Victims! The spot of ‘victims’ in my headline was sealed six months ago by one of the senior officers of Pedro Police Station, Shomolu, Lagos. It was Friday July 19, 2019, the night I was released from Ikoyi Prison at the end of my undercover investigation on corruption in Nigeria’s criminal justice system only to be abducted by Pedro policemen.
This officer rambled on and on, first about low budgetary allocation to the Police, and next about how powerful politicians and officials at the presidency, National Assembly and the Interior Ministry take turns to divert the funds, such that only a pittance gets to the Police at the state level. The various police stations were getting mere crumbs, he argued, inadequate to run their day-to-day overheads.
“If you really want to investigate corruption in the administration of criminal justice, then go to Abuja,” he declared. “That’s where the real corruption takes place. But you’re investigating policemen; those are victims — people looking for N1,000 here or N2,000 there, to eat and feed their families.”
Familiar fable. I’d also heard that line at Ikoyi Prison the previous week. After my cover was blown in prison, a powerful warder — he alone ran the only two public phone booths serving more than 3,000 inmates in Ikoyi — wondered what manner of corruption among warders was worth investigating: “If you want to investigate corruption, is the prison the right place to come? Got to Abuja; that’s where the real corruption is happening.”
He hadn’t used exactly the police officer’s words but he was effectively saying the same thing: warders are victims. Just like the Police.
While I didn’t for a millisecond harbour any plausibility for their claims to victimhood, for the sole reason that the complainants were themselves beneficiaries of low-scale but high-consequence corruption, I’ve been more generous, thought wise, though I ultimately remained unmoved, to similar arguments by third parties.
Unfortunately for everyone who’s played the victimhood card around me, I’ve had so many encounters with oppressive victims. The Pedro police officer, for instance, didn’t know that two hours before his long-winding speech, while some of his men were preparing to hide me in their cell overnight, some of those ‘victims’ spent their evening harassing a motorcycle rider whose wife had just put to bed.
It’s the same with supposed victims who extort others in the line of duty. The health workers who exploit patients to meet family needs must be the only ones with needs; it must be that victims of exploitation dropped down from heaven, with no need.
There’s no disputing the ignoble role of Abuja in the numerous failures of the Nigerian system. I think there can be no denial of the leadership misfortune that has plagued this country for decades. But nothing can be more disingenuous than for the followership to assume no responsibility.
We cannot ignore the ignominy of large-scale corruption, but we must understand that low-scale corruption is almost as dangerous. We must view corruption not only in terms of the amount of money involved but also the scale of damage being done.
If Nigeria must someday become a country that works for all, this claim to victimhood by every Tom, Dick and Harry must stop. The Nigerian people must hold themselves as responsible for this country’s failings as they do the leaders.
Soyombo, former Editor of the TheCable, the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) and SaharaReporters, tweets @fisayosoyombo
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