlook some infractions is breaching the contract of his employment.
A man in the budget office who inflates procurements for personal gain is breaching the contract of his employment.
A man hired for a job but failed to do it because he was not supervised is not respecting the contract of his employment.
I guard myself against breaching the terms and conditions of any job given to me. I believe that if I must expect my leader to do the right thing at all times, I need to replicate the same at my level.
Most government institutions are not working in Nigeria because the workers are not doing what they are expected to do. It is due to this reason that you see privately owned organizations thriving better than their government owned counterparts. You see a school teacher that doesn't go to class frequently but collects his full salary blaming the Governor or President as being corrupt. All these would change if everyone is doing the job that he signed for diligently.
If you hire me for a job of 8 am - 2 pm daily, I would stay put at my duty post even if I have no immediate task to accomplish. I respect the contract that I signed by subscribing to the job. I do all I can to do my work as a part of the requirements for a good running society.
The system of a country is like a pyramid with millions of people working at the grassroots to make the society work. As you ascend the pyramid, the workforce keeps reducing in population till you arrive at the peak where you have the President of the country or his equivalent. If the President is corrupt and he is perpetrating his actions successfully, we have people below him that are helping him to do that.
I believe that if everyone at every level of the pyramid is doing his job diligently, it would be difficult to see someone sabotage the effort no matter his position in the scheme of things.
Thank you for reading and leaving a comment.