Nigerians not yet fed up with corruption —Lumumba – TheNigerialawyer

A former Director of the Kenyan Anti-Corruption Agency, Prof
Patrick Lumumba, on Tuesday, said that the reason corruption still
thrives in Nigeria was because Nigerians were not yet tired of
it.

He said in a society such as Nigeria’s where people still
celebrate those who fraudulently enrich themselves, corruption
would continue to thrive.

Speaking at the opening session of the 49th annual conference of
the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, he said the day
Nigerians become tired of corrupt practices, the actions that would
follow would put an end to graft.

The annual conference of ICAN which is the single largest
gathering of chartered accountants in Nigeria had as its theme,
“Building Nigeria for sustainable growth.”

He said, “The task of nation-building is a collective
responsibility. If you are an accountant, you have to do your work
by ensuring that the right records are kept and that the truth is
told.

“Corruption is a crime against humanity. Experiences have
demonstrated that if a people in a country are sufficiently fed up
they will rise up. In Romania, we saw that the people themselves
were dissatisfied with the conduct of their party officials and
they changed the attitude of the leadership.

“If we think that the international community will solve our
problems, then we have shown that we are incapable of solving
them.

“Sometimes, I think Nigerians and many Africans are not fed up.
Because the day we are fed up, things will begin to change.

“But as long as we celebrate thieves, as long as we celebrate
money no matter how it is got, everybody will want to have the
money and they don’t care about how it’s got. The day we begin to
get angry, the country will change in one month.”