A study carried out by DAILY POST within the last five days has rather indicated that a good number of Nigerians care less about whichever direction the nation’s anti-corruption fight is headed. To them, it is of minute significance whether the country is globally perceived to be succeeding or not in its quest to overcome the plaque of corruption.
The level of participation recorded at the recent weekly survey conducted by this newspaper vis-à-vis the preceding ones make this deduction highly plausible. This edition of DAILY POST Poll published like the other ones before it generated an abysmal response unlike the last two it followed. Hence, it invariably implies that most Nigerians do not find its question exciting enough to warrant their reactions. And what was the question: “Is Nigeria truly winning the anti-corruption war as suggested by the recent Transparency International rating?”
Accordingly, respondents were asked to vote between ‘yes’ and ‘no’. At the end of voting by the usual 12pm (local time), only 212 readers voted and 26 comments recorded unlike the penultimate edition which saw 1921 respondents voting with 396 comments raked in under the same time span. That of last week further asserted how indifferent Nigerians are to what was lately thrown up for voting as a whooping 5,367 respondents were interested enough to vote while 438 comments were posted by interested bloggers.
The current inadvertent findings bespoke a position mooted by President Goodluck Jonathan during a Presidential Media Chat in September last year where he stated that corruption is not Nigeria’s major problem. He buttressed in the course of the chat that: “When you talk of corruption in Nigeria, it is all about perception and index. Perception is like when you say something is wrong 100 times, it becomes true. There was a time we assembled civil society people and asked them to compare and contrast what the major problem of Nigeria was; I think corruption came third. I am not saying corruption does not exist in this country, corruption is existing and it is as old as the human race. What our administration is doing is to ensure that public funds are not exposed to people to steal.”
Similarly, President Jonathan had earlier argued in December 2012 in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State at the funeral of the late former National Security Adviser (NSA), General Andrew Owoye Azazi that corruption is not the cause of Nigeria’s major problems. Hear him, “Corruption is not the cause of our problem, Nigeria has more institutions that fight corruption. Most of the issues we talk about are not corruption. If we do things properly, if we change our attitudes of doing things, we will see that most of the things we think are caused by corruption are not.”
By opting not to participate in the latest question posed by DAILY POST, two things are likely deduced; it’s either most of these Nigerians may have aligned with Mr President’s position or they are tired of debating on an overwhelming issue of such nature; an issue which necessarily speaks for itself, as the belief at some quarters is that corruption has been institutionalized. How ever, out of the 212 respondents that thought the matter worthy of their votes, 31 respondents (14.62%) voted in the affirmative while 181 others (85.38%) voted in the negative. The poll managed to elicit a total of 26 comments, out of which only one, aside inconsequential comments, agreed that Nigeria is truly winning the anti-corruption war as suggested by the recent Transparency International rating.
Below are few comments presented to you without edit…
Tijani Bukar
They have collected money b4 shifting Nigeria 2 this position!
Lex Chuma Okorie
What was our postion last year? We moved 9 places isnt that improvement? Bad belle people
abdulazeez
Truth be told,we are not winning the war against corruption,I have not seen any of the corrupt official caught so far been justified.see the case of stella oduah and lawan that collected $500thousand bribe.they are still vying for positions.what a joke is this government of ours
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