William ABORISADE, oosha53@gmail.com

 

Unethical practices define all acts intended to perpetrate evil for the benefits of only a few individuals in society. Corruption, which runs through our nation’s veins, about which much is being said daily, can be said to be a subset of unethical practices.

Serving the public without full commitment to the ideals of the public service, including humility, compassion and respect for every member of the public who comes your way, is unethical. These members of the public pay the taxes from which you draw your pays! If you now go further to demand gratification from these people, you are corrupt. No member of the public who seeks your service need to gratify you, his/her taxes pay you for your services.

This brings me to the pathetic situation in which every segment of our public service has become a toll gate. Arriving the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos at about 7.am, on the 6th of January 2025, as usual, I was asked, at my turn, to see an officer in a window, conventionally with my travel documents. Getting to him, he asked for my passport, which he opened and while still holding it whispered: what do you bring for your boy?  And the following dialogue ensued:

 Officer - what do you bring for your boy? 

  I - But your new CEO said you must stop these!

Officer - I am asking from you, not from the CEO

I - I have nothing for you

He, then, handed over to me, my passport, saying bye, bye.

Incidentally, he had nothing to do with me, at all! I was later directed to another window where my travel documents were asked and questions asked! This is just one of several shameful events at the airport which brings our country too low and for an airport and I’ll, rather, a fraudport. Festus Keyamo has done a lot to change the physical face of the airport, for which I, most sincerely, commend him. Keyamo and Olubunmi Ojo are two ministers, whose brand Nigerians haven’t had, for a long time. Incidentally, both of them must work on the management of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, to ensure that our gateway to the world does not become an insignia of lawlessness and shame, as it is presently.

Foreigners coming and going, through such a fraudport, in which extortion occurs with such a temerity, that makes it look legitimized, cannot respect and speak well of our country and its nationals.

I wasn’t surprised at the humiliation Adeola Fayehun, a U.S-based Nigerian journalist, producer and host of Keeping It Real with Adeola Show, on YouTube, went through, in her effort to enter into Honduras, only on account of her holding a Nigerian passport! This same passport looked to people as a passport to heaven, early in the January of 1980, as I arrived the United States. This was about four months following the Obasanjo/Joe Garba militant Afrocentric foreign policy of the military government, which preceded Sheu Shagari.  Our currency, the naira, was strong, at 2 to 1 against the dollar! Our nationality was highly respected and our nation had reasons to be proud of its wealth!

I am not unaware of the fact that honour may not matter to a person who is absolutely deprived, the way our citizens are today, on account of years of irresponsive and irresponsible governance. The airport only symbolizes institutional decay, a logical consequence of misgovernance. It behoves our government, therefore, to declare a total war, blind and dumb, devoid of sentiments, on corruption in the whole country. The extortions in the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, it is generally believed, are institutionalized and that the practitioners are only on errand, just as it is in other public agencies! They, it is being alleged, render accounts to the ogas-at-the-top to whom this extortion is a source of personally-generated-revenue.