[COMMENTARY] Celebrity Thieves: How Nigeria Learned To Worship The Hands That Robbed It
By Samuel Ashiwel To understand the depth of our present decay, you must remember the height of our past. We were not always like this. This country once placed honour above wealth. In the Western Region of the early 1960s, Chief Obafemi Awolowo ran what was arguably the most accountable government in our history. It was not a rich government. It was a disciplined government. Every penny of the marketing board revenue was debated and tracked. Free education was not a miracle of charity, it was a product of planning and sacrifice. In that era, a public officer caught diverting one pound did not need to be jailed by a court. The public verdict of shame ended him. Shame was a heavier chain than any prison wall. In the North, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, wielded near absolute power, yet he cultivated a reputation for personal austerity. The story that endures in the North is not of palaces he built, but of how he lived simply and died with little personal property to his...