I don’t subscribe to the psychiatric test. I don’t see corruption as a mental illness. I see it as a social malady. What is sick about our society is our culture. Let us also admit that our culture is fantastic in terms of brotherhood. But our culture is sick when it comes to leadership. What we have is rulership of the pre-colonial culture. We have always had elites even before the colonial masters came.
For instance, we don’t question our obas. They are revered and treated as deities. How did we come about an oba who can confiscate anybody’s land? How did we come about an oba that can take another person’s wife? The locus of the sickness is not in the leaders, it is in the culture that regulates our behaviour. We have a culture we need to put on the table and interrogate.
What our present politicians do is to leverage on the rulership culture – the culture that sees leaders as deities. And if anybody stands up to question it, people will say the person may die. So, the people are subjugated. For me, we have a rulership cultural software that smart politicians leverage on to loot. As a matter of fact, when they steal and come back home, our obas give them titles. •
Dr. Adeoye Oyewole
adeoyewole2000@yahoo.com
+234 803 490 5808 (WhatsApp only)
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