by Kene Obiezu

The true measure of any society does not lie in its shiny buildings or bustling towns; neither does it lie in its defence capabilities or diplomatic capacities.

Rather than these misleading metrics, the true measure of a society can be taken by how it treats its vulnerable members.

Nigeria is a country of vulnerabilities. For one, Boko Haram’s destructive campaign in the Northeast and Northwest have left a country where millions are on the brink having just survived potentially precipitous slides down the precipice.

Terrorism in the parts of the North have cooked a humanitarian catastrophe that is giving Nigeria ceaseless constipation.

According to reports, about two trillion naira has been plunged into humanitarian aid in the Northeast in just over a decade. The question is how much of that money has actually reached the most affected victims of what is arguably Nigeria’s greatest failure as a country.

Nigeria has a Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction. Established by former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019, the ministry was meant to coordinate humanitarian affairs and poverty alleviation in the country. However, it appears that the ministry has become a major cesspool of corruption.

To highlight the seemingly bottomless depth of the problem, recently, the Socio-Economic Rights Accountability Project (SERAP) dragged the Federal Government to court to compel it to investigate reports stating that about N57 billion disappeared in the ministry in 2021 alone.

The staggering sum which should have gone into providing succour to people stranded by terrorism and banditry has obviously disappeared into bottomless private pockets from which they will later reemerge for terrorist financing and to manipulate elections.

That SERAP is having to push the government to act on the report about the ministry speaks volumes. Since inception, the ministry has been a cesspit of mindless corruption. No sooner had Betty Edu assumed office as minister in the ministry than she was swallowed by a mammoth corruption scandal. The minister who preceded her in office was also investigated for corruption.

In a country where corruption is a major problem, one where reptiles and vermin have been known to swallow public funds, anything is possible. But who, it must be asked, are those bent on profiting from the fathomless suffering of men, women, and children in the Northeast and Northwest? Who are those for whom Nigeria’s hour of need has become a massive milking exercise? People like that, no matter how highly placed they may be in Nigeria’s scandalously unequal society, deserve no place but prison? But who will hold them to account? In a country where people steal public funds and use the proceeds of their crime to buy their way out of prosecution and prison, who can hold to account those who have enough to grease any palms?

Nigerians must be alarmed at the staggering amounts of public funds that continue to disappear into the nebulous web of money laundering and illicit financial transactions going on in the country. These monies once stolen are sunk into compromising the electoral system, terrorist financing as well as myriad other actions that undermine Nigeria’s democracy and sovereignty.

At this point, it is perhaps moot to say Nigeria must take the anti-corruption war a notch higher. For each day the country refuses to act, the loss is incalculable.

*Obiezu can be reached at keneobiezu@gmail.com