This corruption is one word that like a few others has been lost in meaning and is now been mixed up with its cousins; theft, fraud. When does theft qualify as theft and corruption as corruption or bribery?
Just like the meanings have been mixed up between the two it is also very difficulty in our modern time to know when one is genuinely concerned or whether one is using the word as a weapon to disgrace and degrade others. For instance David Cameron as then Prime minister of England highlighted the massive levels of corruption in Nigeria. Nigeria countered by saying there is also corruption in England that goes unnoticed. It is true that there is no country perhaps in the whole world where there is no one form or the other of corruption. What differs is the strategies a nation employ to curb it and or tolerate it in certain classes of people. The key is on identifying it, classifying it and employment of safeguards and the later with proper education is where most nations fail.
The key therefore in trying to see whether strategies followed by developing nations are workable. Perhaps, it is to first separate corruption perpetrators into classes, defining what corruption is and proposing strategies on mitigating its effects. Most people are in agreement on existence of corruption, that has never been in dispute anywhere on the face of earth where humans are you will find it. It is how you deal with it and how then you prevent it hurting the under-privileged that matters. In fact some developed nations have used it for positive development, talk about turning a disadvantage into an advantage.
You can not separate attitudes and practices of a people from their traditional cultural attributes. Hofstede in his 1984 book summed up the meaning of culture as “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one category of people from another.” Culture he continued may therefore be identified as ways of behaving and ways of understanding that are shared by a group of people. Schein another writer summarised it as, “the way we do things here.” The tragedy in our society is that each time the word corruption is mentioned people look the direction of the state president or cabinet ministers without looking within themselves or around them on their own conduct and those near them. It is a very lazy way of trying to solve the calamities that befall a society destroyed by the viruses of corruption.
In most developed nations there is zero corruption at the base where service provision is and no one dares to play around at that level where a common man gets help from the state or other organisation on such thing like police services, water provision, electricity. Their laws are strong to protect the common man from the ills of corruption. In these nation you may argue there are some bits of corruption at the higher level where for instance huge contracts are awarded in some cases bordering on nepotism. However at such high level even when some organisation gets a contract as a result of ‘supporting’ the ruling class, there are strong institutions to monitor that work awarded is done to acceptable standard, their workers are paid fairly, materials used are acceptable and the contract duration is respected. Individual citizen normally will not dare fight such big organisation as it is almost a futile cause instead citizens put their faith in the standard boards or institutions to make sure the companies awarded contracts do their work appropriately.
In contrast to the above in countries such as Malawi, individuals want to take on big organisations usually without proper evidence on corruption cases which although at times they could be right about the perpetrators but that their strategy is wrong. On the other hand corruption involving individuals at the basic service provision level is celebrated. An officer who takes on extra money as kickbacks from citizens and or clients to provide a service they deserve is considered clever and most are blind to the fact that this is the most lethal corruption as unlike the top level one it denies the local common man basic necessities.
It is time we examined the current approaches to cubbing corruption. For a start the Anti-Corruption Bureau on its own can not win the fight more especially if they are construed as the monitor, controller, police, investigators, analysers, persecutors, judges of corruption as an all in one label. we need to define their mandate appropriately more especially that of educating the masses on the ills of corruption as being the most important role they play. For the other perceived roles there are other able institutions that are links. Also we need to stop this madness of public persecutions of innocent individuals until courts prove them guilty they are innocent though they may be suspects.
The current rhetoric whether publicly or privately on corruption will not yield anything as it is more used to promote hate and not to solve anything. As long as the actual perpetrators are left unscratched because people’s attention whenever the word is mentioned are pulled towards one direction, corruption will not be curbed. Each time the word is mentioned there are those people who want us to only concentrate and expect the culprit to be the state president or at least a member of his cabinet. That leaves the civil servants, officers of basic social services and generally the actual individual perpetrators or beneficiaries in both public and private organisations to go scot free and continue to promote the practice.
Corruption will be minimised if we took a bottom top approach. Making sure there is zero corruption at the basic needs service provision level where it hurts the poor, it is reduced to zero. Such services like water provision/ connectivity, electricity provision, access to education, medical provision we must make sure has zero base on corruption. It must be totally eradicated in these areas. Proposed workable strategies of dealing with the problem of corruption
To conclude, we can win this battle against corruption if we all become involved in the fight. We must stop celebrating those who perpetrate the practice at the lower levels thus including stopping conniving with them when we ourselves want a service. We need to empower standards and monitoring institutions with professional people to be overseers of all work awarded to organisations in the country making sure they do a good job, they are paying their dues appropriately, their material is of acceptable standard, we have to accept that as individuals we can not claim all expertise to properly follow through issues. Finally we need other smaller organisations to support the Anti-Corruption Bureau in especially cubbing corruption at the lower levels of society. These can even be charitable organisation where common people denied such services like water/ electricity connectivity because they do not have extra money to pay a bribe can get assistance or report incidences of corruption by individual lower level institutional officers.